California, one of the nation’s largest agricultural states, announced plans Wednesday to ban the widely used pesticide chlorpyrifos linked to neurological problems in infants and children even as federal regulators have allowed the product to remain on the market. Read more.
Tag: Environmental Justice
President Trump’s recently proposed federal budget should have come with a warning label: This budget may cause adverse reactions, including shortness of breath, damage to vital organs, and serious illness, sometimes leading to death.
By Flora Cardoni & Gary Morton – Reprinted from The Morning Call April 30, 2019
Every day, most Pennsylvanians drink their tap water, go outside and breathe the air, and walk around outside without getting sick. This normalcy we all take for granted doesn’t just magically happen. It happens because our federal and state environmental protectors, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection employees, are on the job, maintaining continuous vigilance.
Through the hard work and dedication of these government employees, implementation of environmental regulations has achieved such a level of success that we often take clean water, air, and soil as a given, despite modern life’s reliance on chemicals, oil and pesticides.
Now comes President Trump’s proposed budget to slash funding for the EPA by 31%. The EPA Regional Office that serves Pennsylvania (as well as five neighboring states) is already understaffed: More than 350 critical positions have been cut in the region over the past few years. The president’s proposed budget would reduce our regional EPA workforce even further, cutting another 150 positions and bringing it to half of what it was a few years ago.
For Pennsylvania, this means more pollution of our water, lands and air. Nearly one in three days in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg were unhealthy air days in 2016. This dangerous air pollution causes asthma attacks, respiratory problems and heart attacks. Scientists have shown that as air pollution increases, the rate of death from air pollution-related illness also increases, day to day. EPA clean air programs save the lives of 3,441 Pennsylvanians a year by reducing mercury, soot and smog pollution from the air, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
These programs only work if there are EPA employees on the ground, enforcing the rules. The proposed budget will deprive Pennsylvanians of the safeguards necessary to maintain Pennsylvania air quality because EPA will not have the personnel it needs to monitor, inspect and enforce the law against unlawful air polluters, never mind the staff and resources needed to further improve the commonwealth’s environmental protections and air quality.
Another example: Pennsylvania has 95 sites in the Superfund program, the most toxic of the toxic sites in America. A one-third cut to EPA’s budget means that these sites, many of which are within a few hundred yards of residential neighborhoods, will not be cleaned up anytime in the near future: a delay, not by a few weeks or months, but years, during which the toxic stew at these sites continues to jeopardize surrounding properties and residents, especially as downpours and flooding increase. Delay in a Superfund cleanup is akin to a delay in treatment of disease. Both are unnecessary risks that can lead to what could have been avoidable complications.
The proposed budget also slashes climate change research programs and prevention initiatives, including a 90% funding cut for the EPA’s Atmospheric Protection Program, which reports on greenhouse gasses, and a 70% funding cut for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. This ignores the impacts of climate change the United States is currently experiencing, ignores the warnings of the National Climate Assessment (an annual report by scientists from 13 federal agencies) that we need to act now, and ignores the electorate.
There is common agreement by most, except the administration and the extraction industry, that the United States must transition to a clean energy economy in order to mitigate the effects of climate change to our health, economy, national security and livelihood. These budget cuts put our climate progress in reverse.
Some will say that the proposed Trump budget merely sets a target, and indeed it has: That target is squarely on the back of every Pennsylvanian who breathes the air, drinks the water, treads on the land and relies on a livable climate. The EPA needs more funding to protect our environment and public health, not severe budget cuts.
Pennsylvanians need Congress to step in where the administration has failed and protect our health and well-being by fighting to fully fund EPA.
Gary Morton is the president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238. Flora Cardoni is the Climate Defender Campaign director with PennEnvironment a statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy organization.
With assurances from its author that no existing environmental rules will change, a bill that would allow industries to avoid some penalties and keep self-audits of pollution issues secret passed the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday. Read more here.
More than 141 millions Americans lived in areas with unhealthy air pollution levels in 2015 to 2017 — an increase over the previous two years, as ozone pollution worsened across much of the country, according to a new report released Wednesday. Read more here.
Roberson and Joel Gilbert, a powerhouse lawyer with Balch & Bingham, had fought off environmental rules before. But for this campaign they needed a public face, someone with credibility both with the state government in Montgomery and the black communities in north Birmingham.
Someone who could persuade the people living on contaminated land to protest not the pollution, but the cleanup.
By early 2014, they had chosen Oliver L. Robinson Jr. (D), an African American state legislator and former University of Alabama at Birmingham basketball star. Read the entire story.
Every day, Ron Baptiste’s home in West Long Beach is invaded by dust and ash. If he cleans it in the morning, his shelves and furniture are coated again by the afternoon. Read more here.
We get calls from community leaders seeking information that they think will convince their state or local officials to take action. I wish I had a dollar for every person that told me over the years that if they could just get the right information in the hands of the politicians or government officials that those decision makers would do the right thing. If only that were true.
