[The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, was thoroughly
preventable. And it’s a vision of a disastrous future. ]
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MISSISSIPPI’S DRY RUN FOR ECO-APARTHEID  
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Kate Aronoff
September 2, 2022
The New Republic
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_ The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, was thoroughly
preventable. And it’s a vision of a disastrous future. _

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Following torrential downpours last week, Jackson, Mississippi—the
state’s capital and largest city—is still without safe water for
drinking, bathing, or brushing teeth. The city is home to 180,000
people, more than 80 percent
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are Black and a quarter
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whom fall below the poverty line. The immediate crisis was triggered
by flooding in the Pearl River and Ross R. Barnett Reservoir that
overwhelmed the city’s long-neglected water treatment
infrastructure.

Jackson’s water issues, though, are long-running and well known to
residents; they were first told to boil their water in July. Many
haven’t sipped tap water for years. This isn’t the first time
Jackson has gone without clean water, either. The city suffered
through a similar ordeal last winter
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when cold weather froze the pipes and residents were told to boil
their water for a month.

It’s hard to imagine that a similarly sized, richer, and less Black
city—say Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or Providence, Rhode
Island—facing a crisis of this magnitude would have received this
little national attention for so long. It’s hard to know exactly
where to trace the origins of what’s been happening in Jackson: to a
Republican state government that has routinely dismissed years of
warnings from the left-leaning city? A botched private
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that only worsened the city’s already struggling water systems? Or
decades of white flight—sparked by _Brown v. Board of Education_
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decimated the city’s tax base and ability to furnish basic services?
A broader explanation could stretch back further still, to the white
insurgency that sought to defeat multiracial democracy
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organized terrorism after the Civil War, and to slavery. Climate
change only promises to send more floods—and storms, droughts, and
fires—crashing into more history and the infrastructure that history
has built, or rather dismantled.

The story of Jackson’s water crisis, that is—exhaustively
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reporters
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an all-American one. And it offers a preview for how climate change
will play out here. That the issues involved are so ordinary doesn’t
make them any less horrific.

Many were reportedly optimistic this Thursday as the state moved to
install a rented water pump. But overhauling the city’s water system
is expected to cost at least $1 billion, and it’ll cost much more to
future-proof it against ever-worsening weather. The entire state
received $75 million
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upgrade its water systems from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.

In attempting to do that, residents of Jackson face an uphill battle
in the face of both the limited federal funds on offer and a state
government with limited interest in helping them out. Jackson is not
the only city facing that problem. The GOP—whose party line is that
Democrats should not be allowed to govern—enjoys trifecta control
over 23 states. So long as that’s true, those states will not pass
climate policy. But they may well also block whatever federal climate
funds they can from being rolled out within their borders, blunting
the impact of the limited national policy that does exist via the
Inflation Reduction Act.

Here’s one example of how that may play out. State officials and
energy offices are charged with administering
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$4.3 billion rebate program for energy efficiency upgrades and another
$4.3 billion in electrification rebates for installing heat pumps,
electric stoves, and other appliances. In some red states, renewable
energy and its associated devices have proliferated despite political
leaders’ opposition to climate policies, and many utility companies
are writing their own plans for ditching fossil fuels, eventually,
eager to cash in on the declining cost of wind and solar. But several
states are erecting barriers to these market dynamics. Ohio and West
Virginia have each passed massive bailouts for coal, and the Texas
legislature is moving ahead with a proposal
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would erroneously penalize
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state’s enormous amount of wind and solar power as a scapegoat for
power outages in recent years. Furthermore, as I wrote
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week, a growing number of state financial officers are trying to keep
financial institutions from even considering climate risks.

It’s also hard to overstate the sheer level of contempt Republican
state governors and legislatures have for the Democratic cities within
their borders—especially if those cities happen to be majority
Black. When the city government of Jackson requested $47 million
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repair its water systems after last winter’s crisis, it got just $3
million. “The city of Jackson is grateful for the support that we
are now receiving from the state,” Mayor Chokwe Lumumba told
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this week. “We’ve been going it alone for the better part of two
years when it comes to the Jackson water crisis.” Biden has put the
ball in the court of Republican Governor Tate Reeves, saying
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given the state government “everything there is to offer.” Reeves,
a Conservative Political Action Conference regular, denied funds for
Jackson to make upgrades in the past and blamed city officials
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their water troubles.

