Some examples of the federal government’s current endeavors:
• Concerned about “the disproportionate burden that pollution places on certain communities, including low-income communities and communities of color,” the Pentagon will “continue to address Environmental Justice by ensuring equality in our investments in military communities, implementing top-down training for Service members and civilian specialists in Environmental Justice literacy, strengthening government-to-government relations with Tribal Nations, and by leveraging existing public-private partnerships to support infrastructure and environmental enhancements in communities adjacent to the [DOD’s] installations.”
• The U.S. Department of the Interior “is hosting three public listening sessions focused and designed to gather input to inform the development of the Department’s Environmental Justice Strategic Plan.” According to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, “communities in every corner of America — particularly communities of color and poor communities — have been marginalized and ignored, creating dangerous and pervasive environmental injustices” for “far too long.” Her department “is committed to listening to all Americans and correcting these historic wrongs.”
• NASA’s Understanding Needs to Broaden Outside Use of NASA Data program “seeks to make … data, tools, and resources more usable and accessible to a broader community” — after all, “environmental justice is one of several high-priority domains identified by [the] Earth Science Division.”
• The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “has launched an initiative to advance environmental justice in HUD-assisted housing,” by conducting “oversight work that promotes safe, affordable housing by reducing environmental and public health hazards.” It’s part of “the comprehensive environmental justice strategies outlined by HUD and the Department of Justice aimed at reversing environmental inequities in underserved low-income communities that rely heavily on HUD’s housing assistance programs.”
• The U.S. Department of Transportation is working “to identify and prioritize projects that benefit rural, suburban, tribal, and urban communities facing barriers to affordable, equitable, reliable, and safe transportation.” Why? It intends to plug “gaps in … infrastructure and public services” by directing the appropriate amount of “grants, programs, and initiatives … to disadvantaged communities.”
• Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture made an “investment of $27.9 million across 45 organizations that teach and train beginning farmers and ranchers.” One recipient is In Her Shoes, Inc., a “two-state project” that will “provide education and support to 90 new and beginner women and Black farmers each year in West Georgia and the Mississippi Delta,” with the goal of boosting “women and Black operated farm businesses through farm business expansion and new market access.”
• The U.S. Department of Education “has limited authorities in the areas of school infrastructure, sustainability, environmental justice, and climate.” But it “continues to think creatively” on what it can do, and in February, invited “national, regional, and local non-profits, foundations, businesses, and community-based organizations to share bold commitment(s) to advance school sustainability, encompassing infrastructure, health, environmental sustainability education, climate, and environmental justice in America.”
In their defense, the bureaucrats are just following orders.
A week into his presidency, Joe Biden issued an executive order on the “climate crisis” that finger-wagged about the need to “deliver environmental justice in communities all across America,” created the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council, and required 18 federal bureaucracies to each appoint an Environmental Justice Officer. Two months later, he signed a separate dictate focused on “Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All” that pledged “a whole-of-government approach.”
First peddled by activists three decades ago, “environmental racism” was thoroughly debunked, almost at the start. It didn’t help that some voices on the left had doubts. A 1998 book by Christopher H. Foreman Jr. — of the Brookings Institution — admitted that “even a reasonably generous reading of the foundational empirical research alleging environmental inequity along racial lines must leave room for profound skepticism regarding the reported results.”
No matter. When America’s race-based morality play merged with eco-apocalypticism, activists used the new and impressively strong alloy to forge new weapons. The crusade gathered strength during the Clinton and Obama administrations, sure. But the death of George Floyd, intensifying insanity over a trace gas in Earth’s atmosphere, and the election of a career pol who delivers whatever his party’s power brokers desire to the presidency? Now is the time. Everything’s come together, beautifully.
Unless you value a balanced federal budget, colorblind public policy, and affordable, reliable energy, that is.
Well stated. Government is getting into areas it has no business in. Small government only providing essential services as defined by the Constitution.