What is Environmental Justice?
It's not a black versus white issue. Don't let extremists define it that way.
Welcome to EarthWatch, the independent environmental news and opinion newsletter for people who think you should never turn your back on Mother Earth—written by me, Jerry Bowles, an ancient scribbler who has been around the Sun a few times and knows bullshit when he sees it.
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The dirty little open secret of laissez-faire industrial growth is that it affects minority, indigenous and, yes, poor white people most adversely. It is simply a fact that you’re more likely to find a TSDF (treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous wastes) facility in a poor, minority neighborhood or town than a hospital or a Kroger, or a CVS. It is equally a fact that if you live in a coal mining town in southern West Virginia (where I grew up) you are touched every day by problems created by contaminated groundwater, polluted air, and flooding from abandoned mines and sludge piles. And, by the way, you’re not likely to have a hospital, Kroger, or CVS either.
For far too long, polluters in the extractive industries and their bought-and-paid-for state legislators, backed by their PR and marketing factories, have attempted to paint efforts to require safer, cleaner industry practices and livable wages as “job killers” that make poor communities poorer. And they have not hesitated to use race to divide underserved communities that could and should be “stronger together,” to borrow a losing phrase from Hillary.
Walk up to any older white person on the main street of Welch, West Virginia (if you can find a person on the street) and ask them what “environmental justice” is and the chances are they will have no idea but, if forced to venture a guess, they will say it sounds like something the crazy Democrats are promoting to take their tax money and give it to black people. This is not racism; it is ignorance implanted by politicians and, in recent years, Fox News and Donald Trump.
West Virginia has a tiny African-American population—3.6%—the state is sparsely populated and the roads are still poor. My grandmother lived to be 80 without ever having met a black person. In fairness, a random casualty of environmental injustice in a black neighborhood in Toledo is unlikely to feel much sympathy for white hollar- dwellers either although they are both victims of the same excesses of unfettered capitalism.
Mustafa Ali, who headed the EPA’s environmental justice office and now heads the National Wildlife Federation’s environmental justice efforts, says attempts to split the victims of environmental injustice into warring groups is an attempt to dilute the combined political power of both communities.
It’s time for a 21st century systemic change that ensures all #climate or #cleanenergy plans leave no communities behind: “Say I’m a 4th-gen. miner … I’m going to need assurances I can feed my family, pay my mortgage, & pay my car or truck off.
Environmental justice advocates are looking to link communities of color with experience fighting industrial polluters and landfills with polluted communities in Appalachia—a “big tent,” strength-in-numbers approach they say is ripe for results.
To his credit, President Biden and his team have taken care to make environmental justice a color-blind initiative for his administration. His Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad vowed to “deliver environmental justice in communities all across America” by resurrecting and elevating environmental justice advisory groups, including an interagency council directed to reach out to tribal officials, environmental justice organizations, community groups, and unions.
The choice of Michael Regan, head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, to head the Environmental Protection Agency over Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, is clearly a nod to environmental justice advocates, who argued that Nichols was more interested in cutting deals with big corporations on fuel emissions and insufficiently concerned about the impact of industrial waste in marginalized communities.
Nichols led her state’s heroic efforts to block Trump’s attempts to freeze federal fuel-economy and auto-emissions standards through 2026 and to rescind California’s long-standing ability to set its own, tougher rules—rules also followed by 12 other states that together account for a third of the American market for new automobiles. (The appointment also reflects ongoing tensions between Big Green environmental organizations and smaller grassroots groups whose concerns are usually more immediate and local. More about this in a future post.)
Regan, who will be the first Black man to run the EPA, has been widely credited by grassroots activists for cleanups of coal ash and chemicals in underserved communities is also credited with shaping North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s pledge for the state to go carbon neutral in its electric power sector by 2050. Regan promised in his confirmation hearing that the EPA would be appointing new justice officials in each of its regulatory offices who would focus on air, water, and land pollution
In an interview with E&ENews, environmental justice pioneer Adam Mair, the first Black man to head the Sierra Club, praised Regan’s appointment and addressed the misconception that environmental justice is just for Black people.
"It is environmental protection for all people. It's just that African Americans and poor communities happen to be underprotected and poorly shielded from the worst atrocities committed by polluting facilities."
Just one week after his inauguration, President Joe Biden signed a number of executive orders at the White House, including one aimed to “Secure Environmental Justice and Spur Economic Opportunity.” That executive order will initiate the development of an environmental justice screening tool that will build upon EJSCREEN, the U.S. EPA’s existing tool, whose purpose is to identify disadvantaged communities to which federal investments and benefits will be targeted as well as to “inform equitable decision making across the federal government.” It will also create a “government-wide Justice40 Initiative” that will facilitate the delivery of 40 percent of overall benefits of “relevant federal investments to disadvantaged communities.”
Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Ed Markey (D-MA) have introduced the Environmental Justice Mapping and Data Collection Act of 2021, which builds on many of the concepts in the executive order and creates a cross-government initiative, including data infrastructure and funding to “identify communities most at risk from environmental injustices.”
Still, defining environmental justice is hard. The EPA defines environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” That’s not terribly helpful so let’s see if we can get closer to what that means in real life. It seems to me that an organization called Equitable & Just captures the essence of the movement succinctly in four “no community left behind” principles:
A healthy climate and air quality for all
Access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable electricity, water, and transportation for every community
An inclusive, just, and pollution-free energy economy with high- quality jobs
Safe, healthy communities and infrastructure
Finally, for today, there has been considerable pushback from conservatives that while the environment and justice are both important issues, they don’t belong together.
One example is Georgetown University economics professor Arik Levinson, writing in The Hill:
“Environment and justice, both worthy priorities, require different policy tools. Reducing pollution involves pricing carbon, or more traditional regulations, such as emissions standards. Addressing inequality requires social programs, training and education and tax and criminal justice reform. Combining the two has practical and political pitfalls.”
To which, I say, it’s not about semantics. The majority Black population of Flint, Michigan, which has had to consume contaminated water for years knows what environmental injustice is; they’ve lived it. So do the residents of McDowell County, West Virginia, the opioid and abandoned coal mine capital of America, where despair hangs as thick as coal dust. In fact, we all know it when we see it and we need to bring people, governments, and industries to work together to create new forms of economic growth that are both just for people and sustainable for the planet. Anything else is moral cowardice.
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Dig Deeper
Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad
Environmental Justice Mapping and Data Collection Act of 2021
A Vision for and Equitable and Just Climate Future
Environmental justice fails both the environment and justice