As a scientist, I provide technical assistance to grassroots community groups. People send me testing data to review, whether it’s the chemicals found in their drinking water, the air behind their child’s school, or the soil in the park where their children play. They ask me to do this primarily because they want to know what the test results mean. But they also believe that information is where they will find answers to the many questions about the contamination in their community.
To be clear, science and information is important. People need to understand the facts, to know what they can about a situation, and to use information as the basis for their arguments or their demands. But equally important is understanding the limitations of the information and recognizing the fine line between facts and opinion. Science and information are critically important, but it is not enough to convince the decision makers to take action. It’s not the information by itself but rather what you do with it that matters.
Just gathering data and sharing information no matter how important or impactful will not likely change a bureaucrat’s or a politician’s mind. But if you use the information as part of a strategic plan, it can make all the difference in the world. If you use the information to educate your community and then go to the bureaucrats and politicians with a set of demands that meet the needs of your community, you have a much greater chance of success.
So, don’t get trapped into believing you can win over the bureaucrats or your politicians by just gathering information, or become frozen into inaction until you gather every little bit of information. Science and information alone will not solve your problems. What really matters is what you do with the information you have and how it fits strategically into your organizing plan. Don’t hesitate to reach out to CHEJ to further discuss this.
Senators Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), and Tom Carper (D-Delaware) announced the formation of an environmental justice caucus on Monday. Read more here.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s history of lobbying for International Paper Co. and Xcel Energy Inc., among other companies, means he is recused from working on 45 Superfund sites, according to new agency data. Read more here.
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What’s Up with the Green New Deal?
By Maia Lehmann. The ever-tenacious Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled her Green New Deal (GND) on February 7th amidst great anticipation. The non-binding resolution, co-sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, sought to provide the United States with a comprehensive vision to combat climate change using a holistic approach. Excitement was widely felt by those who have been waiting decades to see public health, climate change, and environmental justice seriously addressed by federal legislation. But, what did Ocasio-Cortez’s plan actually lay out? And what’s happening to it now?
The goal of the Green New Deal (GND) was to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions and 100% renewable power use by 2030. This objective was met by broad support from the American public, with 87.2% of citizens polled saying that they strongly agreed with the statement. Adapting the U.S. energy portfolio is an essential step, seeing as in 2017 petroleum, natural gas, and coal accounted for 77.6% of U.S. energy—a direct disconnect from what Americans say they want from their energy sector.
The 14-page GND begins with a preamble that describes the policy issues as seen by Ocasio-Cortez: one-part climate crisis, one-part economic crisis. The preamble is followed by five goals, 24 projects, and 15 requirements that intend to lay a framework for how to address these problems. Rather than laying out concrete steps however, the GND uses a broad brush to advocate for an energy efficient electrical grids, updating infrastructure, and overhauling the transportation sector. While critics say that it is ignoring the most integral questions, it is strategically opening a space for disagreement and discussion.
The GND faces plenty of hurdles, especially since it includes several social and economic oriented projects, such as, “Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and disability leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.” Whether you agree with these issues or not, including them could make the reality of passing the bill even more difficult than climate legislation is already. And the difficulty of climate legislation is highlighted by the co-sponsorship of Senator Markey, who was a leader on the American Clean Energy and Security Act in 2009. The 2009 bill had a much narrower focus but still failed to pass even when both houses of Congress and the presidency was held by Democrats. However, rather than letting that cast a shadow upon the GND, perhaps it speaks to the need for radical changes to the status quo. In fact, 69.8% of Americans polled supported the intertwined social and environmental goals. And due to the inseparable nature of these policy issues it may be advantageous to craft a vision of how they could be developed in tandem. If previous incremental policy efforts have failed, and the opinions of the public are not being reflected by our lawmakers, then it is time to embrace an innovative comprehensive approach.
On March 26th the Senate voted the resolution down in a vote of 57-0, with the majority of Democrats voting “present” in protest to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell bringing the bill to the floor without hearings or debate. If anything, Senate Republican’s refusal to even discuss the most pressing issues of climate change demonstrate the necessity for dramatic policy change. The halt of the GND in the senate did not stall the zeal for the overall project of the GND. Representative Ocasio-Cortez is now refocusing her efforts by writing a series of small bills that will target both social and environmental issues in a more individualized method. The GND has successfully reinvigorated and rallied the efforts and public spirit for tackling the current climate crisis and provided a vision for what a sustainable and equitable America could look like. All of the Senate Democrats running for the presidency in 2020 have endorsed the GND, signaling that its vision will continue to permeate and inspire environmental legislation. This will not be the end of a green future that will support all of America.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/7/18211709/green-new-deal-resolution-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-markey
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/climate-change/flaws-with-a-green-new-deal-part-2-of-2/
https://www.investopedia.com/the-green-new-deal-explained-4588463
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home
https://www.businessinsider.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal-support-among-americans-poll-2019-2
https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal-support