Prompted in part by the appointment of former Shell CEO Marvin Odum to lead Texas recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a coalition of over 130 organizations released a joint statement directed at elected officials in Texas and Louisiana on Thursday demanding that hurricane relief funds be delivered to communities in need, not to big polluters—”the same corporate actors that caused or contributed to many of these problems in the first place.”
“Harvey must be the event that changes our government from industry lackeys into public leaders who accept the reality of climate change and act on it.”
—Priscilla Villa, Earthworks”For years, Texas state government has prioritized oil, gas, and chemical industry profits ahead of the public interest, and Texans have paid the price with their health, their property, and their environment,” said Priscilla Villa, an organizer with Earthworks. “Harvey must be the event that changes our government from industry lackeys into public leaders who accept the reality of climate change and act on it by quickly moving away from dirty fossil fuels and plastics and towards a renewable energy future.”
As Common Dreams has reported, many in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey—which damaged more than 100,000 homes in the Houston area alone—have raised the crucial question: who should pay for the destruction?
All too often, recovery costs are forced upon those who are disproportionately harmed by extreme weather events—low-income and minority communities—while the major fossil fuel companies that have knowingly contributed to the warming of the planet, and thus to the intensity of storms like Harvey, pay little to nothing.
“Taxpayers, especially those living in vulnerable coastal communities, should not have to bear the high costs of these companies’ irresponsible decisions,” Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, concluded in a recent piece for the Guardian.
The signatories of Thursday’s joint statement echoed this sentiment, arguing that relief funds must not be diverted into the coffers of oil and gas companies, as they so often were in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Read the full list of signatories here. The full statement follows: