Really blessed to be able to be on a number of different boards that help us speak to how we’re solving the climate crisis. And the unique opportunity in all of these spaces, I think, is to deeply listen to what communities and philanthropists are thinking about, and how do we solve problems. I am a problem solver. It has been a part of who I have been since I was in kindergarten.

The love of finding solutions has led me to a number of boards, Energy Foundation, rare others that I have served on. And I hope more people do that. I hope more people are solution oriented, not sitting in the problem of where we are, but coming together to figure out, how do we get out of it, and if we stay in that space? To me, that space is the space of hope.

You’re listening to A Climate Change, this is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got Heather McTeer Toney on the program. I’m really excited to have Heather on the program. She has an amazing background. 27 she became the first African American mayor of Greenville, Mississippi. She’s an author of a number of books, be before the street lights came on, black America’s urgent call for climate solutions.

She’s appeared on all kinds of different media outlets. She’s the executive director of Bloomberg Philanthropies beyond petrochemicals campaign, and the list goes on and on. I guess we’ll just kind of jump into the interview to talk to Heather about all the amazing work that she’s done and she’s up to right now. Thanks, Heather.

Thanks so much, Matt, and thanks for having me. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation.

You know, let’s I always like to start at the beginning, like, what is your path and what kind of inspired you to take these steps as an environmentalist, as a political activist. What were those inspirational moments?

Well, I like to think I had a very unconventional path. When people think about environmentalists and climate and climate science, they tend to think of all of the fields that have the IST on the end of it, environmentalist, scientist and I stayed as far away from the science buildings as humanly possible when I was in college, so I did not come to this, this space with a purely scientific mindset. I was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta.

I am the daughter of a civil rights attorney and a school teacher, and I spent my childhood surrounded by not only people who were impacted by the land and the environment, but also a space that most people know to be very close to poverty. So coming up to me, I never learned about environmental issues as something you get in school. We learned in just new environment and climate issues because we knew when hunting season was right.

You know when the river goes up and down in the Mississippi Delta because of when it there’s heavy rain, or it’s harvest season at the same time as it’s football season. And these things are what I think grounded me, without really even knowing it, of how closely connected I was to environmental issues later in my life and career, I went to school at Spelman and went to law school at Tulane back came home to work with my dad, and eventually ran for mayor of my hometown and began working on what I thought were economic issues.

You know, job development. How do you make life better for the people that are in our families, in our friends? And it wasn’t until then that it really struck me the impact of environmental injustices in our community.

So by working on water issues with then Administrator Lisa Jackson, who came and visited my community as a part of her tour across the country to identify what are environmental issues. She was the first woman, first African American, to serve as administrator for US EPA under President Obama. And she really just sort of pulled me to the side and said, you know, you’re working on environmental justice issues, right?

And I said, No, I’m absolutely not. And she said, No, you actually are. And it gave me a different insight into how important water, land, air are to economic development of communities, but also how these are things. That have been really devastating when not addressed to those very same communities. So Matt, this sort of like a long and a long way of saying how I came around to being in this space, but I will tell you, it is the most passionate work, and I think some of the most fulfilling and necessary work of our generation.

Absolutely. And shout out to the Green Wave. I My undergraduate degree is in economics from Tulane.

So, so then we both share that wonderful notion that if you can go to school and graduate in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, then you have truly earned your degree.

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s been about five years down in New Orleans and and that’s kind of part of my environmentalist journey as well. Is that I remember being in law school. I started law school at Loyola, New Orleans, and reading an expose at the time, done by the Wall Street Journal about how the oil companies were creating such an environmental mess in Louisiana, cutting canals through the swamps and Bayou which were destroying the wetlands there, and dumping heavy metals all over the place and polluting the groundwater and just making a toxic stew.

And, you know, just like, holy moly, you know, what are we going to do about this? And, you know, and it’s been going on for, literally, you know, decades, maybe 100 plus years, the degradation of the environment in all kinds of regions across the country and and particularly in areas that are economically impoverished, because that’s where the big oil and big power companies are able to kind of dominate the landscape politically and economically.

So tell us a little bit about what were those first steps like for you. Did you run for mayor before you had kind of, you know, decided that the environment was a top issue for you.

