Short Wave - Biden Promises To Grapple With Environmental Racism

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

People of color experience more air and water pollution than white people and suffer the health impacts. The federal government helped create the problem, and has largely failed to fix it. NPR climate reporter Rebecca Hersher talks about the history of environmental racism in the United States, and what Biden's administration can do to avoid the mistakes of the past. Read Rebecca's reporting on how Biden hopes to address the environmental impacts of systemic racism.Email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Last week, President Biden signed some executive orders. Good afternoon, everybody. Maybe you've heard about some of them. There was one about making it okay for transgender people to serve in the military, a couple about making it easier to sign up for health insurance through Obamacare, and a bunch about climate change. Let me get to it.

Today is climate day at the White House. Becky, this may be a good place for you to say who you are. Oh, yeah. I'm Rebecca Hersher, climate reporter here at NPR. And I'm Emily Kwong. So what was the deal with all these presidential orders about climate change? Well, it was a mixed bag. There was some stuff about making it harder to drill for oil and gas on public land,

suggesting more money for solar and wind energy, helping people work in those industries, which is all really important for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the presidential order that really caught my attention was one about racism. the environmental effects of racism. With this executive order, environmental justice will be at the center of all we do addressing the disproportionate health and environmental and economic impacts on communities of color, so-called fence-line communities, especially those communities, brown, black, Native American, poor whites. Yeah, we've known for a while that people of color in the U.S. are more likely to be exposed to pollution. Is he basically promising to fix that? Yeah, and that caught my attention because, frankly, easier said than done.

What makes you say that? Well, before President Biden signed this order, I had been doing some reporting about the history of this exact kind of thing. And presidents have said, we know that there are environmental effects from racism and we know that poor people and people of color in this country are breathing more polluted air and drinking more polluted water. And presidents have said before, we are going to promise to fix that. President Clinton actually signed a really similar executive order almost 30 years ago. Wow. Yeah. So I thought, in light of all of that, that we could spend some time here talking about that history.

Absolutely. Well, today on the show, environmental racism is as old as the United States itself. Why is it so hard to fix? And can the new administration avoid the mistakes of the past? You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. Okay, Rebecca Hersher, let's start with some basic terms. the one I hear most when it comes to racism in the environment is environmental justice. What does that exactly mean?

Right. So that term has gotten really mainstream in the last few decades. And there's actually an official government definition. Oh. Let me read it to you. Okay. Here goes. The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

I mean, who can argue with that? That sounds really nice and actually pretty straightforward. It's basically saying that when the government is making decisions about where to build factories or highways or landfills, they have to treat everyone fairly. Same with decisions about how to enforce rules about pollution and other things. Exactly. And treating everyone fairly means taking into account unfair treatment in the past, like the environmental impacts of racism or classism. Yeah, let's talk about that history. What specifically are some of the environmental implications? of racism in this country? Well, where to begin? I mean, this goes back a really long time.

Europeans arrived in North America and basically immediately started exploiting the people and natural resources. You know, it's easy to think about pollution. I do this sometimes as something that came up with the industrial era. But that's not right. You know, European colonizers made rules about where enslaved people and native people could live. and those places were more likely to be polluted or environmentally degraded, you know, often didn't have adequate sewage systems or access to clean water, for example. So that's the foundation. And when industrialization happened, you know, factories, steel mills, power plants, giant farms, that followed the same patterns that had already been established.

Right, by that historical precedent. Exactly. So those big sources of pollution, whether it's a factory or a landfill, were essentially more likely to be built next to. to places where poor people and people of color were living. Right. Is that it? Yeah, exactly. And starting with the larger movement for civil rights, you start to see protests about this in the U.S.

And there are some famous ones. You know, United Farm Workers' demonstrations in the 1960s over pesticide exposure. In the 70s, Native Hawaiians protested the military. They were trying to restore land that had been used for target practice. Revolution comes from the word revolving, turning in and out so that you have something better, better to live with. In the early 80s, there was a giant protest in North Carolina trying to block a toxic waste landfill. That one grabbed national headlines. The protesters were told not to block the trucks.

They're now lying in the streets now, blocking one truck. And one thing that's really important about this whole movement over all these decades for environmental justice is that it's really focused on forcing the government to fix these problems. Because all along the way, the government has created these pollution disparities. They've made discrimination real with laws about housing and zoning. Absolutely. I mean, one example of the government doing this, and we talked about this on the podcast before, is redlining. So devaluing homes in neighborhoods where marginalized communities live.

Yeah, and allowing things like landfills and highways to be built next to those neighborhoods or on top of them in some cases. Another example is what's happened in rural parts of the country. You know, big farms, giant corporate operations. they can release a lot of pollution. And that's especially true of farms that raise livestock, like chickens and pigs. And in a lot of places, those farms have been allowed to set up shop in places where black people live, like Duplin County, North Carolina, for example. This is Devon Hall.

