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People and Sustainability: The Human Cost Big Business Keeps Ignoring · How To Protect The Ocean

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  In the past, the health of people really haven't been at the center
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  of attention for businesses.
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  And a lot of the times, some of the businesses that really run our economy,
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  whether it be in Canada, whether it be in the US, like the fossil fuel
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  companies, have really put people at the lowest end of the society in some cases.
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  It's a real shame to see that and what they've been able to get away with.
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  And for a long time, people were suffering with cancer, high cancer rates
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  and things like that in Chemical Alley in the United States and other places.
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  And today we're gonna be talking about how businesses who are not sustainable and
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  who have problems with providing health problems to people in the surrounding
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  areas of refineries and factories and so forth, and disposal areas, have
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  really made a big problem for people.
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  And that sustainable businesses need to think of the health of the people
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  who not only they serve as providing services and products for, but are
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  people who are in the surrounding areas that are part of the communities
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  where these businesses actually run.
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  And I think today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, we're
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  gonna be really focusing on people and sustainability, especially from, like, a
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  negative point of view of the past that's happened, and areas that were vulnerable
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  communities have really suffered, and how we would like to see a change, and how a
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  lot of places are changing in that way, but not fast enough, and unfortunately
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  in the US, not under this administration.
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  So, today we're gonna be talking about that.
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  As we do, we talk about sustainability, ocean news every
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  weekday, Monday to Friday.
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  If you enjoy that type of news, please feel free to follow
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  on your favorite podcast app.
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  And of course, if you wanna support the show, you can do so by going
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  to speakupforblue.com/patreon.
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  I am here to provide you with what you need to know to protect the ocean.
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  I want you to know how to protect the ocean, hence the name of this podcast.
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  And we do this on How to Protect the Ocean.
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  We do this on Beyond Jaws.
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  And if you wanna support the show, all the efforts that I make, you can
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  do so at speakupforblue.com/patreon.
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  All right, let's get back into the show here.
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  Sustainability is about people.
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  And if we look in the past and how major industries have
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  really screwed people over.
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  Communities living next to industrial facilities carry a
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  disproportionate pollution burden.
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  In Philadelphia, a former refinery released the second highest benzene
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  emissions of any US refinery in 2020 and 2021, even after being shut
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  down, with roughly 117,000 people living within one mile, most of
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  them low-income residents of color.
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  And why is this happening?
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  Like what is really going on?
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  So fentyl in communities consistently show higher poverty rates, higher percentages
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  of residents of color, and high cancer rates and respiratory hazard risk rates
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  than the surrounding city or county.
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  And more people now live in oil and gas development due to expanding
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  extraction techniques and new industrial animal operations, both
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  linked to increased pollutant exposure.
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  And if you look at something that's very, very new to the news world is wildfires.
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  Areas where, you know, forests are catching on fire and they are spreading
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  like crazy are areas where you will see some of our most vulnerable communities.
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  Communities who do not have the infrastructure or the getaway a
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  lot of the times to get out easy, to evacuate their areas easily.
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  Last year and the year before, we talked about the Santa Ana
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  winds in California, Pasadena.
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  It was horrible what we saw.
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  We saw homes go down, people losing pets.
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  They lost homes, they lost memorabilia, they lost a lot of
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  things and their possessions.
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  And now these were homes of affluent communities for the most part, and
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  they were able to get another home.
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  Obviously they were devastated, but they had the means to be able to find
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  places to live and get their family safe and get out as safely as possible.
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  Obviously quickly, and had to be evacuated for some, but still able to
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  get out compared to countries in the north of Canada, Northern Ontario, the
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  Arctic, where indigenous communities who do not have the infrastructure
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  of multiple roads and some, they only had one road in, one road out, could
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  not get out because of the wildfires.
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  They had to be evacuated out by plane or by helicopter multiple
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  times to accommodate all the family members of that community.
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  These are vulnerable communities.
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  Some of them don't even have proper drinking water.
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  Some of them don't have road infrastructure, multiple
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  road infrastructure.
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  Some of them just don't have the communities to rebuild and go back
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  to where they can because there might be another fire there, or they don't
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  have the money to rebuild, or the money is not being put in to rebuild
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  because there's such a disaster around the area that other things have to
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  be rebuilt and maybe prioritized differently That's a scary thought
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  when you are surrounded by wildfires, and these wildfires come in quickly.
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  Anybody who's been around them or studied them knows how
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  fast these wildfires spread.
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  And sometimes you think, "Oh, I have time to get out." No, you don't
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  have time to get out, and you have to get out when they tell you to
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  because if not, it might be too late.
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  A lot of times before a community's evacuated, they give like the get your
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  72-hour bag ready, basically being like within 72 hours you be ready to go at
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  any point in time, because you have to have a go bag and you have to get out,
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  and you have to know how to get out.
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  Think about a massive community of like 100, 200 people up north in very remote
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  areas having to get out all at the same time with one road in, one road out.
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  That's not good.
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  Then you're looking at breathing in all the toxins from the fire, the methane,
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  the metals, everything that comes out, the nasty stuff that comes out of
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  those fires, the smoke from the fire.
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  Then you're looking at communities downwind or upwind, wherever
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  they are, where that wind goes and where the wind blows.
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  You have those communities that have higher toxicity in
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  the air, bad water quality.
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  Toronto had the worst air quality in the world at one point a couple of weeks ago.
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  That was the least that we suffered compared to all these other communities
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  who were devastated by the loss of their homes and their communities
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  and some of them, their loved ones.
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  And again, it's these, companies that continue to contribute to the
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  problem and get away with it with tax breaks and other things and other
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  benefits that they can get away with while building their refineries,
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  while building their oil and gas extraction plants and things like that.