Absolutely. It just, you know, running for mayor, it was about being of service to people who raised me, who had such a hand in not only who I am and what I’ve become, but being a public servant, I think, is a part of my entire family background, and so that desire to really help all of us move forward in our lives, generational building of a community. Those are things that bring me joy, but I think it was so lost on entire communities, particularly communities that have so for so long, been impoverished.

What it means to have a healthy environment, right? There’s so many issues that impact the community. It’s always thinking about health and safety, very important thinking about jobs and economic development, because honestly, when you are trying to feed your family, you’re trying to make sure that your kids are going to school, trying to make sure that you’re just safe going in and out of your home, whether it’s at play or at worship, all of these things are priority. But at the end of the day, if you cannot breathe the air in the community that you’re living in, you become sicker.

Sick people can’t work. If you are not able to do simple things like maybe grow a garden, as much as we talk about growing our own food, if you can’t do it on land that’s clean, then you’re making yourself worse. If you can’t drink water without an additional cost, then it is more expensive to just go about your daily lives. So the underlying of the environment and its importance to our everyday lives is so critical in understanding that when I really began to embrace this issue.

I Well, two things happened. One, I got really angry. I got angry at how much we had not been told how communities that are on the front lines of the environmental and climate crisis are often the ones that are first and worst hit, but there was not the services and the need for rectifying injured land and people, and then we seem to be on the back cover of any and every fundraising idea, like always showing this images of people or what has hurt people, without, at the same time Coming to understand, how do we correct these problems?

And then I think in the communities that we work in, it was very obvious that there was divide between, what are environmental issues and people issues, right? It’s not just penguins and polar bears. Let’s put it that way. It’s about people and how people are living. Their everyday lives, to the best of our all of our ability, we have one planet, and so it’s important for us to be able to do that safely and in a healthy way.

Those are the urging things that really were important to me, as well as understanding it as a civil rights issue. So a combination of all of this, I think, really, not only catapulted me into the space, but there was also this little incident called the BP oil spill. I don’t know if you remember that or not, in New Orleans, kind of a big deal, yeah, sort of a big deal.

At the time I was mayor, and I had just been appointed by Lisa Jackson to the local government advisory committee. And if you never knew what these committees of local officials do and how important they are, they are the life blood of being able to get genuine information and insight from a local perspective to the federal government.

So I was appointed as chair of that, and two weeks after that, BP oil spill happened, and I very quickly became on the front lines of together local elected officials talking and seeing how EPA regulations were helpful in cleanup, helpful in economic development and re establishing the community in a very environmentally sound way, and hearing feedback right from people who were going through it every Single Day and the ways in which we weave together environment, culture, jobs, tourism, regulations, accountability is paramount to how we are successful together as a community.

So tell us a little bit about your your work for the Bloomberg Philanthropies project, and what are you doing there?

So beyond petrochemicals, it is a effort to stop the expansion of petrochemical facilities in the United States of America, but particularly in the southeast. So if you have remember being in the area of New Orleans and particularly in south of Louisiana, you go across the Mississippi River and you see just miles and miles and miles of facilities. In fact, oftentimes, if you’re coming in to South Louisiana or into the Gulf Texas area, you see these big plumes of smoke that are going up, and those are chemical facilities, chemical facilities that, more often than not, are emitting very dangerous chemicals into the surrounding communities and areas.

So our mission is very simple. We have enough of these facilities, we do not need to build out more of them, especially as they continue to unjustly and unfairly impact communities in which they’re sitting in. So we focus primarily in three areas. There is the Louisiana cancer alley area. That’s how most people know it. It’s a 78 mile stretch of Mississippi River Coast that’s completely inundated by chemical facilities. Then there is the Texas area, that’s the Gulf Texas area, as well as the Houston shipping channel.

And then there is the Ohio River Valley region, where we’re beginning to see petrochemical facilities start to try to pop up in places that, again, have been overburdened by pollution. When we address what is happening in communities, we also help communities have space and have a way to decide what they want to do in their own communities. And the thing about petrochemicals is they’re actually a triple threat. Petrochemicals are the building box the plastic.