In advance of a “Stop the Steal Rally” in Jackson last November,
Republican State Representative Steve Hopkins dubbed
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city “Mordor on the Pearl”—Mordor being the city where evil
goblin hybrids and their power-hungry dictator live in J.R.R.
Tolkien’s _Lord of the Rings _books, and the Pearl being the river
that runs through Jackson. (Hopkins later apologized.) State-level
officials like Hopkins, it’s important to understand, have the
ability to ration Jackson’s access to state and federal resources.
They also determine what powers cities have to raise revenue—a major
issue for Jackson as it’s tried to repair its water system in recent
years. Limited funds were part of what led the city to seek out a $90
million contract with the German electronics firm Siemens to upgrade
its payment systems.

Hostile state-city relationships are already hobbling the latter’s
ability to prepare for rising temperatures. Louisiana’s State Bond
Commission has voted repeatedly
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deny New Orleans a line of credit to finance power stations for
drainage pipes that would protect the city from flooding. Their
rationale? City officials’ opposition to the state’s near-total
ban on abortion, including pledges from the sheriffs’ office,
district attorney, and City Council not to enforce it. Louisiana
Attorney General Jeff Landry—who urged the bond commission to reject
NOLA’s request—said the state should “use the tools at our
disposal to bring them [meaning the city of New Orleans] to heel,
quite frankly.”

Liberals have touted states and cities as engines of climate policy if
Republicans retake Congress or the White House in the coming years.
But clearly, these polities could also be the site of the country’s
most dystopian resistance to such policies, and response to rising
temperatures. Many are arguably already laboratories for
eco-apartheid. States that stand to face a steady drumbeat of climate
disasters—and are already dealing with several
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rapidly passing laws to proliferate guns, restrict voting rights, and
further criminalize immigrants, taking away access to health care and
education. What, to these state officials, will count as an emergency?
And how will they respond?

Easy as it is to cast blame on Republican politicians for ignoring
suffering, self-described champions of a liberal world order have been
more than willing to do the same. Flooding in Pakistan
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now submerged a third of the country, displacing some 35 million
people, wiping out agricultural lands, and killing at least 1,200. For
years at U.N. climate talks, U.S. negotiators on both sides of the
aisle have routinely fought back
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the idea that rich countries responsible for the vast majority of
historical emissions should help other countries adapt to and recover
from the mess they’ve played an outsize role creating. While home to
just 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States is
responsible for 21.5 percent
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the carbon emitted since 1959; rich countries are responsible for 90
percent of historical emissions. Pakistan accounts for just 0.4
percent. With climate finance from wealthy governments still sparse,
Pakistan and other climate-vulnerable countries—many of which now
face urgent and worsening debt crises
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be forced to seek additional loans
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the International Monetary Fund as they rebuild and brace for the next
storm. Rich countries have failed to deliver even on their own modest
pledge of $100 billion per year in climate finance, mustering just
$79.8 billion in 2019. Roughly 80 percent
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that is loans.

There’s plenty
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U.S. could do to help remedy that and other situations, short of
paying its climate debt
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redistributing its unused, IMF-issued Special Drawing Rights
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backing another dispersal of those funds at the IMF; and calling
for debt-for-climate swaps
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well as more widespread debt forgiveness, so that Pakistan and other
climate-vulnerable places can rebuild infrastructure, adapt to more
volatile weather, and embark on an energy transition. And the U.S.
could enthusiastically support a well-funded loss and damage
financing mechanism
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this year at the COP 27 climate conference. The question is whether
the U.S. is willing to offer the rest of the world any more support
than Mississippi Republicans have offered Jackson. Without a concerted
national plan to do more, and do better—and take demands
for reparations
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like Jackson’s will be more common than not.

_Kate Aronoff
[[link removed]] @KateAronoff
[[link removed]] is a staff writer at The New
Republic._

_Want more climate change ideas and updates? Sign up for TNR’s
Apocalypse Soon weekly newsletter.
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* Jackson Mississippi
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* water supply
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* Chokwe Lumumba
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* infrastructure
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* Climate Crisis
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