Thread: EPA Chief: CO2 Regulations Are About ‘Justice’ For ‘Communities Of Color’

EPA Chief: CO2 Regulations Are About ‘Justice’ For ‘Communities Of Color’

2:20 PM 08/27/2014
Michael Bastasch

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed global warming regulations aren’t just about stemming global temperature rises — according to agency’s chief, they are also about “justice” for “communities of color.”

“Carbon pollution standards are an issue of justice,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a teleconference call with environmental activists. “If we want to protect communities of color, we need to protect them from climate change.”

McCarthy is referring to the EPA’s proposed rule that would limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. The agency says the rule will not only help fight global warming, but will also improve public health as coal-fired power plants are shuttered. McCarthy, however, put special emphasis on how the rule would reduce asthma rates, which affect African-American children.

“Asthma disproportionately affects African-American kids,” McCarthy added. “In just the first year these standards go into effect, we’ll avoid up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks — and those numbers go up from there.”

“These standards are also doing more than to just address public health. By the time these standards are fully in place in 2030, the average household will also save $8 a month on electricity and create thousands of jobs that can’t be shipped overseas,” McCarthy said.

The teleconference was hosted by the environmental group Green For All. The group bills itself as an outreach organization seeking to educate “communities of color” about fighting global warming. But Green For All also describes itself as “radical enough to push a deeply justice-based agenda.”

“Green For All acknowledges the need to disrupt the current economy, because we understand that our current economy was based upon human trafficking, the exploitation of labor, and violent racism,” according to the group’s website. “We are safe enough to be invited into spaces where power-building groups are not, and radical enough to push a deeply justice-based agenda in those spaces. We are radical enough to partner with grassroots organizations when other national groups are turned away, and enough of an ally to offer resources and support in those spaces.”

“As a black woman who suffers from asthma, I know first-hand how climate change can affect communities of color,” said Nikki Silvestri, Green For All’s executive director. “We are more susceptible to extreme weather, storms and heat-related deaths. But, I also know that we want climate action now.”

On the call, McCarthy and Green For All activists asked attendees to file regulatory comments in the support of the EPA’s carbon dioxide rule.

The rule has been heavily supported by environmental groups, who have also been using global warming as a way to extend their activist base into minority communities. The group 350.org recently published a piece trying to connect the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri to global warming.

“It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the climate crisis,” writes Deirdre Smith, strategic partnership coordinator for the environmental group 350.org.

“To me, the connection between militarized state violence, racism, and climate change was common-sense and intuitive,” she said.
But not everyone in the African-American community has gotten behind the EPA’s proposed power plant regulations.

“African-American businesses, entrepreneurs and workers need to better understand this rule because the potential impact may hit them more directly, and more severely, than any other group,” wrote Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.

“Higher energy costs could be devastating to small businesses, for which energy costs are often the highest, or one of the highest, operating expenses,” Alford wrote. “Thousands of jobs by definition will be eliminated by this rule, but the same certainty does not exist in the promise of creating new jobs.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/27/ep...#ixzz3CD0U39jZ

EPA’s real agenda: empire, control, and inverted justice for poor and minority families

EPA’s phony “environmental justice” caper

By Paul Driessen September 8, 2014 | Comments| Print friendly | 7

When it comes to energy, climate change, justice and transparency, the Obama Administration and its Environmental Protection Agency want it every possible way. Their only consistency is their double standards and their determination to slash hydrocarbon use, ensure that electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket,” expand federal government command and control, and “fundamentally transform” America.