Yes, what you make plastic out of, pure and simple, it is chemicals made out of oil and the continued increase of making petrochemicals. They are a byproduct of the oil and gas industry. And as our planet comes off of oil and gas and into more renewables, the industry sort of had to figure out, okay, what do we do with all this stuff? Well, plastic or like, you need more plastic.

I think a lot of people would agree that adding more plastic is not necessarily what we need to do for a planet right now, in addition to the fact that the oceans are completely inundated with plastic when you are just in your day to day, work in life and getting rid of plastic, plastic. Waste, we see recycling bins and places that we’re putting all of this plastic, but it begs the question, what’s happening to it? Do we need more of it? And how do we stop it?

Because the creation of all of this new plastic just continues to clog our systems. So beyond petrochemicals is working to, again, stop the creation of new plastic facilities, so that we are not continuing to put harmful plastics, microplastics and chemical emissions into the air. We’re saving lives working in our environment at the same time reducing emissions across the board.

Well, that’s great work. I had interviewed Senator Ben Allen, who’s a state senator out here in California, and he had helped pass some model legislation regarding the reduction of plastics here in California, and so transitioning to materials that are not plastics, and we are capable of producing materials that are not plastics for the same things that we use plastics for currently. And I’m curious as to if you’re working on similar legislation or projects like that to kind of, you know, turn the corner on this legislatively.

I think there’s so many opportunities to do that right now, you’re absolutely right. We are brilliant people, and the ingenuity of America has shown itself time and time again through different periods of industrial and technological development. So it certainly begs the question of, why can’t we come up with some alternative to plastic that is not only healthier for us, but also gives us opportunities for strong economic development.

I think this is, though, an interesting time, because while there’s not as much push for this on the federal level, local action like you just identified in California is without a doubt where it’s at, because local action moves people, not only quickly, but it also is something that people feel closely we do our work in a way that helps to provide space for those local actions to take place, so making sure that the infrastructure is not built out such that local actions can be in place to provide space, provide infrastructure, provide idea developments that are often coming from those local spaces is a part of our role, holding the space so that others can move forward in that legislative space, I think, is critical.

Tell us a little bit about your your new book, and why you wrote it, and why you think it was important to be put out there.

So I wrote before the street lights come on, and actually, it was a development that started when the COVID crisis hit us, and I was writing about how we are experiencing so many different issues in the black community in particular that have an underlying foundation of climate change, but it was something that folks weren’t really talking about. In fact, when I started writing just in having conversations with friends and family members, I would ask them, what do they think about climate? And they would tell me how that nobody’s thinking about climate.

What are you talking about? We gotta deal with COVID. We gotta deal with police brutality. We gotta figure out how to just get our kids into school. You are really, really on a whole different not in our community space. And I muddled over that for a moment, because I realized that there’s so many of our issues that are about climate change, but we had not done a good job in the environmental community of identifying it with all cultures.

So starting, you know, charity starts at home, starting with my own. Being a black American from Mississippi, I wanted to talk about these issues with respect to the black community, and really identify how we’ve been in this space of talking about moving the needle on environmental issues and how they related to all of the other major concerns that we experience.

So whether it is talking about violence in a community that is directly related to climate change, and how we’re seeing an increase in heat and the relationship between heat and tree canopies and clean air to an elevation of violence, whether it is domestic violence, child abuse or even police brutality, connecting the dots in science to show us that these things are not just happening because of there being some upset in the community, there’s actual scientific information.

Conversation, as well as conclusions that can be drawn that’s high climate change to many of the problems that we see in the community, as well as the solutions for that. Because I don’t think that it’s fair to talk about the problems without talking about an opportunity for solutions and really sitting in that.

Yeah, I’ve certainly talked to a number of people about heat islands in cities and the lack of tree canopy in inner cities, and how that affects, you know, those communities adversely, and how those communities have historically not had the cities plant trees in those areas, and so they suffer from a lack of, you know, just foliage and things that heat up the community to unhealthy levels.

So, you know, there’s all kinds of things that can be done to mitigate those factors. I was curious. I wanted to kind of pivot to the election and and wanted to know kind of what your what your role was, and in that process, were you actively engaged? And my kind of takeaway was that Kamala Harris didn’t make the case as strongly as she could have on the environment.

