After a long year of environmental disasters across the globe and in the midst of a public health crisis that has killed well over a million people, six “environmental heroes” were announced on Monday as winners of the 2020 Goldman Environmental Prize, an annual honor that recognizes grassroots activists from each of the world’s inhabited continental regions.
“These six environmental champions reflect the powerful impact that one person can have on many,” John Goldman, president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, said in a statement. “In today’s world, we witness the effects of an imbalance with nature: a global pandemic, climate change, wildfires, environmental injustices affecting those most at risk, and constant threats to a sustainable existence.”
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Photo credit: Goldman Environmental Foundation
Month: November 2020
By: Shaina Smith, Organizing Intern
The relationship between Native Americans and the United States has always involved genocide and theft. An estimated 5 to 15 million indigenous people already inhabited the land when European settlers first discovered America. By the late 1800s, only 237 thousand people remained. During this period of colonization, the United States took more than 1.5 billion acres of land from Native Americans. To force people onto land and then to contaminate the air, soil, and water of that land is environmental genocide. Environmental genocide by the United States government and corporate polluters is done through both legal and nonlegal methods.
The concept of environmental justice was created to acknowledge the disproportionate burden marginalized communities face from corporate polluters. Government and industry often ignore indigenous people, making it all the more important that they have a critical voice in the environmental justice movement.
Vi Waghiyi of Alaska Community Actions on Toxins (ACAT) faces what she calls “environmental violence” in her community because of contamination from a former US military base at Northeast Cape on St. Lawrence Island. Vi is a Yupik grandmother from Savoonga, a native village in St. Lawrence. Once abandoned in the early 1970s, the military left behind at least 220,000 gallons of spilt fuel, heavy metals, asbestos, solvents, and PCBs known to cause cancer. These pollutants contaminate the soil and groundwater, which especially harms the nearby Yupik community of Savoonga who have for generations relied on traditional subsistence agriculture. A 2002 study found that Native people who hunt and fish near Northeast Cape have almost 10 times as many PCBs in their blood compared to the average American. Many residents suffer from PCB-associated health problems, such as cancer, low birth weight, and miscarriages.
Rebecca Jim of Local Environmental Action Demanded (LEAD) Agency Inc, lives in a Cherokee community plagued by environmental and economic exploitation from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Over many years, US authorities forced tribes onto land in Northeast Oklahoma in Ottawa County. Once it was discovered the land was rich in lead and zinc, the BIA illegitimately leased land for mining and extraction starting in the early 1900s. The BIA claimed Native people were incompetent to manage their wealth and kept many from seeing their earnings. Though the mines were no longer in production, they contained debris contaminated with heavy metals. The BIA encouraged tribal land owners to make use of the waste, resulting in poison being spread throughout the county. By 1994 tests had found that 35% of children in the area had high concentration of lead in their blood. Prolonged lead exposure can damage the immune system, nervous system, blood system and kidneys. It can also potentially cause birth defects, learning disabilities, decreased mental ability, and reduced growth in children.
From the moment the first European settlers reached America, indigenous people have suffered physical and cultural genocide. Politicians who claim to empathize with indegenous people are still not doing enough to stop people from being poisoned. Kaniela Ing, a Native Hawaiian and former State Representative, noted during his time in office how even progressive politicians are pulled to the right by corporate lobbyists. “A system that relies on appealing to the good nature of politicians is never going to work,” Kaniela observed. “We never really learned how to do democracy right.” At best this violence results from negligence and inaction, and at worst it’s no more than the continuation of centuries of genocide. It’s imperative that the US government listen to Native voices, show greater urgency in clean-up efforts, and compensate those who’ve been harmed.
By: Ruth Rodriguez, Communications Intern
Jerry Ensminger, a U.S Marine Corps veteran who led the fight for justice at Camp Lejeune, a military base in North Carolina where severe water contamination went unaddressed and unresolved for over 30 years, shared his experience for CHEJ’s Living Room Leadership series.
Raised in Pennsylvania on a dairy farm, Ensminger joked that he joined the Marine Corps because he needed a break from the farm life. In actuality, he joined in 1969 after his brother, who had volunteered for the draft to obtain the GI Bill after service, was wounded 78 times in the front of his body and lost the top left corner of his brain.