The president was thus eager to give away Seal Team secrets in bragging about “he” got Osama bin Laden. But in sharp contrast, there has been no transparency on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal – or the data and analyses that supposedly support Environmental Protection Agency claims that “dangerous manmade climate change” is “not just a future threat; it is happening right now.”
That rhetoric made it sound like EPA’s Clean Power Plan was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, in July EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy made it clear that her initiative “is not about pollution control.” Rather, it is an “investment strategy” designed to spur renewable energy.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) opined that the agency does not have “explicit statutory authority” to steer investments toward “green” energy. Perhaps so, McCarthy replied, but her actions are legal under the Clean Air Act and within the agency’s ever broadening purview – as are EPA’s attempts to expand its mission and oversight authority by emphasizing “sustainable development” and “environmental justice.”
The ironies abound. Wind, solar and ethanol power were intended to address “imminent oil and gas depletion” that ended with the hydraulic fracturing revolution, and prevent “global warming” that ended some 18 years ago. Now “investment” in these “alternative” energy technologies primarily involves greenback dollars taken from hard-working taxpayers and delivered to crony corporatists and campaign contributors who want to earn fat profits from climate scares, renewable energy mandates and subsidies.

A 2010 report suggested that EPA should begin to examine how it might “encourage the development of sustainable communities, biodiversity protection, clean energy, environmentally sustainable economic development and climate change.” Talk about an open-ended invitation to control our lives. A few weeks ago, EPA proclaimed “environmental justice” as yet another new cause celebre. The agency claims low-income groups are “disproportionately affected” by airborne pollution, and therefore it must tighten air quality standards yet again. The results will likely be a perverse opposite of true justice.
The agency’s own Urban Air Toxics report chronicles a 66% reduction in benzene levels, 84% in outdoor airborne lead, 84% in mercury from coal-fueled power plants, and huge reductions in particulates (soot). “But we know our work is not done yet,” McCarthy said. “At the core of EPA’s mission is the pursuit of environmental justice – striving for clean air, water and healthy land for every American; and we are committed to reducing remaining pollution, especially in low-income neighborhoods.”
Most air quality and health experts say America’s air is completely safe. That’s why EPA pays its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the American Lung Association millions of dollars a year to say otherwise. It’s why the EPA, CASAC and ALA refuse to discuss the $353 billion in annual regulatory compliance costs that EPA alone imposes on U.S. businesses and families (out of a total federal regulatory bill of $1.9 trillion), according to Competitive Enterprise Institute studies.
Those costs mean too many people lose their jobs. Their hopes, dreams, pride and work ethic are replaced by despair and dependency. If they can find new work, they are forced to work multiple jobs, commute longer distances, and spend greater portions of their incomes on gasoline and electricity. They suffer greater sleep deprivation, stress, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse, and poorer nutrition and medical care. More people have strokes and heart attacks; more die prematurely.
EPA’s new 54.5-mile-per-gallon standards mean cars are lighter and less safe in accidents. That means more people suffer severe injuries or get killed. Minority and other poor families are especially at risk.
Every one of these impacts is also a matter of environmental justice. But EPA chooses to ignore them.
Moreover, nothing in the law says EPA has a right to declare that it intends to seek “justice” by drawing a line between poor people and other Americans, all of whom have a stake in clean air. McCarthy’s language is more befitting a rabble-rouser than an agency administrator who is supposed make decisions based on science – not on emotions, politics, or racial and class divisiveness.
EPA’s climate and environmental policies appear destined to become even more insane. Just two months after calling climate change “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction” – and amid radical Islamist chaos and conflagrations across the Arab world – on September 3, Secretary of State John Kerry actually said “Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable” to climate change. “Scriptures,” he claimed, make it clear that Americans have a “responsibility” to prevent this calamity.
McCarthy’s environmental justice claims also appear to be based on an ugly premise that undergirds many Obama Administration policies: that low-income people are victims and businesspeople are guilty of doing irreparable harm to their health and communities. (At least business people who are not aligned with Obama and don’t support liberal/Democrat agendas and candidates are guilty.)
Such sentiments pit low-income and working-class Americans against businesses. They are a divisive throwback to the 99% versus 1% protests. They ignore the fact that Mr. Kerry, climate politics bankroller Tom Steyer, and President Obama and his fundraiser dinner companions are all part of the 0.1 percent.
These sentiments also ignore the fact that businesspeople create jobs, give workers opportunities to earn a living for themselves and their families, and develop the employment and life skills to successfully climb the socio-economic ladder. Any company that violates environmental, health, safety, tax and other laws is penalized civilly or criminally – whereas all too often the regulators themselves escape any accountability or liability for accidental, incompetent and even deliberate actions that hurt their fellow citizens.
Ms. McCarthy’s statements also reflect the lengths to which EPA will go to continue expanding its reach and grow its bureaucracy. The agency cannot admit that it has nearly won the battle against dirty air, because thousands of government regulators could lose their jobs. (Never mind the millions of Americans who lose their jobs because of EPA regulators and regulations.) To protect its legions of workers, justify its massive taxpayer-provided budget, and expand it many times over, EPA continues to move the goal posts, by invoking environmental justice, climate change and sustainability – for which there can never be objective goals and achievements, but only political considerations and subjective “feelings.”
Apparently Ms. McCarthy embraces the ideology that ignores the benefits of affordable energy and of a robust economy that creates jobs and opportunities. In her view, government controls are paramount, even when they stifle self-reliance, creativity and entrepreneurship, destroy jobs, harm human health and welfare, and cast low-income Americans as perpetual victims.
As Congress of Racial Equality national chairman Roy Innis emphasizes in his book, Energy Keepers / Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle: access to abundant, reliable, affordable energy is essential for individuals, families and communities that want to improve their lives and living standards.
Jason Riley puts it just as forcefully in his new book, Please Stop Helping Us: How liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. Blacks must “develop the habits and attitudes that other groups had to develop” to improve their lives, he writes. The real secret to rolling back black unemployment and poverty is to change a culture that has allowed too many black children to grow up without the benefit of a father in the home, and that scorns black intellectual achievement as “acting white.”
Environmental protection should never be an “us vs. them” mentality. Such attitudes divide us, rather than bringing us together to improve our nation and world for everyone’s benefit. Ms. McCarthy should base environmental policy on sound science – and check her phony justice rhetoric at the door.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/65865

