Letters Racism pervades pollution policies, too

Brian Obach notes that environmental pollution killed 13,000 Black people last year, about 15 times more than the scandalous total of 235 killed by police (“We must challenge environmental racism, too,” June 29).

A recent Harvard study showing a statistical link between COVID-19 deaths and other diseases associated with living in polluted, impoverished communities substantiates Obach’s claim that racism pervades our environmental policies as well as our justice system.

Perhaps we need to examine the connection between the harm we do to each other and harm we do to the environment. In his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Sí, Pope Francis articulated that connection: “We have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach. It must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

New York State Energy

Research and Development Authority recently provided more than $10.6 million to help underserved New Yorkers access solar power. This is a first step in implementing New York’s social energy equity framework and in aiding the recovery of the state’s economy.

Kudos to the Cuomo administration for creating a policy that could both preserve our planet and protect vulnerable communities. After all, as Pope Francis reminds us, ”whether believers or not, we are agreed today that the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone.”

John Poreba New Lebanon