I felt like they were trying to soft pedal it, because the pollsters were saying, hey, it’s not a saleable issue or something like that. And she didn’t come on as strongly as I thought she could have. And obviously, 2020 hindsight, you know, you can kind of money morning quarterback this thing. But what are your thoughts on that?

Well, I will say, in my personal capacity, I’ve always been very active in elections and in voter engagement. I think constituency education and voter engagement is critical for people understanding the issue. And I think on both sides the aisle, folks didn’t pay attention to the issues and pushed it to climate in particular, pushed it to a back burner, versus making it at the forefront of what we’re experiencing and what we what we’re doing. I think that happened across the board.

The I guess bright spot in all of this is that climate change is a very local issue, and there are a number of opportunities, if we’re willing to see them and take them, where people at the most local level can weigh in and begin to shift policy.

Take, for example, boards and commissions, whether it be something like a city council or tree board or court commission, regardless of the outcome of the last election, we have municipal elections that happen just about every year in this country, as well as state and county level elections, where those positions are extremely important in determining how we use clean energy, how we reduce petrochemical and chemical companies from not only coming into our community, but hold them accountable, it’s the people who live next door to us, who attend church with us, that we play.

You know, their kids play soccer and football together, these are the same people who are sitting on these boards and commissions. So the more we’re able to take our opportunity and really look internally, what’s going on at home, talking to one another, saying, Hey, is that smoke coming out of that plant over there? Black is what’s going on in that space? Should they be doing that?

Or in my community, if there’s a sign that goes up for a permit that’s supposed to happen on a piece of land, everybody wants to know they’re looking they’re finding out what’s coming over here. Is it going to be a new store, or is it going to be some kind of manufacturing plant, like having these kind of conversations with one another, and really taking attention to what’s happening in our community begins to shift up and change policy.

So regardless of what’s happening on a federal level, and I know it’s a little challenging right now for a lot of us, we got to look at what’s going on in the local and think about a long game.

Yeah, I think that that’s a brilliant strategy. And I think that, you know, quite frankly, that kind of happened in the first Trump administration, is that I thought that a lot of people woke up at the state and local levels, and there were a lot of amazingly good new policies that were created in the environmental space, because people kind of started to take it back and say, Hey, we may not get it from Washington, but we could get it at the state and local level, and we can do a lot of work there. And I love what you’re saying about just looking at the permitting.

You know, water boards, air air quality boards, there are all kinds of different opportunities for people to. Serve and and we should be looking at the micro, because that’s where we can affect it the most and start to change the conversation. So I think that’s really important. You know, way to look at this.

I think absolutely, and it’s a space where people can see the work taking place. It’s not just a subjective idea that’s theorized out. There it is. We can see the work taking place. We can be a part of the work. And another important point to notice this period is also one in which we’re seeing the federal government come away from many of the investments that were made to support clean energy and to support this level of accountability that communities want.

So in doing so, I think local communities, while they are on again, the front line of the action now also have to turn to how we’re investing in our local nonprofits, you know, places where funding has been stripped away, we still want to see those development projects move forward.

So it is giving us a space to internalize and giving us a space to say, Hey, we are clearly making a decision that we want accountability, clean air, clean water, clean land, and we want to have these things happen in a way that are measurable, accountable, that we’re not putting more plastics, not putting more petrochemicals into our bodies, into our atmosphere, and we are creating development in our communities, so having the space to do that right now, again, I know it looks very tough, but we have to say, what does this give us an opportunity to do?

What lessons did we learn from the last time to make sure that we have staying power? You mentioned at the first administration the local government stepping in. There was the city’s effort of we’re all in. We’re still in where mayors and governors really stepped in to make sure that they were continuing to stay aligned with global climate targets, continuing to reduce emissions in their states through either their legislative authority and power or their local authority and power.

And they were still able to look at how we are moving towards clean energy development and using that as an economic factor, because we can’t leave out that part. These are the pathways, tools and resources that we’re reverting back to.

Like no one that I know and thinking about and working with in this movement is taking the approach of woe is me. We’re all going to hell in a hand basket. We’re doomed because that’s not what we do, especially if you are coming from the environmental justice movement, we have seen dark spaces before the lives of countless children and families are dependent on the advocacy of clean energy and environment, and so no, this is not the time that we sit down and cry. This is the time that we collectively come together, look at pathways on local levels, that we move forward and we keep pushing.

