Heather McGhee: Elon Musk Throws up Dozens of Large Gas Turbines in Highly Polluted Communities

EXCERPT:

McGHEE: “This is such an important issue and it is a cross-cutting issue. I first got to know the local leader there, Justin J. Pearson, when he was in his early 20s as an environmental activist who was able to unite segregated Memphis along black and white lines to stop an oil pipeline. And then the David and Goliath story happened again when Elon Musk, the richest and — I like to remind folks — the greediest man in the world came to overnight throw up these dozens of huge gas turbines in this community that already is in the sort of cancer alley of a highly polluted community. And what he didn’t count on was a person like Justin J. Pearson, who’s this incredible advocate, he’s now running for Congress, and he has been able to again unite this black/white coalition. There’s been like a million chapters in this story, but basically he — they were able to get — and Color of Change has been involved in this fight as well on the ground — they’ve been able to get many of the turbines which were illegally put up there for this huge data center, using so much of this precious resource in Memphis — they love their water, it’s some of the cleanest water in the world — and then they just moved it across the state lines to Mississippi, to a working class, low-income white community. Southaven, Mississippi. This is one of those issues, there are not that many, where we’re talking about rising costs for electricity, we’re talking about land use, we’re talking about, obviously, climate change. We’re talking mostly, though, about democracy.”