The COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed again a fundamental truth about the Anthropocene: When disaster strikes, the vulnerable take the hardest punches. Communities of color have suffered much higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and mortality, both because they are disproportionately represented in frontline service positions and because their access to routine healthcare is more limited.
This pattern has long been observed in studies of environmental and climate justice, as the titles in this month’s bookshelf show. Vulnerable communities of color face more and more serious exposure to environmental hazards and have more limited access to economic, social, and political remedies.
Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger, by Julie Sze (University of California Press 2020, 160 pages, $18.95 paperback)
A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind, by Harriet A. Washington (Little, Brown & Co. 2019/2020, 368 pages, $17.99 paperback)
Katrina: A History, 1915-2015, by Andy Horowitz (Harvard University Press 2020, 296 pages, $35.00)
Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement, by Michael Mendez (Yale University Press 2020, 304 pages, $30.00)
Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment, by Lucas Channel (Harvard University Press 2020, 184 pages, $29.95)
Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition, by Shalanda H. Baker (Island Press 2021, 224 pages, $32.00 paperback)
The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age, by Francois Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux (The MIT Press 2020, 480 pages, $39.95)
Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret, by Catherine Coleman Flowers (New Press 2020, 224 pages, $25.99)
Superfund Underfunded: How Taxpayers Have Been Left with a Toxic Financial Burden, by Jillian Gordner (US PIRG/Environment America 2021, 174 pages, free download available here)
Struggles for Climate Justice: Uneven Geographies and the Politics of Connection, by Brandon Derman (Palgrave Macmillan 2020, 261 pages, $74.99 soft cover)
The 2020 NGO and Foundation Transparency Report, by Staff of Green 2.0 (Diverse Green 2021, 101 pages, free download here)
Covering Climate Equitably: A Guide for Journalists, by Erica Priggen Wright, Vanice Dunn, Katie Parrish, and Benjamin Gass (The Solutions Project with Conspire for Good and Provoc 2020, 36 pages, free download available here)
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