In the United States, Hispanics and blacks are more exposed to pollution than whites. The Economist Insight
Thirty-five years ago this month, the United Church of Christ released a report that inspired a movement. Entitled “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States,” it documented what activists had long argued for. Hazardous waste sites were so often found in non-white neighborhoods that the race of the local population was the most reliable predictor of their location. Three out of five Black and Hispanic Americans lived near the toxic sludge. One of the firm’s architects, Benjamin Chavis, a former assistant to Martin Luther King, called this “environmental racism”.
A link between civil rights and environmentalism was established, and I created a new cause, which took the name of an alternative slogan: “environmental justice”. Justice activism is dedicated to lifting the disproportionately heavy burden that environmental problems, from pollution to coastal erosion, place on racial and other minorities. And on this point it has largely failed. A follow-up study in 2007 found that communities living closest to pollution were not as white as before, and there is little reason to think the situation has improved. But despite its lack of success, the justice movement has become hugely influential – writes The Economist.
In 1994 Bill Clinton ordered every federal agency to make “environmental justice part of its mission”. The movement soon spawned countless doctoral theses and a racial lexicon. Polluted areas are considered “zones of sacrifice” and the tendency of investors to ignore them is “green-lining”. As Democrats’ attention to racial and green concerns increases, so does the prominence of such activism. The Green New Deal, a utopian politics pushed by the left in 2019, has been linked with the language and goals of justice. President Joe Biden hugged both of them. After his inauguration, he promised that “at least 40% of the overall benefits” of his planned spending on renewable energy and other climate-related infrastructure would go to “disadvantaged communities”. He has also established several licensing authorities, including the Environmental Justice Advisory Council, led by veteran activists.
This development has been almost undisputed on the left, even by those who rightly contest one of its premises. Racism isn’t the only reason pollution plagues minorities: landfills are located on low-cost land where poor communities, both white and non-white, live. However, the combination of covid-19 and Black Lives Matter protests made minority malaise politically unacceptable. Justice activism seems to offer an explanation and a solution. And Biden’s climate surge, perhaps the greatest thing his administration will accomplish, appears to many as the means to pay for it. What’s not to like
Maybe a lot. The main problem is the elision by activists of environmental problems that are long-standing and local with global warming. This is also an equity issue, but not primarily because of its toll on American minorities. Several hundred million people in African and South Asian countries, whose contributions to global emissions are a rounding error, are suffering from much more severe warming, to which they are incomparably more vulnerable. The moral imperative for wealthy emitters like America is to reduce their emissions. And there are reasons to fear that the justice movement may make this daunting task even more difficult.
Consider the inconsistency of the administration’s justice goals. It is not clear what are the “benefits” promised to poor communities. Wind turbines cannot be sited primarily on the basis of race – and how their benefits should be counted anyway
Activists tried to clear things up with a list of recommended investments, but this raised a bigger problem. Many of their suggestions have little or no direct connection to climate change. For example: “We should invest in transportation hubs because the communities that are most affected by the lack of access to transportation are low-income communities, people of color and the elderly.” But the idea that limited government spending on the climate emergency could cover general socioeconomic improvement seems dubious, and arguments against it a distraction at best.
Many activists want worse. By extending the notion of justice to punishment, they oppose any climate solution that past polluters could benefit from. Thus the White House Advisory Committee has ruled that carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and the development of carbon markets (which are probably all essential) cannot be counted as “benefits.” Other justice activists oppose the use of hydrogen as a fuel, even when it is made from renewable energy – apparently because it does not conform to their bucolic vision of a world powered by wind and sun. The administration, to its credit, backtracked.
The policy of the administration’s dependence on this problem is, if nothing else, more difficult to justify than the economy. While many black and Hispanic voters profess to feel positive about environmental justice, only 6% consider climate change a top priority. The prevalence of Hispanics in oil and gas jobs is another vulnerability for Biden. You should treat activists’ claims to speak for their communities with caution.
He might also consider how they are viewed across the hall. The biggest obstacle to effective climate policy is not democratic unity, which seems indestructible on the issue. And the Republican refusal to take it seriously. There is probably nothing Biden can do to resolve the situation. Yet by promoting a racial and leftist view of the problem – even if he himself seems ambivalent about it – he has perhaps made a bad case worse.
(Extract from the press review of eprcomunicazione)
