美国国家公共电台 NPR Stepping Into The Sun: A Mission To Bring Solar Energy To Communities Of Color

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Solar technology is steadily¹ getting better and cheaper, and lots of people are already seeing the benefits through lower electricity bills but not everyone. In black and Hispanic neighborhoods, there is far less solar than in white neighborhoods. NPR's Andrea Hsu went to Nashville to meet someone who's trying to change that.

JASON CARNEY: There's eight right there coming out - two more after that one.

ANDREA HSU, BYLINE²: His name is Jason Carney. I caught up with him at Whites Creek³ High School just a few miles from his home in North Nashville. He was getting a group of teenagers to haul solar panels from a storage garage to a grassy⁴ slope on the edge of school property.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Hey, we're going to carry it on our head.

HSU: This spring, Jason Carney was finishing up his dream project, his baby - a solar installation paid for by grants and donations, designed and built largely by students; students he's pretty sure wouldn't have otherwise been interested in renewable energy. He tells me about one of the kids, Daniel Van Clief.

CARNEY: He said the other day - he was like, man, this was just grass before. It was nothing, right? I mean, you can elaborate on that, Daniel. What were you saying?

DANIEL VAN CLIEF: We turned this field from nothing to something.

HSU: Van Clief spent much of his senior year working on this - everything from calculating how deep the posts for the frame had to be to cutting the steel and pouring cement and now climbing a ladder and throwing himself over the top of the whole thing to secure the panels.

CARNEY: Aren't you a dancer?

VAN CLIEF: I am also a dancer.

CARNEY: That's why you're super limber (laughter).

HSU: Now Van Clief wants to work as a solar installer. In fact, he wants to work just like this alongside his mentor⁵.

CARNEY: Let's put the ladder here.

HSU: Jason Carney gets that. He savors⁶ being the mentor that he never had. When he was getting his start, he saw how few African Americans and other people of color were doing green energy work in Tennessee. In meetings and at conferences, he often found he was the only one. He's pretty used to it now. But at first...

CARNEY: It was very intimidating⁷. It was very you don't belong here. That was the feeling.

HSU: This year, a nonprofit called The Solar Foundation put out a report that found executive leadership in solar companies to be almost exclusively white men. It also found women and African Americans to be underrepresented in the solar workforce⁸. Deborah Sunter of Tufts University thinks that may be one reason minority communities have been slower to adopt solar. She's been leading the research into disparities around who's installing solar. She says people also get interested in solar when they see it on their neighbor's house. And in black neighborhoods, that's just not happening as much.

DEBORAH SUNTER: Essentially⁹, half of the black-majority neighborhoods didn't have a single installation of rooftop solar.

HSU: Sunter sees this as a kind of environmental injustice¹⁰ not so different from, say, putting a toxic¹¹ landfill next to a poor neighborhood.

SUNTER: Equity¹² isn't just, who is bearing the disproportional burdens of the world? But it also is, who's missing out on the benefits?

HSU: That's Jason Carney's fear too. He says communities of color in Nashville spend a lot of their income heating and cooling their homes.

CARNEY: Bottom line is the houses are old. And when the houses are old, they're less efficient.

HSU: Think sagging¹³ insulation¹⁴, roofs that need updating, HVAC units out of whack¹⁵ and a feeling of helplessness.

CARNEY: There is no conversation about what we can do. Conversation is always about how high my bill is, and people almost get into kind of a competition. It's like a sad competition, like my bill was 300 or my bill was $400. My bill's 425 not, you know, I put in insulation, and my bill is now $100. Well, yeah. I put solar on, and my bill's now $80. You know, that's the conversation on which communities of color could start having.

HSU: So Carney hopes the solar installation at Whites Creek High School will help start that conversation. Where it goes is another challenge. Tennessee, like most of the Southeast, has not adopted mandates¹⁶ around renewable energy. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which generates and supplies power for the region, no longer offers generous economic incentives¹⁷ for rooftop solar. So even though solar prices have fallen dramatically in recent years, it's still a lot of money upfront to put panels on your home - upwards¹⁸ of $10,000.

CARNEY: It's still an investment. You're probably not going to get benefit right now. It's going to come later. And when you're in communities where people are hand-to-mouth, they don't have room for investment.

HSU: Still, Carney looks for signs of hope wherever he can find them. Last month, Nashville's Metro¹⁹ Council passed what supporters have called the city's own Green New Deal. All government buildings will have to run on a 100% renewable energy by 2041, and they'll have to meet stricter green building standards. Carney thinks that could yield work opportunities in the near future.