CFACT

When the Obama administration says the government must take control of American energy production in the name of "climate justice," WATCH OUT!
Share the facts at CFACT.org: http://www.cfact.org/?p=23148
Are we not supposed to remember that phony talk of justice is a standard tactic in the Left's playbook?
... 'EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said her new “Clean Power Plan” isn’t really about pollution control. It’s an “investment strategy,” to encourage renewables by making fossil fuel use increasingly expensive or legally impossible, and justifying more taxpayer billions to subsidize wind, solar and biofuel energy.
Now the EPA is redefining its goals yet again. “At the core of EPA’s mission,” Ms. McCarthy recently said, “is the pursuit of environmental justice – striving for clean air, water and healthy land for every American,” by “reducing remaining pollution, especially in low-income neighborhoods.”
The concept is vintage Obama Administration: Deliberately vague, infinitely malleable, heavily race-based, and decided by executive fiat. Equally problematical, the EPA’s own policies and programs undermine these supposed “fairness” and “justice” objectives. It’s an invitation for more EPA money, personnel, power, and control.'




Phony “environmental justice” at EPA
September 24, 2014 by Paul Driessen, 0 Comments Tweet Tweet Secretary of State John Kerry recently called climate change “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” The Environmental Protection Agency says it is...
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Phony “environmental justice” at EPA

The agency’s programs will actually wreak injustice on poor and minority families



September 24, 2014 by Paul Driessen, 1 Comment

Secretary of State John Kerry recently called climate change “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” The Environmental Protection Agency says it is “happening right now.”