Ensminger had two daughters, the second, named Janey, was conceived at Camp Lejeune. She was born in Parris Island and then the family moved back to Camp Lejeune. For a while, Janey had a severe case of strep throat. Ensminger then noticed she had red spots all over her torso. When she was taken to the hospital he found out that the spots were petechiae, caused by broken blood vessels below the skin. He then was informed that his daughter had leukemia after her bone marrow was tested. Janey Ensminger passed on September 24, 1985.
Ensminger retired in 1994. In 1997, while getting ready for dinner, he heard a report about the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s public health assessment for Camp Lejeune. It found that drinking water contamination took place in Camp Lejeune from 1968 to 1985 and was suspected to have caused different types of birth defects and childhood cancer, specifically leukemia. Ensminger said the dates were incorrect and the contamination went further back. When he initially heard the news he thought only of Janey, but then remembered all those who lived on the base and were now all over the world and did not hear the local news. The only reason Ensminger found out was because he stayed in the area after his retirement. He said he almost felt physically ill from what was going on. He faithfully served for 24 and a half years and was betrayed, but he turned his sense of betrayal into astounding work.
“There were hundreds of thousands if not over a million people out there that’s had that same nagging question, ‘what happened to me’, ‘what happened to my loved one’, and I made it my mission to give them a possible answer to that nagging question, and that set me in motion.”
Volatile organic compounds (VOC) trichloroethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), vinyl chloride, and benzene were among the contaminants found in the drinking water. These sourced from leaking storage tanks, dumping into the ground, dry cleaning, and industrial activities. It took Ensminger from 1997 to 2004 to get a major news outlet to take the Camp Lejeune story. The story was finally published by The Washington Post in 2004 titled, “Tainted Water in the Land of Semper Fi.”
Ensminger testified 9 different times to Congress from that point until August 2012 when President Barack Obama signed the Janey Ensminger Act. The Act established a connection between the illnesses associated with the water contamination at Camp Lejeune and allowed dependents to apply for Veterans Affair health care in relation to exposure.
“It’s not easy and if you only go into it half hearted they’re gonna beat you.”
The Department of Defense holds that they will pay to clean up the contamination, because they are required to, but will not be held liable to pay any person for damages caused by the contamination. The Supreme Court upheld this notion. In response, Ensminger introduced the Camp Lejeune Justice Act to overturn the ruling.
“The only way you’re gonna punish them, whether it’s industry or the Department of Defense, any polluter…is in their pocket.”
To learn more about the toxic water at Camp Lejeune, visit The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten.
Read the story of William Sanjour, who blew the whistle on the EPA and throughout his career.
How long does it take to fight the good fight? How long can one stand in the arena and continue the battle? For some whistleblowers, it can be decades, and William Sanjour is a case in point. For half his life, he has been a whistleblower and a whistleblower advocate. He was the point man in a court case that reverberates to this day, and he outsmarted many people who tried desperately to silence him.
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When Joe Biden delivered his first speech as president-elect two weeks ago, he focused on his mandate to “marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time.” Climate change was high on that list. After another year of unprecedented climate disasters, Biden will enter office with the most ambitious plans of any incoming president to wean our country off fossil fuels.
To deliver on his promises of “getting climate under control,” Biden will need to follow the prevailing science that suggests the United States achieve about a 45 percent reduction in its greenhouse gas pollution by 2030. He can’t afford to wade through years of congressional gridlock to get there. Instead, he will have to exploit the broad powers of the executive branch, using existing law to get as close as possible to the target.
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Photo credit: C-Span, Zuma
When it comes to letting Reserve Management Group close its General Iron plant on the North Side and move the metal-shredding operations to the Southeast Side, we understand that Mayor Lori Lightfoot has a problem. She has to worry about keeping businesses in the city. Jobs and tax revenues are at stake.
But because this is Chicago, and because General Iron has shown its operations continue to pollute the city’s air, she also has to take environmental justice into account when considering this move. Though not confined to Chicago, environmental injustice has been endemic here. Systemic racism, in the form of disinvestment in neighborhoods where people of color live, leaves those communities less able to resist when dirty industry decides to move in.
