While CPS likes to boast about its low rates, utility bills are high for our members because homes here waste more energy than any other large city in the South. CPS’s conservation programs, which run out of money early each year, gave rebates to folks that can afford to buy new appliances or solar arrays – leaving the majority of families out. A 2004 study commissioned by CPS found San Antonio could save almost as much energy as it would gain from the nukes through efficiency programs. That goal was never implemented. In our campaign we champion retrofitting, efficiency programs and local renewable installations as vehicles for “green job” creation that can lift working families out of poverty and lower family’s utility bills at the same time.
As the debate on these ideas and federal climate change policy finally heats up, most of us doing grassroots organizing anywhere but the coasts find ourselves left out in the cold. Restructuring our energy systems to combat global warming is an opportunity to take on larger structural issues of poverty, inequity, and environmental justice – but ensuring that the green economy isn’t just a new emerging market for big business to capitalize on is a huge challenge. Models for harnessing the green economy from the Bay Area or New York won’t necessarily work in poor communities like San Antonio, with a small tax base and little wealth or resources. By focusing on local battles, SWU is pushing to land climate justice on the ground in a way that uplifts working families of color and undoes business as usual.
We are in some pretty hostile territory. The Gulf Coast is a major hub of the energy industry and home to 57 refineries and 60% of the U.S.’s oil refining capacity. Texas generates more electricity from coal than any other state and leads the nation in mercury emissions. If it were a country, Texas would be ranked number seven in greenhouse gas emissions. Ten new coal plants are in the works after Governor Rick Perry ordered fast-tracking of the permit process.
In San Antonio, CPS started construction on its third coal-fired power plant in 2005. Mercury and smog-forming pollution from these plants blows towards the overwhelmingly working class, Mexican@ and African American southeast side of San Antonio. Over a third of households on the southeast side have an annual income of less than $20,000 and someone in nearly one in four of households suffers from asthma.
Less than two years later, CPS was applying to build the two nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project, presenting them as a “clean” solution for generating low-cost energy. But the communities living along the nuclear lifecycle know nukes are anything but clean. We have no way to dispose of radioactive waste that stays incredibly dangerous for 1,000s of generations. The development of Yucca Mountain as a disposal site is desecration of Western Shoshone land and values. None of the drinking water aquifers subject to in-situ uranium mining in South Texas have ever been successfully restored. In part because of studies finding more leukemia in communities surrounding nuclear plants, Germany is sending all its nukes into early retirement.
SWU has a long history challenging environmental racism locally and pushing for climate justice, with the ultimate goal being community empowerment. Through grassroots organizing and direct action, we were able to very quickly force City Council and CPS to hold public hearings on the nuclear proposal. We shared the true story of alternatives to our energy policy in popular education sessions to develop the leadership of our members to advocate for themselves against CPS’s plans. We forged strong alliances with communities fighting new permits for uranium mining in South Texas to build statewide grassroots pressure.
Mayor Hardberger said the nukes were a done deal. CPS said we were crazy to think more solar and wind were the answer. City Council, who gets a third of the City’s budget from selling energy, never wanted to talk energy conservation. City Council staff told us they had gotten a pro-nuke email a day for the last year from CPS, while the public knew nothing of the proposal. The newspaper editorial board thought they were the best idea since sliced bread.
It was a major victory, then, when instead of rubberstamping their request, City Council voted down the rate hike CPS wanted to finance the nuclear reactors, giving them 3.5% when they wanted 5%. In fact, eight months after banging down the board room door, CPS had committed to doubling its energy conservation goals and Mayor Hardberger said “green collar jobs” a – count ‘em – five times while unveiling the framework for a city-wide sustainability plan that includes weatherization. It was a huge shift in the debate here in the belly of the dirty energy beast.
Of course we’ve got a long way to go. Though delayed, the initial work on the reactors will be funded through some creative accounting on the part of CPS. There is still a lack of transparency, accountability, and vehicles for public participation at CPS. “Mission Verde,” the city’s sustainability plan, currently lacks any real teeth. Instead of taking on proactive weatherization programs, CPS is funding ad campaigns to turn off plasma televisions and turn down thermostats when most homes use window units. They are talking of installing advanced metering systems that will show us exactly how much energy our leaky homes are wasting while providing no resources to stop it. Local solar programs are getting pennies, while CPS spends ratepayer money on lobbying for nukes through the newly formed Nuclear Energy for Texans and against the construction of transmission lines to bring more wind energy to urban centers from West Texas.
The environmental justice movement has to be in the forefront of the battle for climate change policies to ensure that those in the shadows of the dirty fossil fuel and nuclear regimes get solutions that will benefit our communities. With such a great opportunity for energy conservation and the most solar and wind energy potential of any state, SWU will continue to fight for local energy policies that combat climate change in an equitable way. SWU is modeling the changes we want to see happen in our community with our organic Roots of Change Community Garden food security project and by retrofitting and solarizing our building. In the process, we’re hoping to push forward home-grown solutions that can act as models in low-income communities across the country.
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