(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Republican-led committee's erasing of 'environmental justice' won't erase environmental racism [1] ['Daily Kos Staff Emeritus', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-06 A sample of this malevolent nonsense could be seen last April. A webcast hearing of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee featured Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell. Together with Texas Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne—who has labeled cutting fossil fuel consumption a “radical far-left” policy and landed on the League of Conservation Voters’ annual Dirty Dozen roster for 2022—Republican Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana challenged the entire idea that environmental impacts disproportionately affect Black people and other people of color. The two representatives objected to the Biden administration’s efforts to give disadvantaged communities priority in the fight against the climate crisis and give them better access to disaster aid than they’ve had in the past. Thomas Franks reports: “I have yet to encounter a racist natural disaster, but it seems to be what some of my colleagues here today are suggesting,” Van Duyne said in a remote appearance. “There are legitimate victims of natural disasters, and I would hope that that would be where our focus is, and not on those manufactured victims by identity politics.” Natural disasters don’t discriminate but human policymakers do. From scientific journals to mainstream newspapers, headlines like “People of Color Breathe More Hazardous Air, The Sources Are Everywhere” or “PM 2.5 polluters disproportionately and systemically affect people of color in the United States” were almost never seen a decade or so ago. Now they are so common that I suspect many people just pass them by, thinking, “I know that already.” But the bad news keeps getting worse, as Darryl Fears at The Washington Post reported in May. And it cries out for remedies. The Post headline was familiar, but it topped the story of a more intensive and granular measuring method: “Block-by-block data shows pollution’s stark toll on people of color.” The very fact that people of color are concentrated in high-pollution areas is not some coincidence, some accident. In the 1930s, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) literally colored in red the maps of areas it considered unworthy of loans because of the “infiltration of foreign-born, Negro, or lower grade population.” HOLC also gave letter grades: A for solidly white areas and D for largely non-white areas. This made it harder for Black, Latino, and Asian would-be home buyers to obtain mortgages. While the practice was outlawed a half-century ago, the impacts are very much with us, as the Aclima study illustrates. The Chevron refinery in Richmond, California, provides a perfect example of these impacts. The surrounding area consisting mostly of Black and Latino residents is afflicted by an asthma rate of 25%, nearly twice the statewide average. In addition to these slower disasters are the sudden ones and the government response to them. As a 2019 NPR investigation showed: Disasters are becoming more common in America. In the early and mid-20th century, fewer than 20 percent of U.S. counties experienced a disaster each year. Today, it's about 50 percent. According to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, climate change is already driving more severe droughts, floods and wildfires in the U.S. And those disasters are expensive. The federal government spends billions of dollars annually helping communities rebuild and prevent future damage. But an NPR investigation has found that across the country, white Americans and those with more wealth often receive more federal dollars after a disaster than do minorities and those with less wealth. Federal aid isn't necessarily allocated to those who need ... Put another way, after a disaster, rich people get richer and poor people get poorer. And federal disaster spending appears to exacerbate that wealth inequality. Robert Bullard. As Niala Boodhoo at Axios reports, Black people are 40% more likely to live in areas with the highest projected mortality rates because of climate change. Latinos are 43% more likely to work in places where high temperature days will put them at risk. And Indigenous Americans are 48% more likely to live in places that will be flooded because of sea level rise. Early on in his term, President Joe Biden set up an advisory council on environmental justice and established the Justice 40 initiative to ensure that 40% of all the benefits from government-funded climate investments go to the most vulnerable communities, many of them deeply burdened by pollution and other environmental harms. Robert Bullard is widely regarded as the “father of environmental justice” and a member of the president’s council. He’s been digging into the subject since 1979 as author and activist. One of his early books on the subject is Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. In response to a question from Boodhoo, Bullard said: You know, I finished the book in 1989 and it took me a whole year to get it published because I got nasty notes from publishers saying, “Oh, there's no such thing as environmental racism. The environment is neutral. It's subjective. Everybody is treated the same.” ... You got to make sure that the [Justice 40] monies flow to those cities and counties and municipalities. What we have to do is to assist and support what's happening on the ground to ensure that the historical pattern of how federal funds and disaster funding and FEMA and other kinds of funding, even Covid monies that this dominant paradigm money follows money, follows power, money follows whites. That's how it generally happens and the communities of greatest need get left out. We have to flip that script. We have to flip it so that money and resources flow toward need. We're talking about giant steps and we're talking about steps to eradicate those structural factors that create and perpetuate inequality. Message to Republicans: Erasing “environmental justice” from committee documents won’t erase environmental racism any more than deleting “climate change” will stop the seas from rising. ***** More to read: How 600 Years of Environmental Violence Is Still Harming Black Communities [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/6/2151375/-Republican-led-committee-s-erasing-of-environmental-justice-won-t-erase-environmental-racism Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/