New focus for environmental justice: Affordability, accountability and well-paying jobs
The impact of climate change and the potential of the green economy on communities of color was the focus of the Connecticut Green Bank”™s recent webinar, “History of Environmental Justice in America and the Frontlines of Climate Justice Today in Connecticut.”
The presentation began with a keynote address by Deeohn Ferris, president of the Institute for Sustainable Communities, who insisted that “a global green economy must include everyone.”
She recalled President Bill Clinton”™s 1994 Executive Order 12898, titled “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” as the stepping stone to addressing issues that were overlooked for many years.
The executive order directed each federal agency to make environmental justice part of its mission and defined responsibilities for developing a strategy to identify and address “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies and activities on minority populations and low-income populations.”
Ferris, who attended the ceremony where Clinton signed the executive order, acknowledged that the document “is not judicially enforceable law of the land” and congressional legislation addressing the core challenges of the environmental justice bill has yet to be produced. Nonetheless, she remained optimistic that progress was on the near-horizon.
“I was on the ground floor of the environmental justice movement and I”™m very glad to say in 2021 we”™ve come a long way,” Ferris said. “We”™re not all the way to comprehensively tackling the cross-cutting factors affecting communities of color and other marginalized groups, but after worldwide protests this past year and the attention focused on justice and equity, we”™ve got momentum to transform the hardest-hit communities to build resiliency and achieve success.”
The lethargy in the legislative process addressing an issue like environment justice flummoxed state Rep. Geraldo Reyes (D-Waterbury), who shared his frustration at the inability of the General Assembly to produce speedy results.
“It takes time,” he lamented. “That”™s the one thing that as a legislator I struggle with because I want to get to the end result. I want to put the perfect bill out there, but when you”™re working across aisles and you”™re working in negotiating, you may not be able to get the perfect bill in one shot, and this is what I”™m learning about the politics in Hartford.”
Reyes warned that time is not on the side of the environmental justice movement, noting issues, including high-pollution trash incinerators in Bridgeport and Hartford need to be given priority. He also pointed out that poor air quality from pollution-spewing sites in lower-income neighborhoods is a problem facing all communities.
“Just because it comes from a marginalized community doesn”™t mean it stays there,” he said. “We”™re all impacted from a health standpoint and it”™s just a shame that a lot of these polluted entities are almost always in a low-income area.”
Brenda Watson, executive director of Operation Fuel, highlighted the question of energy affordability, which she defined as “an entry point into climate change.” She rued that environmental justice has traditionally focused on air quality and water preservation while energy affordability was relegated to a parallel track of climate justice and public health.
“The pandemic has demonstrated that reliable home energy and access to clean and reliable water are more than just basic needs,” she said. “They are, in fact, essential needs and, in my opinion, not just a public health need but public safety need.”
Watson called on the utility industry and the regulatory agencies that monitor them to become more cognizant of this issue.
“We all need to be at the planning table together,” she said. “For a long time, regulators and investor-owned utilities have been shaping energy policy and regulation from the top down, and I believe what we should be doing is planning from the top down as well as the bottom up ”” because what tends to happen is low-income customers are at the bottom of this decision-making.
“As long as customers are being mandated to supplement the activities of investor-owned utilities,” she added, “then we all deserve a voice in some decision-making.”
John Harrity, chairman of the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs, discussed how his organization helped influence the state”™s entrance into the offshore wind market, which he predicted will “get a lot of jobs out of it in New London and in Bridgeport.”
Harrity also stressed that his organization worked with the legislature to ensure that the new jobs connected to the offshore wind development would be unionized, with the energy companies involved agreeing to apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs designed to assist “people from the communities that have been marginalized in the past and get them the skills that they need to have successful careers in that field.”
Harrity argued that it would be catastrophic if green economy jobs “become a kind of a Walmart basement-payment, no-benefit-type job.” He also urged the state legislature to pass SB 999 ”” An Act Concerning a Just Transition to Climate Protective Energy Production and Community Investment ”” to help workers at risk of losing jobs in the fossil fuel industry with professional and financial transitioning into green economy professions.
“Transition means that there”™s jobs for them to go to, hopefully in the green economy,” he said. “That means in the interim they should be able to get training and education if needed, that they should have income replacement, they should have health care and even relocation assistance ”” things that other countries do to assure that people move smoothly.”