Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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A new era has dawned on our country, and we have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to address the devastating toll fossil fuels are taking on our communities.
With new President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, we have leadership that recognizes climate change as one of the biggest crises facing this country, and the world. Beyond rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, we need even stronger and bolder action on climate and the environment. Thankfully, recent executive orders signed by the president do just that by pausing all oil and gas leasing on public land.
Still in the midst of a pandemic, with over 450,000 Americans lost, there’s no more appropriate place to start than by addressing air pollution and the urgent need for people to breathe cleaner air. For the frontline workers and communities of color who have been most affected by COVID-19, this means reducing pollutants that put them at greater risk of contracting the worst symptoms and effects of this deadly virus.
A new report by the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments shows that oil and gas development exacerbates the effects of air pollution and the health disparities for the most vulnerable communities. Scientists have long known that fossil fuels emit pollutants that can cause serious health problems, including asthma and other respiratory, lung and heart issues. Unsurprisingly, communities of color bear the brunt of air pollution, due to decades of discriminatory practices like redlining. Such practices forced communities to live in neighborhoods nearest to sources of contamination. While the report focuses on oil and gas development in three western states (Colorado, Montana and New Mexico), it’s obvious that this problem persists beyond state borders. Even with little to no oil and gas potential, Nevada’s public lands are still being leased for extractive drilling, putting communities at risk.
This flies in the face of our state’s commitment to tackling climate change. During the 2019 legislative session, I was proud to serve on the Assembly’s Growth and Infrastructure Committee, which helped draft and pass legislation that increased our state’s share of renewable energy, expanded solar energy options for low-income communities and nonprofit organizations and businesses, and called for the state to begin inventorying Nevada’s greenhouse gas emissions. These were all necessary steps to begin winding down our reliance on fossil fuels, and instead start investing in the plentiful, clean, renewable energy resources we have — solar and geothermal energy.
It’s not just air quality that’s harmed by our continued reliance on oil and gas development. Numerous reports have also shown that the oil and gas industry benefited greatly from stimulus packages passed last year, receiving up to $15 billion in direct COVID relief, while Americans — mostly low-income Black and Hispanic communities — died without the same access to relief, choking on dirty air, a deadly respiratory virus and the vestiges of environmental racism.
Our frontline professionals, the nurses who are battling the pandemic each day, are asking us, for the sake of our communities, to strengthen air quality standards, set limits on pollutants from power plants, increase funding for public health problems and, most importantly, stop building fossil fuel infrastructure that is worsening these environmental injustices.
We look forward to doing what we can during the 2021 legislative session, but after four years of inaction from the White House, it’s time for the federal government to step up and do its part to lessen the damages of air pollution. The Biden-Harris administration is exploring executive action to pause oil and gas drilling on public lands. This is a great place to start that will add the benefit of protecting the public lands that are a critical part of Nevada’s booming outdoor recreation economy, and I’m sure we can count on our members of Congress to support the administration.
But we can do more, as nurses and other frontline professionals are calling for. We need even bolder, stronger steps to speed up our transition to clean, renewable energy that will improve the health of Nevadans and protect future generations from the many risks of fossil-fuel pollution.
Rochelle Nguyen was elected to the Nevada Assembly in 2018. She serves District 10, located in the central Las Vegas Valley.
