The Color of Climate
The Ambitious Plan to Turn a Massive Jail Island Into a Green Oasis
Rikers Island is being reimagined as a solar farm and a water treatment hub for local communities of color
This is The Color of Climate, a weekly column from Future Human exploring how climate change and other environmental issues uniquely impact the future of communities of color.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, and its prison system is contributing to the warming climate. As I reported last week, researchers have shown that there is a rise in emissions for each incarcerated person in the country.
These incarcerated people, meanwhile, are on the front lines of climate change. They are disproportionately Black and Latinx because police and the judicial system unfairly target these communities, as prison reform and abolition groups like The Vera Institute of Justice and Prison Policy Project have documented. Prisoners are being left behind during floods, hurricanes, and wildfires. They’re asked to fight wildfires for less than $6 a day, and many struggle to survive heat waves because prisons lack adequate ventilation.