As you were talking, I was thinking about what you’d said earlier, which is, hey, if you see stuff coming out of a smokestack in an industrial facility that doesn’t look right, you know, raise your hand and complain and ask questions, because a lot of times it is they’re violating the law there. We certainly have seen it here in California, which a lot of people think, Oh, well, we’re in California.

You know, the environmental policies are strong, but there’s tremendous amount of pollution from petrochemical plants and things like that out here, and they’re kind of getting away with it because the EPA sometimes is not doing their job appropriately. They’re not regulating the way they should, and people aren’t standing up and saying, Hey, that’s wrong. What’s going on? Are they violating the law?

And so we need to step up. And another point kind of related, I had a woman on the show a while back, and she Melissa Sims, and she’s suing Exxon. But prior to that, she was like a local prosecutor in a small town, and she used trespass laws to go after polluters, major companies, because they were putting toxic chemicals on the land, and that’s a trespass. And you don’t even have to go into the technical, you know, EPA, like law.

You’re just talking about local trespass law. You cannot put chemicals on my property, and that’s illegal, you know. And so she. She ticketed them, and then they find them, and, you know, and it was pretty effective. So, you know, there’s just creative ways to go about these, you know, enforcing environmental justice, and we kind of have to go into our tool kits and be more creative than maybe we were six months ago.

I think he is absolutely right, and there’s a beauty to that creativity. I was saying earlier that we are a creative genius group of people. And just think about the technology and advancements that have come from Americans, we have this ability to just think in a way that can catapult the planet and at the same time utilize these elements of our culture that we’re from.

And I think this is the space and the time that we do that. Wanna even that too. Matt is still under attack. You know, there’s a amazing group in South Louisiana, the descendants project sisters, Joe and joy banner, who had been not only working to protect the community from expanding petrochemical facilities, they are a part and they do own part of the only 11 mile stretch of Louisiana Mississippi River coastline that does not have any chemical plant on it.

So they also use a very creative way of the national historic land preservation trust as a means to not only protect and highlight the importance of this land, the legacy of this land, through plantations. They’re the only black women that own a plantation and telling this story in a way that is very familiar to the South was a way of also protecting it from more facilities. But would you believe that even that now is under attack from the federal government as they are attempting to rescind National Historic Preservation Trust?

I mean, can you imagine what that does to landmarks across the country, not just this one, but the process of landmarks, protecting our culture or the benefit of our future, but also protecting the land in which it sits on.

Like these are the reasons why you need local action to speak to it, speak to the value of what we know exists in this country, but also speak to how we go about our processes of making sure that they study talk about a nefarious action, oh, my God, to wipe out this park that you know is protecting the history and culture and telling a important piece of our story, and then to put a petrochemical plan on top of it. I mean, that is, that is, that is sinful in so many ways.

Oh, my God, yes. That’s why we have to have this kind of conversation while we, I think, continue to push awareness, push truth and truthfulness so that people are hearing from trusted sources, places that they know and they understand what’s really happening on the local level, and our opportunity here to make a tremendous difference In the lives of our children.

Well, tell us about the work that you’ve done for this group, rare, you’re a board member of, and the type of work that it’s doing and how people can connect with it.

I’m really excited about rare. I’m a new one of the newer board members, and they do a number of different things, but one that is of great interest to me is climate storytelling. It is how we are sharing and talking about the message and weaving the message of climate protections and environmental protections into every element scripted or unscripted of what we do, so that people begin to really resonate with it, and they see it if you think about the movies that you’ve seen or just television shows that you’ve watched, I challenge people to look and see if you can identify the climate spaces in there, like, do you see recycling containers?

You see EV cars that are used when it talking about futuristic things you’re watching, sci fi. Do you see lines growing across like utility poles that are carrying electricity? Are they all underground? Like all of these different ways that we resonate with how climate shows up in our everyday lives, is what is so important about climate storytelling, and there’s a huge hole in a space I think to fill, because the lived experiences of people every day also drive how we think about policy.

So for all of the people, families, businesses that have suffered from the LA fires and along the coastline there in California that have lived through this experience of the impact of climate change, wind, toxic chemicals that have been burned because, hey, we have a lot of chemicals and plastics in our home as well as in the building materials of our homes, those stories need to be told, those experiences have to be understood and embraced by the larger culture, such that we change policy, but also don’t repeat these mistakes.