Based on these and other dubious claims, the EPA issued rules shutting down hundreds of coal-fired power plants and preventing new ones from being built. Then it said the regulations will bring “ancillary” health benefits from general air pollution reductions, beyond the nearly 90% reduction in unhealthy U.S. emissions since 1970, even as coal-based electricity more than doubled.
Next, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said her new “Clean Power Plan” isn’t really about pollution control. It’s an “investment strategy,” to encourage renewables by making fossil fuel use increasingly expensive or legally impossible, and justifying more taxpayer billions to subsidize wind, solar and biofuel energy.
Now the EPA is redefining its goals yet again. “At the core of EPA’s mission,” Ms. McCarthy recently said, “is the pursuit of environmental justice – striving for clean air, water and healthy land for every American,” by “reducing remaining pollution, especially in low-income neighborhoods.”
The concept is vintage Obama Administration: Deliberately vague, infinitely malleable, heavily race-based, and decided by executive fiat. Equally problematical, the EPA’s own policies and programs undermine these supposed “fairness” and “justice” objectives. It’s an invitation for more EPA money, personnel, power, and control.
However, the agency is adept at ignoring and hiding its harmful impacts on American citizens, especially the very people the EPA claims to be helping.
Overall median household income increased barely $180 between 2012 and 2013, and was still $5,000 below the 1999 level, Census Bureau data show. Perhaps worse, since Mr. Obama took office, median incomes for much of his voter base have plummeted: nearly $3,000 for black households, $2,500 for Hispanic families, and $1,500 for households headed by single mothers. Unemployment rates for these groups are likewise much higher than for the general population.A primary reason is the federal government’s $1.9 trillion in annual regulatory compliance costs for U.S. businesses and families – of which the EPA alone is responsible for $353 billion – the Competitive Enterprise Institute calculates.
Ms. McCarthy is nevertheless determined to advance President Obama’s agenda of slashing fossil fuel use, making electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket,” and “fundamentally transforming” the United States. That translates into fewer job opportunities and steadily higher prices for electricity, motor fuels and everything we make, grow, ship, eat, drive and do.
Minority, elderly, and other low-income groups are far less “disproportionately affected” by air pollution than they are by having to spend disproportionate amounts of their declining incomes on heating, air conditioning, food and other basic necessities, whose costs continue to rise, largely because of the EPA and other federal anti-energy, anti-growth policies.
Our air is already safe. The EPA’s own Urban Air Toxics report chronicles reductions of 66% in benzene levels, 84% in airborne lead, 84% in mercury from coal-fueled power plants, and over 90% in particulates (soot). So the EPA pays its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the American Lung Association millions of dollars a year to say otherwise.
“Investing” in “Green” energy technologies requires taking greenback dollars from hard-working taxpayers – and delivering them to crony corporatists and campaign contributors who seek hefty profits from climate scares and renewable mandates. Wind and solar electricity are inherently unreliable and cost many times more than power generated with coal, natural gas, or nuclear.
Soaring energy and regulatory costs mean people lose their jobs. Dependency replaces hopes, dreams, pride, and work ethics. If they can find new positions, motivated people must often work multiple lower paying jobs, commute longer distances, and spend greater portions of their incomes on transportation.
More people suffer greater sleep deprivation, stress, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse, and poorer nutrition and medical care. More have strokes and heart attacks. More die prematurely.
EPA’s climate-based 54.5-mile-per-gallon standards mean cars are lighter and less safe in accidents. More people suffer severe injuries or get killed.

Minority and other poor families are at greatest risk, because they cannot afford vehicles with advanced safety features.
As Congress of Racial Equality national chairman Roy Innis emphasizes, access to abundant, reliable, affordable energy is the key to improving lives, living standards, and civil rights.
These are all matters of social and environmental justice. EPA simply ignores them.
EPA-style justice also reflects an ugly premise that undergirds many Obama Administration policies: that low-income people are victims of business people who threaten their health and communities – if they don’t support liberal/Democrat agendas and candidates.
These sentiments are a divisive throwback to Occupy Wall Street. They ignore the fact that Mr. Kerry, climate alarmist political bankroller Tom Steyer, President Obama, and their crony-capitalist fundraiser dinner companions are all part of the 0.1%.
Despite often oppressive taxes and regulations, businesspeople create jobs, give workers opportunities to earn livings and support their families, and develop the employment and life skills to successfully climb the socio-economic ladder.
Those who violate environmental, health, safety, tax, and other laws are penalized – whereas all too often the regulatory overseers escape any accountability for accidental, incompetent, and even deliberate actions that hurt their fellow citizens.
Ms. McCarthy should base environmental policy on sound science – and check her phony justice rhetoric at the door.

http://www.cfact.org/2014/09/24/phon...ustice-at-epa/