CPR Board President Rob Verchick is out with a new episode of the Connect the Dots podcast, the first in a new season focused on climate justice. As he puts it, "We’re looking at people living in the crosshairs of climate change, those disproportionately carrying the burden of the world and suffering on a daily basis."
As part of Rob's exploration of the issue in this episode, we hear from three experts on the topic, each with a different vantage point. CPR Member Scholar Maxine Burkett is a Professor of Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Leslie Fields is the Sierra Club's Senior Director of Environmental Justice and Healthy Communities. Mychal Johnson is co-founder of South Bronx Unite, a coalition of residents, organizations, and allies confronting policies that perpetuate harm and building support for viable community-driven solutions in the South Bronx.
Over the course of the episode, we hear Johnson describe the many ways that pollution is foisted off onto low-income communities – industrial facilities on their doorstep, highways running through their heart, truck routes that bring smog-emitting tractor-trailers puffing down their streets. Fields traces the history of environmental injustice, noting that colonialism was often about extracting resources from distant communities and degrading their natural resources, health, and livelihoods along the way.
Burkett observes that "it would be hard to imagine this kind of devastation to the global climate without a deep element of racism…. There are these places that we’ve decided are disposable, and the people that inhabit them are disposable. In places like Port Arthur, Texas, places like Cancer Alley in Louisiana, innumerable places in indigenous lands that have been used for extraction of fossil fuels and transportation of fossil fuels. The core point is that those 'sacrifice zones' are as old as our industrial economy…. We've sacrificed the livelihoods and sustenance and lifestyles of a number of communities in expansion of the carbon economy."
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Matthew Freeman | September 9, 2020
CPR Board President Rob Verchick is out with a new episode of the Connect the Dots podcast, the first in a new season focused on climate justice. As he puts it, "We’re looking at people living in the cross hairs of climate change, those disproportionately carrying the burden of the world and suffering on a daily basis."
Rena Steinzor | September 8, 2020
As the country prays for relief from the global pandemic, what have we learned that could help us protect the environment better? Most alarming, I would argue, are COVID-19's revelations about the power of conspiracy theories and the antipathy they generate toward scientific experts.
Katlyn Schmitt | September 3, 2020
In the absence of meaningful action by OSHA, more than a dozen states, including Virginia, have issued emergency safety measures to protect essential workers from the risks of COVID-19. But Maryland – home to one of the largest poultry industries in the nation – is glaringly absent from that list.
Matthew Freeman | September 1, 2020
Writing in The Hill, CPR's Bill Buzbee and Mažeika Patricio Sullivan expand on a point they and their co-authors on an important article in Science magazine in August made ably: The Trump administration is running roughshod over science and law in its efforts to deregulate.
Alejandro Camacho, Robert L. Glicksman | August 27, 2020
Throughout his time in office, President Donald J. Trump has boasted about cutting regulations. His antagonism to environmental regulation has been particularly virulent and incessant. By one count, Trump Administration agencies have initiated or completed 100 environmental rollbacks. By thwarting often bipartisan legislative environmental protection goals adopted over the course of 50 years, President Trump's actions create serious threats to public health and environmental integrity. The Administration's suppression of public participation in regulatory decision-making has also undercut the ability of people and communities harmed by the Administration's deregulatory frenzy to protect themselves. These anti-environmental and anti-democratic practices converged in the Administration's recent revisions to the Council on Environmental Quality's (CEQ) regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Matt Shudtz | August 26, 2020
Since the very beginning of the pandemic, public health officials have warned of a second wave of COVID infections. With no epidemiological background, I’d say the impact of the virus looks more like a wildfire rolling across a forest seeking fresh fuel. But I fear that I am on the front side of a different sort of second wave. When the pandemic forced shutdowns across the country in March and April, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Some of us, myself included, were fortunate to work for organizations that have been able to weather the storm in a “virtual office.” But with September approaching, and schools forced to navigate uncharted waters, there are hard choices to be made. My wife and I had to make one such choice not long ago, and as a result, I'm leaving the best job I've ever had.
James Goodwin | August 25, 2020
This week, CPR is launching its Beyond 12866 initiative, an online platform focused on promoting a progressive vision for rebuilding the U.S. regulatory system. Such a regulatory system will be essential not only to achieving the progressive vision of a more just and equitable society; it will also do the heavy practical lifting needed for implementing key elements of a progressive policy agenda, such as the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and Black Lives Matter movement.
Daniel Farber | August 24, 2020
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has driven home some lessons about governance. Those lessons have broader application -- for instance, to climate governance. We can't afford for the federal government to flunk Crisis Management 101 again.
James Goodwin | August 20, 2020
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is a bad law and should be repealed. Yet, it has taken on outsized importance given that it provides one of the few vehicles for moving substantive legislation through a hyper-polarized Congress. The upcoming elections are thrusting it back in the spotlight, so let’s talk about the CRA and how opponents of the Trump administration’s assault on public safeguards might put it to its highest and best use.