VAN CLIEF: All right. Now it's the moment of truth.

HSU: Back at Whites Creek, Carney stands under a hot sun, watching his students hoist²⁰ the last solar panel onto the steel frame. He takes a moment to appreciate all they've accomplished²¹ with this project and all the possibilities it represents.

CARNEY: No one controls the sun, you know? If someone could, they would. But they can't. Right now all you need is knowledge.

HSU: Knowledge, he says, and the faith to go after it.

Andrea Hsu, NPR News.

1 steadily   

adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地

参考例句：

• The scope of man's use of natural resources will steadily grow.人类利用自然资源的广度将日益扩大。
• Our educational reform was steadily led onto the correct path.我们的教学改革慢慢上轨道了。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 creek   

n.小溪，小河，小湾

参考例句：

• He sprang through the creek.他跳过小河。
• People sunbathe in the nude on the rocks above the creek.人们在露出小溪的岩石上裸体晒日光浴。

4 grassy   

adj.盖满草的；长满草的

参考例句：

• They sat and had their lunch on a grassy hillside.他们坐在长满草的山坡上吃午饭。
• Cattle move freely across the grassy plain.牛群自由自在地走过草原。

5 mentor   

n.指导者，良师益友；v.指导

参考例句：

• He fed on the great ideas of his mentor.他以他导师的伟大思想为支撑。
• He had mentored scores of younger doctors.他指导过许多更年轻的医生。

6 savors   

v.意味，带有…的性质( savor的第三人称单数 )；给…加调味品；使有风味；品尝

参考例句：

• His talk savors, of self-conceit. 他的谈话给人以自负的感觉。 来自辞典例句
• This sauce savors, of lemon. 这个调味酱有柠檬味。 来自辞典例句

7 intimidating   

vt.恐吓，威胁( intimidate的现在分词)

参考例句：

• They were accused of intimidating people into voting for them. 他们被控胁迫选民投他们的票。
• This kind of questioning can be very intimidating to children. 这种问话的方式可能让孩子们非常害怕。

8 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。

9 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

10 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

11 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

12 equity   

n.公正，公平，（无固定利息的）股票

参考例句：

• They shared the work of the house with equity.他们公平地分担家务。
• To capture his equity,Murphy must either sell or refinance.要获得资产净值，墨菲必须出售或者重新融资。

13 sagging   

下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度

参考例句：

• The morale of the enemy troops is continuously sagging. 敌军的士气不断低落。
• We are sagging south. 我们的船正离开航线向南漂流。

14 insulation   

n.隔离；绝缘；隔热

参考例句：

• Please examine the insulation of the electric wires in my house.请检查一下我屋子里电线的绝缘情况。
• It is always difficult to assure good insulation between the electric leads.要保证两个电触头之间有良好的绝缘总是很困难的。

15 whack   

v.敲击，重打，瓜分；n.重击，重打，尝试，一份

参考例句：

• After years of dieting,Carol's metabolism was completely out of whack.经过数年的节食，卡罗尔的新陈代谢完全紊乱了。
• He gave me a whack on the back to wake me up.他为把我弄醒，在我背上猛拍一下。

16 mandates   

托管（mandate的第三人称单数形式）

参考例句：

• Individual mandates would require all people to purchase health insurance. 个人托管要求所有人都要购买健康保险。
• While I agree with those benefits, I'm not a supporter of mandates. 我同意上述好处，我不是授权软件的支持者。

17 incentives   

激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机

参考例句：

• tax incentives to encourage savings 鼓励储蓄的税收措施
• Furthermore, subsidies provide incentives only for investments in equipment. 更有甚者，提供津贴仅是为鼓励增添设备的投资。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

18 upwards   

adv.向上，在更高处...以上

参考例句：

• The trend of prices is still upwards.物价的趋向是仍在上涨。
• The smoke rose straight upwards.烟一直向上升。

19 metro   

n.地铁；adj.大都市的；(METRO)麦德隆(财富500强公司之一总部所在地德国，主要经营零售)

参考例句：

• Can you reach the park by metro?你可以乘地铁到达那个公园吗？
• The metro flood gate system is a disaster prevention equipment.地铁防淹门系统是一种防灾设备。

20 hoist   

n.升高，起重机，推动；v.升起，升高，举起

参考例句：

• By using a hoist the movers were able to sling the piano to the third floor.搬运工人用吊车才把钢琴吊到3楼。
• Hoist the Chinese flag on the flagpole,please!请在旗杆上升起中国国旗！

21 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。