The "environmental justice movement" is a new radical left idea that began at the beginning of the 21st century. It was based on the idea that low-income and minority communities were unfairly "targeted" by businesses that dumped their waste and polluted the ground.
There's evidence that, in some cases, irresponsible businesses and even more irresponsible governments dumped chemicals and other waste in minority communities. One example is the Flint Water Crisis, where a predominantly low-income community experienced lead contamination in their drinking water due to lax government enforcement.
“When the consequences of the environmental justice movement mean fewer high-paying jobs, then it’s not justice. That’s not justice for a low-income worker who needs to support her family," says the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, Diana Furchtgott-Roth.
But "environmental justice" as a legal theory depends on the idea that minorities were exclusively targeted. That theory was challenged successfully by the state of Louisiana in a court case last year.
Other critics of environmental justice claim that the programs place an unwarranted focus on race. That idea was tested in a high-profile environmental justice case brought by the state of Louisiana against the EPA and the Department of Justice last year. The district judge ultimately sided with the state, decreeing that “pollution does not discriminate” and that “if a decision maker has to consider race” in its enforcement decisions, “it has indeed participated in racism.”
Though Ms. Furchtgott-Roth views Mr. Trump’s move as a step in the right direction, she notes that she holds “the utmost sympathy” for the EPA employees who are slated to lose their jobs. “They work really hard to do what the president told them to do. I hope that they can be reallocated to other places in the federal government,” she tells the Sun.
“If more than 100 EPA employees are placed on administrative leave tomorrow, it will be unprecedented in scope and scale. We have not experienced anything like that in the 34 years I’ve been at this agency,” Nicole Cantello, president of AFGE local 704, a union that represents EPA employees.
"The agency’s environmental justice programs are meant to ensure federal agency policies, grants and initiatives protect underserved communities from experiencing disproportionately negative health and environmental impacts," reports CNN. What is "disproportionately"? For that matter, what's an "underserved community"?
An entirely new vocabulary has been created in the interest of "social justice" and "environmental justice." "Justice" for who? Justice for what? Pollution is terrible, but isn't the local government responsible for assuring compliance with local environmental law? This was true even before the EPA came into existence.
And as one of her first acts after being sworn in as the nation’s 87th attorney general Wednesday, Pam Bondi rescinded former attorney general Merrick Garland’s directives on environmental justice, according to a memorandum obtained by The Washington Post. Bondi also directed the heads of all U.S. Attorney’s Offices to revoke any “memoranda, guidance, or similar directive that implement the prior administration’s ‘environmental justice’ agenda.”
“Going forward, the Department will evenhandedly enforce all federal civil and criminal laws, including environmental laws,” the memo concluded.
If the actions of a company harm an individual, that individual has the right to sue for any damage to his health or property. That standard was good enough for a few hundred years before "environmental justice" became a buzzword.
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