Environmental Injustice: Race, Class, and Toxic Inequality | The Way Forward
The final program in this three-part series on the intersection of racial inequality and the environment looks ahead. Join us in imagining a future free from the race and class based divides that determine who is — and isn’t — protected from toxins, pollutants, flooding, and the impacts of global warming.
As the climate crisis intensifies and extreme weather events, from floods to heatwaves, grow in frequency and impact, the most devastating effects continue to fall on communities of color and those with the fewest resources. Meanwhile, existing systems and solutions are proving inadequate. So how do we respond — not with fear, but with imagination and courage?
In this urgent and visionary conversation, three acclaimed writers — Rose Eveleth, Emily Raboteau, and Mary Annaïse Heglar — explore what it means to create a just and sustainable world. Across podcasts, books, essays, and activism, they’ve challenged conventional thinking and reimagined our collective future. Guided by journalist Vann R. Newkirk II, this culminating discussion confronts the climate crisis as an opportunity to redefine justice — environmental, racial, and beyond.
This series is presented with generous support from Con Edison.
Participants
Rose Eveleth is an award winning reporter and writer who explores how humans tangle with science and technology. They’re the creator and host of the award winning podcast Tested from CBC and NPR's Embedded. Before that, they made the hit independent podcast Flash Forward. Their work has covered everything from fake tumbleweed farms to million dollar baccarat heists for places like The Atlantic, CBS, VOX, Scientific American, Eater, The New York Times, 99 Percent Invisible, ESPN's 30 for 30 podcast, and more. Their work has been nominated for a Peabody, an Emmy, and an Eisner Award, and has appeared in the Best American Science and Nature Writing.
Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, public art, and parenthood. Her latest book, Lessons for Survival, was a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Best American Science and Nature Writing and elsewhere. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine, Raboteau’s distinctions include the Climate Narratives Prize and the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting. She is a professor in the Black Studies Department at the City College of New York (CUNY) and lives with her family in the Bronx.
Mary Annaïse Heglar is the author ofTroubled Waters (Harper Muse, 2024) and The World is Ours to Cherish (Random House Kids, 2024). She is also known for her essays that dissect and interrogate the climate crisis, drawing heavily on her personal experience as a Black woman with deep roots in the South. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Nation, The Boston Globe, Vox, Rolling Stone, and other outlets. Her work has also been featured in collections like All We Can Save, The World As We Knew It, The Black Agenda, Letters to the Earth, and Not Too Late. Mary is from Birmingham, Alabama and Mississippi. She is based in Birmingham.
Vann R. Newkirk II is a senior editor at the Atlantic, and the host and co-creator of narrative podcasts Floodlines and Holy Week. For years, Newkirk has covered voting rights, democracy, and environmental justice, with a focus on how race and class shape the country's and the world's fundamental structures, in print and audio. Newkirk was a 2022 Andrew Carnegie fellow, and was a 2020 James Beard Award Finalist, a 2020 11th Hour Fellow at New America, and a 2018 recipient of the American Society of Magazine Editors's ASME Next Award. In 2021, Newkirk received the Peabody Award for Floodlines. In 2024, Newkirk was named Journalist of the Year by the Washington Association of Black Journalists.
