6 min read

Where the Money Flows

Where the Money Flows
Photograph by Gleeson Paulino / Instagram

LISTENING: to a leaf blower grumble
FEELING: oh so very sleepy
SEEING: brown leaves roll down the street

In New York, the temperature is starting to cool. It's nearly 80°F (27°C), and what a relief. The summer is coming to an end, yet I can't help but wonder if the end of summer as we know it is slowly approaching, too. For me, summer has always signaled the start of a rest period: lying on sandy beach towels, lazying around on the couch with my niece and nephew, and living my best life on a dancefloor. (Dancing is incredibly invigorating!)

This year, however, I'm feeling comforted by the leaves that are browning and falling from the trees. Summer has been a season of stress. I can't even count the number of nights I awoke in terror because of a lightning storm that broke out in the middle of my sleep. I'd lie in bed wondering if the rain would be enough to flood my new car or if a tornado would sprout from the clouds, tearing apart everything in sight.

The thoughts would be enough to keep my eyes wide open until the sun rose.

Unfortunately, not even the end of summer can truly calm my spirit. Hurricane season is heating up, and my heart is with those who sit on the frontlines of regions most impacted: the U.S. South and the Caribbean.

The possibility of their safe future will depend heavily on the money they're able to access to improve their infrastructure and build resiliency into their very fabric. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has promised to allocate a significant portion of funds to them — but will it in actuality? The possibilities of what can happen with such dollars are immense. As are the possibilities if money never reaches them.

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Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, and this week, I want to talk about the anniversary of the IRA's passing.

The landmark climate bill signed by President Joe Biden promised billions of dollars of federal funding to those most impacted historically by environmental burdens. However, a year after the bill was codified into law, many community-based groups that know best the needs of their constituents have struggled to navigate the bureaucratic process.

I wrote about this in a story for the Guardian this week.

The federal government has been mindful of this reality, so it created new technical assistance centers to support organizations and groups that need it, but leading advocates still remain skeptical about how effective the centers will be.

I interviewed some 16 people for this piece, all of whom I was not able to include. The article itself remained pretty focused on a few organizations that have struggled to connect to funding through grant opportunities, but there are so many more threads I couldn't fit into my assigned word count.

I want to flag a few for you all here.

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West Virginia, the state represented by Sen. Joe Manchin (whose loyalty to the fossil fuel industry resulted in the law's support for oil and gas), is a state that would benefit immensely from IRA money but also a state where organizers are currently facing challenges to build capacity to do so.
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The technical centers, known as TCTACs, are some of the first recipients of these IRA dollars. Though a handful of environmental justice organizations were chosen as centers, most are universities. Kyle Whyte, an environment professor at the University of Michigan and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council I wasn't able to fit into the piece, told me he's troubled by the number of “white-run, more affluent” universities receiving dollars that should go directly to Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color. The bureaucratic administrative process of universities isn’t amenable to community needs, he explained. He hopes that as money continues to be rolled out in the future, the federal government will adjust accordingly from the feedback it receives.
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The TCTAC serving the Southeast is run by the Research Triangle Institute, an international nonprofit research institute. The co-directors there told me they have already heard from some 100 organizations in need. They recognize the challenge of covering such a big land area, so they’re partnering with universities to be their boots on the ground. However, given Whyte's concerns, we'll have to see how that shakes out.

Janelle Armstrong-Brown, a senior research scientist at RTI and hub co-director told me: "Our goal is to have a portal set up where community-based organizations can enter in what their technical assistance needs are, and then we can leverage our partnership to be able to connect them to whatever the needs may be whether it’s grant writing or identifying air quality monitors.”
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Advocates are worried that non-English speaking communities will struggle to access funding. On the bright side, the TCTACs are supposed to address this need. In Puerto Rico, for instance, Spanish is the primary language. Accessing IRA dollars could transition the fragile fossil fuel-dependent energy grid there to renewables. This could improve its climate resiliency, Ruth Santiago, a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council who serves as a community and environmental lawyer for several groups on the archipelago, told me. Hurricane Fiona, a Category 1 storm, shut down power for nearly two weeks last year.

“Puerto Rico desperately needs to transform its electric system, and maybe these IRA funds could be a tool,” Santiago said. “We need to somehow provide life-saving access to distributed renewable energy to people here who live in these hurricane-prone areas that really goes beyond Puerto Rico.”
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Just about everyone I spoke to remained skeptical that the positives that come out of this funding — should dollars even reach communities — will outweigh the negatives from the IRA's fossil fuel investments. They were all concerned about the law's attention on carbon capture and storage projects, as well as hydrogen. They believe these types of infrastructure projects will exacerbate past toxic legacies.

I wanted to share with you all, my subscribers, what I was unable to include in the actual story. And if there are any editors out there interested in a follow-up related to the above, definitely reach out. I'm looking to continue covering the rollout of the IRA and what it means for the most vulnerable.

Until next week! 🌀

Rest in Power

While we can't say for certain that climate change led to these specific weather events (we need attribution studies for that), we do know that the Earth's rising temperatures are already creating more disasters like these.

On Tuesday, 18 bodies were found in Greece. The deceased, believed to be migrants, were killed by wildfires.

The Maui flames have killed a confirmed 115 people as of Tuesday. The death toll is expected to keep rising.

Portland, Oregon, suffered from a heat wave last week, potentially killing at least two people.

Currently Reading

In case you skipped the above, check out my new piece for the Guardian on the struggle community-based groups face in accessing the Inflation Reduction Act's billions of dollars meant for them.

My girl Paola Rosa-Aquino wrote for The Atlantic about America's island disaster problem.

If you watch "Reservation Dogs," you'll appreciate this Atmos essay on Star People.

I dream of the day I get to taste ice cream from Sad Girl Creamery. Read about the Latina-owned ice cream shop here from the Los Angeles Times.

Please, read everything Jessica Kutz at the 19th writes — but especially this one.

This New Yorker story from last year captures a lot of what I feel these days: "What so many have come to think of as a season of escape will become—if we are diligent and lucky—a season of survival."

The whole world needs to read The Washington Post's "The Collection" series on the gruesome history behind eugenics, the scientists who collected people's brains, and the collection that remains in the Smithsonian's possession. This piece on an Indigenous Filipino woman named Maura was my favorite. Why don't more outlets create graphics like this?!

From Inside Climate News: Extreme heat is putting more incarcerated people in mental distress, increasing suicide watch incidents.

Poetry

lying on the sand,
my hand in yours,
the water rushes over us,
taking a hold

can we survive this tidal wave?
can we survive this trial?

we hold our breaths,
and we swim
we kiss a wet kiss,
surrounded by bleached corals
and lost manatees

breaking through the surface,
we feel the tidal wave pass
and we float back to the sand,
our hair covered in seaweed,
our knees scraped by porous rock

and yet, our fingers remain interlocked

that's the power of togetherness
that's the power of love

we hold,
and we squeeze
even when the moon
tries to pull us away
even when the blue
tries to wither us away

-ylf-

What are you reading and seeing? Join the community and become a paid member so that you can share in a comment.

See you next week. xx

- Yessenia

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Yessenia Funes

Yessenia Funes

Yessenia Funes is an environmental journalist telling stories of society's most oppressed. She's been published in The Guardian, Yale Climate Connections, The Verge, Vox, and more. Think of this newsletter as a digital postcard from a friend.
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