Monday marked the start of the 2 week long COP26 meeting in Glasgow that will see world leaders including the UK and USA outline future plans to combat climate change. This time, they say, it will be different as they make new promises that they will almost undoubtedly fail to deliver. They are striving to meet the 1.5C temperature rise however we are currently on track to see a temperature rise in excess of this and some models are predicting a rise of 5C by 2100. Is it just one big song and dance, to allow world leaders to feel good about themselves?
Where are the people from the most affected groups including ethnic minorities, prisoners, communities from the southern hemisphere and less traditional, improvised communities. Since 1965 the global north has been responsible for 92% of all emissions and just 20 companies contributed ⅓ of all carbon emissions. Instead the decisions are left to the ‘leaders’ which includes not only prime ministers but CEOs of the companies most responsible, causing most harm. These individuals profit from the continued use of fossil fuels. The biggest hypocrisy so far is that just two days in, Boris Johnson has flown from Glasgow back to London rather than taken a 4.5 hour train journey.
Many reports conclude that the building and maintenance of prisons contributes to increased greenhouse gas emissions and is detrimental to the individuals locked up in many ways. Despite this last year the UK government announced the creation of 18000 more prison spaces claiming that these new prisons will reduce carbon emissions by 85% and be net carbon neutral once the grid is decarbonised. But who knows when that might be?
In 2019 New York pledged to shut down Rikers Island, a prison built on an island a waste that was a toxic environment to prisoners and workers. When this prison closes there are promises to turn into a unit of renewable energy allowing plants in minority communities to close.
SUCCESS!
Or so you thought, this closure has led to plans to open four new prison facilities. As a result, New York will be a cleaner, greener space but not for everyone to enjoy, but in which to be incarcerated. Rather than addressing the root causes of crime, they are carrying on with the obviously broken, dysfunctional system.
This prison business program has prompted the building of a massive new infrastructure. Contracts and profits all go to the companies within the prison industrial complex (PIC) which burn copious amounts of fossil fuels to build and maintain new prisons.
In the US alone, $485 million is spent on fuels annually, all of which goes into these companies’ pockets. We know that mass incarceration leads to increased emissions.
In addition these companies have prisoner employment programmes which pay prisoners as little as $0.23 to $1.15 per hour and is one of three ways that the PIC companies financially benefit from incarceration while also producing emissions.
The use of mass incarceration leads to increased greenhouse emissions in the following ways: contractors producing equipment for the construction and maintenance of prisons benefit from increased housing demands for prisoner housing, companies producing necessities such as mattresses and clothing benefit from the growing prison population and private industries benefit from cheap labour provided by prisoners.
It is well established that the processes implemented in the construction and maintenance of prisons call for increased use of fossil fuels and greenhouse emissions.
Not only are prions contributing to the emission of greenhouse gasses but they’re also polluting waterways. Prisoners often have no choice but to drink water contaminated with arsenic and lead. Waste water from prison estates lead to the pollution of the waterway with sewage, as shown recently in several instances where prisons have falsified water pollution reports and been found in violation by US Federal and State laws.
Prisons have also reduced air quality due to prison labour programmes and in the last five years US Environmental Protection Agency data shows that 92 informal actions and 51 formal actions were brought against prisons, jails, and detention centres across the country under the Clean Air Act.
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