The national president of the Sierra Club said at the annual meeting of the state conference of the NAACP held in Peoria that attempting to protect the coal industry because it provides jobs is a shortsighted argument based on a “false trick.”
Aaron Mair, the first African American president of the Sierra Club, said environmental justice demands a clean environment to live and work for all people.
“Our humanity is in peril. We have a common enemy, but divide-and-conquer plays one group against the other,” he said, rejecting the notion that the coal industry provides needed jobs.
Only 3 percent of jobs in the carbon industry are held by people of color, he said, yet the industry is responsible for disproportionately contaminating poor African American communities.
“We have nothing to lose by closing coal and demanding clean jobs,” Mair said, calling the Illinois Clean Jobs Bill co-sponsored by Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria, an important piece of legislation.
“A system that profits from climate change profits from an unholy dollar,” he said. “We need to stop burning coal and establish clean solutions. Peoria could be on the front lines of this. Peoria could build wind turbines, but this requires political will.
“It’s nonsense to say this puts people out of work.”
Peoria asthma rates are higher than the statewide average.
Mair started his environmental advocacy by campaigning to shut down a polluting site in Schenectady, New York. He went to the Sierra Club for help and was rebuffed with a suggestion that he seek help from the NAACP. However, one person from the Sierra Club followed up with him and recognized the campaign was an issue for all communities and Sierra Club needed to work with him on this and other issue of environmental justice.
Speakers at the annual meeting in Peoria repeated the need for environmentalists, labor unions and African Americans to work together.
The state conference was held in Peoria during the 100th anniversary of the Peoria Branch NAACP.