When Aaron Brockovich was on screen, and people saw how she went through the experience of recognizing these toxic chemicals in the community, garnering community support, actually revealing and holding to account chemical companies that resonated with a lot of people.

And that is something that I think comes across very well when we talk about all kinds of media, whether it is television, radio, music, podcasts, people go to those trusted sources, and we have to do a better job of telling the stories. And that’s one of the things that rare does. I’m excited about that.

Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I was thinking as you were talking about the 10s of 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of people who’ve been who’ve died as a result of air pollution in the United States. And yet it’s kind of a story that goes untold. It’s a statistic that is without a story. And kind of we need to tell those stories because it’s it seems like it’s invisible to us because we’re not telling the stories. It’s not on TV.

Hey, here’s another little kid who’s got asthma because of XYZ company belching all kinds of pollution out into the air. And you know, people would take action if they heard that or saw that on a regular basis. Like, of course, we’re outraged by that, but we’re not hearing that. We’re not seeing it, and so it’s invisible.

I think that’s absolutely right. And not only invisible. When we do tell those stories, we are telling them a way that can often be sad and depressing. Because, let’s face it, it is sad and depressing when we talk about people who have asthma, of which we’re talking about how companies are continuing and trying to pollute and create more pollution that just goes further and further into our systems.

But there are also other aspects of, I think, humanity and how we receive information that we have to tie into. I’m looking forward to seeing the latest anime that we’ve in air pollution and weaves in. You know how we come up with solutions? We’ve got young people who are genius, who are who are coming up with comedy, romance, they’re coming up with thrillers, unscripted, work like there’s such a broad scope of how we tell this story and who we tell the story to that’s missing.

And these are spaces that have yet to be filled. Some are being filled now. But you know from different demographics, whether you are a person in the south or you’re a person in the northeast, whether you are black or white, Democrat, Republican of faith or agnostic, all of these have a space in climate storytelling, because we’re all experiencing it.

That’s the unique thing about climate and environmental issues. All of us live on Earth. We’re all experiencing it in some shape, form or fashion, and so let’s talk about that.

Yeah, well, I think that’s great work. And and tell us a little bit about I guess you worked with the US Energy Foundation, and you’re a board member there. What type of work are you doing with that foundation?

I’m really blessed to be able to be on a number of different boards that help us speak to how we’re solving the climate crisis, and the unique opportunity in all of these spaces, I think, is to deeply listen to what communities and philanthropists are thinking about, and how do we solve problems? I am a problem solver. It has been a part of who I have been since I was in kindergarten.

My mom told me that when I was kindergarten and first grade, they didn’t have a play in our classroom, and I was the one who figured out how we’re going to have a play. So just have always had that sort of streak in me of finding the solution, and the love of finding solutions has led me to a number of boards, energy, foundation, rare others that I have served on.

And I hope more people do that. I hope more people are solution oriented, not sitting in the problem of where we are, but coming together to figure out, how do we get out of. Of it, and if we stay in that space, to me, that space is the space of hope.

Yeah, I totally agree. And living in the solution is definitely where it’s at. And I greatly appreciate, you know, having you on the show Heather and talking with you about the solution and living in the solution. And everybody should go out and check out Heather’s new book, before the street lights come on, black America’s urgent call for climate solutions.

And you know, follow her and her organizations. Maybe Heather, you can do a shout out to where they can find your, uh, find your stuff on social media.

Absolutely. Please follow and check out. Beyond petrochemicals.org, www, dot beyond petrochemicals.org, and you can find us on Instagram, blue sky social. And if you like tiktoks, you can follow me there. Heather McTeer Toney. I’m on all the socials and just check in. Oh, love, just to chat with folks and know what the latest and greatest is. And let’s stay some we’re staying in some hope together.

That sounds great. And definitely look forward to connecting with you and working with you collaboratively, going forward as a fellow Green Wave alumni and you know activist, love to see the work that you’re doing down there. And thank you, Heather for being on the show. It’s been a great pleasure, and love to have you back some time to talk about the great work you’re doing.

Thanks so much, Matt.

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