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  And then of course, there's other places where there's like really
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  bad health, outcomes, right?
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  Now, some of the things that, like the consequences you get, like
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  obviously the health outcomes, not just like ecosystem outcomes where
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  it's bad, but directly involved in like industrial siting decisions.
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  There's an ocean tie-in, like the Philadelphia example includes a
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  shipping port among the compounding pollution sources and the direct
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  link between industrial waterfront activities and community health.
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  If you look at New York back in the '50s and '60s and '70s, their water
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  quality was awful along the harbor front.
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  Like, the Hudson River was a disaster.
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  They lost a lot of, like, oysters.
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  They lost their whales, they lost their menhaden because
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  that's when the whales left.
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  And they're just the, the chemicals that were in there from the warehouses and
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  the chemical plants and all that kind of stuff just made it an absolute disaster.
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  And then of course being around that area, inhaling all that smell and the
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  chemicals coming off of that, that couldn't have been good for them either.
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  And then when New York cleaned up its harbor finally, the menhaden
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  came back, oysters were put back in through restoration efforts,
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  expensive restoration efforts, and then eventually the whales came back.
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  And that's great.
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  That's awesome.
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  I think that's great to be able to clean it up, but to get there in the
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  first place is really awful and that's where a lot of people were suffering.
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  And the refineries where they are, the old refineries that are shut down and
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  the example that I talked about at the beginning of this show and refineries
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  that are going on right now are usually in areas where it's poverty-stricken.
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  The people can't afford to move and nobody's gonna buy their
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  homes right next to a refinery.
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  So it's not as if they have a lot of value in their homes other than living in
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  their homes and having their communities.
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  Plus that's where they grew up.
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  That's their history.
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  That's their culture.
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  Those refineries may not have been there when they were first born, but then they
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  got added there without their consultation and without any word from them.
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  And now they're suffering higher cancer rates, higher pollution
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  rates, emphysema, asthma rates.
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  It's awful.
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  These are examples of companies who don't care about the people who are
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  probably their consumers, and they get away with it every single time.
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  And unfortunately, like the states are stepping up as federal environmental
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  justice efforts recede in 2026.
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  So, Minnesota is advancing cumulative impact rules.
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  Illinois created an EPA Office of Environmental Justice, and
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  Massachusetts adopted new siting regulations for energy infrastructure.
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  So, we're seeing states step up where the federal government is lacking, 'cause
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  the federal government has pretty much taken away all the ability for the EPA
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  to do anything, and sometimes the EPA is harming more than it is doing good.
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  And meanwhile, like in federal courts found the EPA unlawfully terminated
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  environmental justice grant funding, because that's what they did when they
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  first came out, 'cause they wanted to get rid of any kind of, quote-unquote,
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  " DEI projects." And that case is still being litigated on appeal.
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  So, the EPA tried to take it away, went to court, a judge says, "Hey, yeah, you can't
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  do this," and now it's being appealed I assume, by the federal government.
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  And this is where we start to feel hopeless a little bit.
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  One, you know the courts are doing their jobs by upholding the laws that
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  were originally put in, in most cases.
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  We've seen a lot of environmental things that the Trump administration
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  has tried to do in the last couple years, and a lot of times they
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  haven't been able to be successful.
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  Although some, they have been able to be successful is opening
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  up marine monuments to industrial fishing and/or artisanal fishing.
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  They're not monitoring those programs either as a way to actually look at what
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  kind of data they can get out of that and looking at the benefits of what a
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  marine protected area has over the last 10, 16 years, or 15 years, has been
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  able to do to replenish those numbers.
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  Unfortunately, they're just not gonna get the value out of that by monitoring that.
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  And in many cases, like this case where there were the EPA unlawfully terminated
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  environmental justice grant funding, that gets held up in court, which is good.
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  So we're starting to see some movement on there, but there's
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  still a lot of stuff that people are fighting that environmental justice
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  people, environmental advocates are fighting, and activists are fighting
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  against the Trump administration.
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  And nonprofit organizations and NGOs who have law divisions, who have
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  people able to take the government to court, they're taking them to
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  court, and they're winning these battles, which is really great to see.
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  Now, there's stuff that you can do.
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  You can understand that protecting the environment and protecting people are
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  the same fight in some communities.
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  I think sometimes you'll hear me or you'll hear people be
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  like, " Hey, you know what?
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  We need to protect the environment.
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  This is one of the best things we need to do." But while protecting the
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  environment, you're also protecting the economy, you're making it more
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  sustainable, you're saving money for businesses, and you're protecting people.
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  You are protecting people.
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  And people will start to say, " Why do we care about the environment?
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  We need to care about the economy." We also need to take care of the health
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  of people, which often gets ignored when we talk about climate change.
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  When we talk about pollution, it gets ignored a lot of the times.
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  And we've seen some really big mistakes that have happened in countries all
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  over the world, but especially in the US, especially as these laws are being
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  contested for protecting the environment.
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  So that's it for today's episode.
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  It's a short one.
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  I just wanted to get that through.
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  Protecting the environment, being sustainable protects
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  people, and that's a very big, important part of sustainability.
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  So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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  You can DM me in my socials, go to the show notes.
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  You can also support the show by going to speakupforblue.com/patreon.
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  I put an episode Monday to Friday.
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  I do The Ocean Decoded live on YouTube.
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  I, uh, do The Beyond Jaws podcast with David Ebert.
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  We edit shows.
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  We do all this wonderful stuff, to get you the ocean resources you
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  need so that you can make - a better decision on protecting the ocean.
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  And this is how you learn how to protect the ocean, by listening to this podcast.
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  So follow on your favorite podcast app, and don't forget to go
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  speakupforblue.com/patreon if you wanna support the show and
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  become part of the community.
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  I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.