Known as The Magnolia State, Mississippi has a population of nearly 3 million people and occupies an area of nearly 47 thousand square miles. The state gets its name from the Mississippi River, which is one of the world’s major river systems in size, habitat diversity, and biological productivity, as well as being a vital commercial waterway and migration route. Today, Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the US, with nearly 20% of the state’s residents living below the poverty line, and has the lowest ranking healthcare system.
Mississippi’s social and economic factors compound the challenges posed by climate change, which manifests in the form of extreme weather including severe thunderstorms, flooding, extreme heat, tornadoes, winter storms and tropical cyclones. Between 2005 and 2020, according to NOAA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency granted 29 disaster declarations to the state; 23 were for severe storms, tornadoes, and flooding events, and the other 6 were for hurricanes. From 1980 to 2024, the NOAA logged 108 billion-dollar climate disasters in the state.
Natural gas fuels the majority of Mississippi’s total electricity generation (78% in 2024). 9 of the state’s 10 largest power plants are fueled by natural gas. Mississippi is also home to the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Station, the fifth largest nuclear power plant in the world, and nuclear power contributed 14% of electricity generation in 2024. Coal contributed 4% in 2024, the lowest in two decades. Renewables only contributed 4% of total electricity generation, mostly from biomass and solar. Utility-scale solar generation nearly tripled in 2024, with over 790 megawatts of capacity added, though its small-scale solar power generating capacity is fourth lowest among states. Its largest solar-generating facility came online in 2025, and the state’s first utility-scale wind farm came online in 2024. Mississippi is one of three states, including Delaware and Rhode Island, with no utility-scale hydroelectricity.
Mississippi is one of 12 states with no mandatory or voluntary RPS. Investor-owned utilities lack incentives to lower emissions when economic benefits are the primary driver, not environmental concerns. Jennifer Crosslin, regional organizer for Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy, says “We are way behind nationally, and then we look within the nation, we’re even further behind as a state… The market-based approach is not working at all. It’s time for the state to step in.” One bright light: Entergy Mississippi, the state’s largest utility company, committed in 2022 to sourcing a third of its power from renewables by 2027.
According to Dominika Parry, founder of the environmental non-profit 2C Mississippi, in Mississippi “climate change is not just not a priority, it’s a hostile topic. It’s perceived as a goal that is wasting money, solving a problem that doesn’t exist.”
According to the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index, released by the Environmental Defense Fund and Texas A&M University in 2023, Mississippi is the most vulnerable state in the country to climate change. Mississippi’s high poverty rates, low health care access and quality, underinvestment in public services, stratification of wealth and resources, and history of systemic environmental racism all contributes to its vulnerability to natural disasters and other climate change impacts.
Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, has been called the “embodiment of environmental justice at its most extreme.” Jackson, which has over 80% Black residents and a quarter of the population living below the poverty line, has been facing an ongoing water crisis. The crisis rose to national attention in 2022 when flooding in Pearl River led to failure of the city’s water treatment systems, causing President Biden and Governor Reeves to declare states of emergency, but Jackson residents had been facing unsafe water conditions for years, with failing sanitation infrastructure in schools and hospitals, sewage overflows, line breaks, boil water notices, water shortages, and lead contamination. Yet over and over Governor Reeves vetoed bills and the state legislature blocked measures to improve the city’s water system. Climate change impacts in Jackson are exacerbated by years of systemic neglect and disinvestment due to environmental racism. As writer and climate justice Catherine Coleman Flowers wrote for Time, “I keep wondering: Why would officials in Mississippi allow their capital city to die?... Considering the catastrophic unfolding of the water crisis in Jackson - and the repeated refusals by the governor and state legislature to meaningfully address it - it seems to be hardly a coincidence that Jackson has a large Black population in a state with a storied racist. Past. What is happening is not armed combat; it is a slow-motion assault.”
While statewide climate plans and legislation are largely lacking in Mississippi, environmental justice organizations continue to work to address how climate change and environmental racism are already impacting their communities. One Mississippi advocates for Indigenous land sovereignty, reparations, equitable land access, abolishing racist land use policies, and a healthy river ecosystem, and the Mississippi People’s Movement combats climate injustices in disadvantaged communities. The Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate and Health Organization (EEECHO), based in Gulfport, Mississippi is engaged in lawsuits to fight a proposed road and military staging operation in Forest Heights and in Turkey Creek, a neighborhood founded by African Americans emancipated from enslavement which currently ranks the fifth most vulnerable census tract in the US to climate change.
CREDIT: NBC NEWS
