“They have suffered most from industrial pollution and are projected to suffer most from the effects of climate change. Alongside them, “this economic transformation will require changes in many communities that have come to rely upon fossil fuel production, transportation, or combustion, for employment, tax base, and economy.”
Looking out for these communities through the transition — making sure that this time, unlike in so many other chapters of our history, they are given opportunities to participate and a fair share of the fruits — is what advocates mean by a “just transition.”
But looking out for them begins with information. It begins with knowing who is vulnerable, in what ways, and where.
To that end, an Inslee White House would “lead a major interagency initiative to identify Census tract and community-level information on pollution hotspots as well as patterns of economic inequality, racial demography, and vulnerability to climate change.”
This “equity impact mapping” would allow a more accurate and detailed assessment of the equity impacts of federal policies.
Inslee would use the information to establish an “equity screen” on all big federal policies, “to analyze and make decisions about how major federal actions interact with communities’ different environmental and pollution legacies, economic and racial demographics, as well as community capacities and climate vulnerabilities.”
The equity screen perspective would be propagated to all federal agencies, at both the headquarters and field level, in part by strengthening Executive Order 12898. (President Clinton ordered federal agencies to take disparate environmental impacts into account.)
“The goal of the equity screen is twofold: to prevent policies that create concentrations of environmental harm and to allow targeted efforts to address America’s long history of environmental injustice.
I like this idea a lot. Even if it only involved gathering and organizing the information, information alone often spurs policy. It will be easier to take action on environmental justice when the geography and socioeconomics of environmental impacts are better mapped and understood.
2) Rooting environmental justice in the White House and DOJ