Trump has yet to acknowledge his election loss to president-elect Joe Biden but his administration has been busily finishing off a cavalcade of regulatory moves to lock in more oil and gas drilling, loosened protections for wildlife and lax air pollution standards before the Democrat enters the White House on 20 January.
By: Ruth Rodriguez, Communications Intern
“I’m hoping this bill can pave the way for a tidal wave of bills like this across the country.”
Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Deputy Director, Organizing and Advocacy of Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC) in Newark, Jersey shared her experience as one of the leaders that helped pass S232, the strongest environmental justice law in the United States. Signed by Governor Murphy in New Jersey, the law protects overburdened communities by requiring the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate permits based on cumulative impacts of pollution.
Born in Honduras, Lopez-Nuñez moved to New Jersey when she was 3 years old. She later earned a degree in philosophy. Her entry to environmental justice work was through social justice and began at ICC in 2014.
The Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, is situated among the state’s largest incinerator, 2 power plants, a railroad, a port, and a river that is the longest superfund site in the nation. Lopez-Nuñez describes the neighborhood as a “toxic soup.”
Pushed by ICC, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, and Clean Water Action of New Jersey for 12 years, a new and groundbreaking environmental justice bill was signed into law in September. Originally, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection claimed that they did not have the jurisdiction to deny permits based on cumulative impacts. Every factory and industry was viewed as an individual in the permitting process. When each individual goes up to their limit, the combination of their pollution and waste falls upon the community. The Environmental Justice law, also referred to as Cumulative Impacts, protects overburdened communities by mandating that the Department of Environmental Protection “SHALL DENY” a permit to an industry that adds burden to the neighborhood. An impacted community is measured by Census block and defined as 40 percent people of color, OR 40 percent monolingual, non-english speaking, OR 35 percent low income. The definition was designed to be inclusive and protect people of color and low income white communities. If a new facility is planning to settle in an environmental justice/impacted community, a review on cumulative impacts is triggered. Renewals and expansions receive conditions on their permits to lower emissions and pollution. Lopez-Nuñez says, “I’m looking forward to that first denial under the bill, that will be our historic moment come true.”
“I’m hoping that other people can build on this…they always ask you who else has done it…you can go and say that this bill in New Jersey has ‘shall deny’ as the premise.”
The law is not currently in effect, but is in its rulemaking process. During this period, industry begins lobbying to create loopholes in the legislation. Lopez-Nuñez says that the hardest part of the journey now is to influence the bureaucrats. She found that using tangible things like the way the air smells was effective in community organizing, and stresses that the community needs to lead and negotiate for themselves. Community members are trained to participate in stakeholder meetings. She said that, “It’s not about intelligence, it’s just about a little determination.”
“At the heart it’s about community organizing and making sure we’re all connected…fight together against the forces that would really just bury us.”
Environmental justice has found its way into President-elect Joe Biden’s transition plan as a “key consideration” for policy-making, and advocates are cautiously optimistic. And though a divided Congress is likely, they suspect an infrastructure bill — long promised but never delivered under the Trump administration — is a potential avenue for investing in communities that have borne the brunt of pollution and environmental racism.
These “frontline” communities, whose populations are predominantly Black or other people of color, are those that experience the first and worst consequences of climate change and other environmental problems.
The new administration’s ability to allocate 40 percent of clean energy and infrastructure investment benefits to these communities, as Biden called for in his campaign plan, will likely depend on whether Republicans retain control of the Senate following two Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia. Even with the potentially split legislature, however, those who have worked alongside Biden’s campaign or in previous administrations are convinced that the president-elect’s best chance to invest in environmental justice is through targeted infrastructure spending.
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Photo credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
On Nov. 16, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced the first round of grantees from his “Earth Fund,” which has committed to ultimately channel $10 billion to climate change-related causes and groups. In this first crop, 16 organizations will receive a total of $791 million, making Bezos the world’s biggest backer of climate activism. In one day, he single-handedly boosted the total amount of climate-related philanthropic funding available in the US by around 11%.
But the list of recipients is raising some objections—both because of its potential to greenwash Amazon’s own climate accountability, and because it significantly favors well-funded Beltway institutions over grassroots groups that arguably need the money more.
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Photo credit: Reuters / Francis Mascarenhas