He runs a local environmental health group in Duplin County called Reach. It's an acronym for Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help. And I really wanted to talk to him because he is, been trying to cut down on pollution from hog farms in his area for more than 15 years. And he's kind of a hard guy to get on the phone. Like, he's one of those people who seems to be doing like 10,000 things at once. He's always working. He's always busy. I'm in the grocery store, but I can start talking. We got how to get this done. I'm glad you got on his calendar. He seems like a really busy guy. Yeah, no kidding. So a little background about where Devon lives.

Duplin County is about an hour's drive from the North Carolina coast, and there are so many hogs being raised there that hogs outnumber humans by about 29 to one. That is a lot of hogs, and I imagine they generate a lot of waste. Yes, that is very polite of you. The hogs generate an enormous amount of feces, and microscopic pieces of that feces can get into the air and the water. It makes people's eyes water and their throats burn. Studies have shown that it exacerbates respiratory diseases and kidney disease. and infant mortality. It's nasty. That is not good. Not good at all.

And what's wild is the government has acknowledged all of that for decades. Like hog pollution in North Carolina has been an environmental injustice, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, since at least the mid-2000s, if not earlier. And I know that because in 2007, the EPA gave Devon's group an environmental justice grant to hold meetings between residents and people from hog-producing companies, try to find a way to reduce pollution. And Devon figured, since it was four, federal regulators who gave the grant that the federal government would find a way to crack down on this pollution.

Yeah, it was so many years ago. So how did it all go? Well, that's what I wanted to know. It's why I called him. Well, since there was nothing done. Nothing changed. Devon says today there is still overwhelming pollution in his community from hog farms in 2021. Wow. Even though in 2017, the EPA said that what's happening there violates the Civil Rights Act. This is such a huge problem. And Becky, what went wrong here, really, from Devon's point of view? Like, why hasn't the federal government's attention and money led them to crack down on the pollution here?

You know, Devon feels that one of the big problems is that the people with the power to fix the problem are not listening to the people to the people who are suffering. He feels like employees of the federal government aren't spending enough time in places like his county, are not talking to the people about what's happening enough and are not staying until the pollution problem is fixed. In some cases, you may have communities that's crying out that is not even really formally organized. So they don't have a voice. How do you give a voice to the voice list? How do you give those people a platform divorce their concerns? And then who's going to have a listening here? And how long will you listen to those people that crying out?

Yeah, there must be people like Devon all over the country, who are super tired of the government saying they're going to fix pollution problems and then not following through, not really. Totally. And that's why when the Biden administration signed that new executive order, a lot of people were happy, right? Like he's saying that environmental justice will be at the center of everything the government does. But people were also skeptical. Like, sure, another promise. I'll believe it when I see it. And that's how Devon seems to feel about federal promises in general. So what would you say to someone, like, in the new administration who says, we promise to fix environmental injustices, like if they passed a new law or a rule or something? Just thinking, you know, I actually speak about other words, you know. Don't tell me what you're going to do. Just do it.

Yeah. So in light of all the ways the government has let people down in the past, could they, you know, could they? the Biden administration do anything new or different that administrations in the past haven't tried so far? Yeah, there are some options. The new administration could support a bill that's already been drafted in Congress. And that would give people like Devon Hall more power to sue over pollution. That bill was originally sponsored by Vice President Harris when she was in the Senate. It could have new life now that Democrats control Congress. But the other big thing is money. You know, President Biden is getting ready to spend a huge amount of money on pandemic recovery and climate change, like trillions of dollars

for new infrastructure and housing and job training. If that money focuses on undoing generations of discrimination, it can make a big difference. So a lot of people are watching to see if it gets spent equitably, not equally, but equitably. Yeah, that's an important distinction. What do you mean by that, Becky? What does equitable mean in this context? You know, equitable spending would be spending that acknowledges all this history that we've been talking about, which means more money, more benefits, and more pollution enforcement in places where poor people and people of color live. And the administration has nodded to this idea.

The president promised that 40% of the benefits from investment and things like clean energy would go to disadvantaged communities. But the devil's in the details, you know, will the money for new solar and wind energy, for electric car infrastructure and new housing that can withstand climate-driven disasters like floods and fires, will all of that money benefit people like Devon Hall and his neighbors, or will it end up disproportionately benefiting white people? That is the question. Yeah, that sounds like the ultimate question. And like this administration is a lot of its sleeves to keep you busy over the next few years. Yes. Yeah. Well, Rebecca Herscher, we really appreciate

your reporting and are hopeful to hear you more on Shortwave. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks. This episode was produced by Thomas Liu, edited by Gizal Grayson and fact-checked by Rasha Aireti. I'm Emily Kwong, thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR. We live in a world, a country, and a moment in time where there's so much important news, and it is constantly changing. That's why Up First is here for you. It's NPR's Daily Morning News podcast. In about 10 minutes, you can start your day informed. Listen to Up First on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts.