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Environmental Justice

An Open Letter From EPA Staff To The American Public

March 21, 2025 anonymous EPA employees, DeSmog. , , ,
The Trump administration is making accusations of fraud, waste, and abuse associated with federal environmental justice programs under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as justification for firing federal workers and defunding critical environmental programs. But the real waste, fraud, and abuse would be to strip away these funds from the American people. As current and former employees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who developed and implemented the agency’s environmental justice funding and grant programs, we want to offer our first-hand insights about the efficiency and importance of this work.

New York City’s Congestion Pricing Program Sacrifices Human Rights

January 9, 2025 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
It’s been said that the road to bad policy is paved with good intentions. The case of New York City’s new congestion pricing program puts this aphorism to the task as both the intentions and the program itself raise salient questions about who benefits, who suffers, and if the inchoate initiative even complies with at least two landmark State statutes that purport to position New York State as the national leader in climate action and environmental justice. The congestion pricing program, which charges drivers entering Manhattan from 60th street and below $9.00 between the hours of 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends.

The Zionist Effort To Defund Climate And Environmental Justice

November 28, 2024 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
While the emissions reduction efficacy of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is still in question, it’s less debatable that the “historic climate law” has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to certain climate and environmental justice organizations (CEJ). Many in the U.S. climate community herald this development as CEJ groups have been historically underfunded and markedly less resourced than historically white-led environmental organizations, commonly referred to as “Big Green.” According to a 2020 report by researcher Michael Thomas, environmental justice organizations received between $25 and $50 million.

Why All Hurricanes Should Be Named ‘Jim’

October 20, 2024 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , , , , , ,
The devastation effectuated by Hurricane Helene represents yet another elucidation of a quintessential climate crisis that is right here and right now. It demonstrates that climate change is not a conclusion that awaits us, but a set of present day precarities taking and altering lives right now. According to initial assessments, Helene could cost U.S. taxpayers upwards of $175 billion , and of course, there is no way to quantify the estimated 230 lives that were taken, thus far, with the death toll expected to rise. Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm, continued this season of carnage and calamity with a death toll of approximately 20 people and an estimated $50 billion in damages.

Black Residents In Cancer Alley Try A Last Legal Defense Against Pollution

October 16, 2024 Lylla Younes, Next City. , , , , , ,
On the banks of the lower Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana, on sprawling tracts of land that break up the vast wetlands, hulking petrochemical complexes light the sky day and night. They piled up over the past half century, built by fossil fuel giants like Nucor and Occidental. In that time, they replaced farmland with concrete and steel, and threaded the levees with pipelines that carry natural gas from as far away as West Texas. When the plants came, the lush landscape of this part of south Louisiana deteriorated. “The pecans are dry. They don’t yield like they used to,” said Gail Lebouf, a longtime resident of the region.

Environmental Protesters Under Attack And Often Treated As Terrorists

July 11, 2024 Peter Speetjens, Resilience. , , , , ,
Events in February felt like a legal double whammy for the environment and its defenders. First, the United Nations Environment Assembly declined a Bolivian proposal to grant rights to nature and Mother Earth. Then, Michel Forst, the U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders under the Aarhus Convention, raised the alarm with his new paper: “State Repression of Environmental Protest and Civil Disobedience: A Major Threat to Human Rights and Democracy.” Although the right to protest is safeguarded by universal human rights like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, Forst signals a worrisome rise in police brutality in dealing with environmental defenders.

Forest Defenders Declare Victory After 22-Day Tree Sit

April 24, 2024 Unicorn Riot. , , , , , ,
Josephine County, OR – Environmentalists are declaring victory after occupying a stand of old growth forest for three weeks to prevent trees from being logged. Forest defenders launched a tree sit on April 1 to prevent Boise Cascade Wood Products, the timber company who bought the logging rights, from cutting a stand of mature trees which represents some of the last remaining intact old growth in the region. For 22 days, community members occupied a patch of old growth forest that sits inside the boundaries of the Poor Windy Forest Management Plan.

Biden’s So-Called LNG Export Freeze Sacrifices Gulf South Communities

April 8, 2024 Candice Bernd, Truthout. , , , , ,
In late March, Texas joined a 15-state federal lawsuit led by Louisiana to block the Biden administration’s executive order pausing new permits for terminals that export fracked gas, or so-called liquefied natural gas (LNG). Separately, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan created a special committee to investigate President Joe Biden’s permitting freeze, a move that has not only drawn backlash from the oil industry and Texas GOP, but also Republicans on Capitol Hill. Texas’s moves follow House Republicans’ February passage of House Resolution 7176, a bill that would reverse President Biden’s permitting pause by stripping the Department of Energy (DOE) of the power to approve LNG exports to non-free trade agreement countries

Thacker Pass Protectors File First-Ever ‘Biodiversity Necessity Defense’

March 27, 2024 Max Wilbert, Last Real Indians. , , , , , ,
Winnemuca, Nevada — In a first for the American legal system, the lawyers for six people sued by Lithium Nevada Corporation for protesting the Thacker Pass mine are arguing a ‘biodiversity necessity defense.’ The necessity defense is a legal argument used to justify breaking the law when a greater harm is being prevented; for example, breaking a car window to save an infant locked inside on a stifling hot day, or breaking down a door to help someone screaming inside a locked home. In these cases, trespassing is justified to save a life.

Ecocide Movement Aims To Criminalize Long-Term Environmental Harm

December 8, 2023 Matthew Green, DeSmog. , , ,
Jojo Mehta co-founded Stop Ecocide in 2017, alongside legal pioneer the late Polly Higgins, to support the recognition and establishment of ecocide as a crime at the International Criminal Court at the Hague. She’ll be at COP28 in Dubai to push for an ecocide law. Ecocide is generally defined as mass damage and destruction of ecosystems — severe harm to nature that is widespread or long-term. Stop Ecocide generates collaborations around the globe at every level of society, from diplomats and politicians to lawyers and academics, from corporate influencers to indigenous and faith leaders. 

Environmental Pollution Lawsuit May Pump The Brakes On Cop City

November 23, 2023 Jocelyn James, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
Earlier this month, the South River Watershed Alliance (SRWA) filed a civil rights complaint against the city of Atlanta, saying the rapid construction of a police training facility, locally known as Cop City, has caused environmental destruction to the surrounding community. The SRWA filed the complaint with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and says the project’s location constitutes environmental racism. The facility’s construction is planned for a predominantly Black residential area, despite the investors and organizers of the project hailing from mostly white residential areas, and a proposed 43% of police trainees at the facility are expected to come from outside of the state of Georgia.

Fighting Industrial Development In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

July 18, 2023 Daja E. Henry, In These Times. , , , ,
Wallace, Louisiana - There are only a handful of homes situated on Alexis Court, but there are a whole lot of memories. At one end of the short street, facing the Mississippi River, is Fee-Fo-Lay Café, run by twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner. The Fifolet, according to local lore, is a spirit that haunts the swamps and guards the treasures of pirate Jean Lafitte. Growing up, the Banner sisters heard a variation of the myth from their grandmother, and the café bears its name as an homage to their grandparents’ stories. Inside, the walls hold the stories and pictures of at least four generations. Many of their family members live around Fee-Fo-Lay — the family has been in the town of Wallace since its beginnings.

How A Utility Giant Tried (And Failed) To Build A Pipeline Under Brooklyn

July 7, 2023 Sara Van Horn, In These Times. , , ,
In February 2016, small advertisements appeared in the back pages of a Brooklyn newspaper notifying the public of a coming rate hike in energy bills — to the tune of $245 million over a year-long period. Crammed beneath movie listings and accompanied by a table of decimals, small print and legal jargon, the ads said nothing about how British utility giant National Grid would use these millions. By November 2019, when Brooklyn residents learned the hike would pay for seven miles of a new fracked gas transmission pipeline beneath their neighborhoods, construction was two years along; large portions of the Metropolitan Reliability Infrastructure Project had been quietly laid under the streets from Brownsville to East Williamsburg.

The Two-Sided Uprising Sweeping France

July 5, 2023 Nicolas Haeringer, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
On June 27, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French boy of North African descent was murdered by a white police officer in a Parisian suburb. Since then, anger has erupted almost everywhere in the country, especially in poor neighborhoods. Young people are taking to the streets to protest against police violence and state racism. Their anger is eruptive. Recently, I helped organize support and solidarity for another uprising in France: Soulèvements de la terre, or Earth’s uprising. This movement, created in 2021, is fighting against large and useless infrastructure (like highways and giant tunnels under the Alps), transnational corporations and other sources of pollution and environmental destruction.

Upcoming National Day Of Action Demands Housing For ‘Need Not Greed’

July 3, 2023 The Canary. , , ,
In March 2023, we reported on a new activist group called Housing Rebellion. Now, it will be making itself known to even more people on Saturday 8 July when it takes part in a national Day of Action. The event seeks to draw attention to the housing crisis and the many issues around it. The Canary wrote of Housing Rebellion in March: Housing Rebellion is a new offshoot of Extinction Rebellion (XR). The group exists to highlight the fact that many of the anti-tenant policies that landlords get away with are also having an enormous impact on the environment. Now, and in a press release for the upcoming action, it states: On Saturday July 8th 2023, residents and housing campaigners across the UK are organising a day of local actions and protests, to highlight the links between the climate crisis and the UK’s broken housing system.
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