Why EJ leaders think Harris could be a better ally than Biden

By Jean Chemnick | 10/21/2024 06:23 AM EDT

The vice president’s history as a senator and attorney reveal “where her values lie” on environmental justice, one advocate said.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaks at a church service at New Birth Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, on Sunday.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaks at a church service at New Birth Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, on Sunday. Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Kamala Harris has said little about her climate agenda on the campaign trail — and practically nothing about environmental justice.

But the vice president is getting the benefit of the doubt from environmental justice advocates, who say Harris’ track record shows she is attentive to the needs of communities whose health and welfare have historically been sacrificed to economic development. Their expectation: Harris’ experience as California attorney general and U.S. senator will inform how she approaches federal programs supporting carbon capture and storage (CCS).

“My hope — and I would like to think my assumption — is that a Harris administration would build on the strengths of the Biden-Harris administration in terms of the commitment to environmental justice, public health and civil rights and potentially do some course-correcting in terms of the concessions that have been made through the passage of the [Inflation Reduction Act] to double down on fossil fuel infrastructure, and to fund a whole set of CCS projects,” said Amy Laura Cahn, a climate and environmental justice attorney.

Advertisement

The Biden administration has made carbon capture and removal a key part of its climate agenda. Scientists say such technologies — which trap carbon dioxide from smokestacks or suck it out of the atmosphere — are necessary to decarbonize certain industries and limit global warming.

But environmental justice advocates say overburdened communities shouldn’t have to host carbon dioxide pipelines and injection wells for a nascent industry. That has put EJ groups sometimes at odds with the Biden administration, which is working to distribute the $12 billion from the 2021 infrastructure law for CCS and direct air capture (DAC) projects. The 2022 climate law also boosted the industry by expanding valuable tax credits for permanently storing CO2.

Peggy Shepard, executive director of the New York-based WE Act for Environmental Justice, is a co-chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which has been highly critical of the Biden administration’s support for industrial carbon management. She said she is hopeful that Harris would prioritize helping communities historically burdened by industrial pollution.

But Shepard also said she doesn’t expect a potential Harris administration to represent a U-turn on environmental justice and carbon management policies. Harris is, after all, a member of the Biden administration.

“I think the current administration, like many others, weighs the benefits and the challenges between the constituencies that they are subject to,” she said. “Sometimes community considerations are uppermost, and other times they’re not.”

The Harris campaign did not respond to calls for comment on this story. But on the campaign trail the vice president has tried to thread the needle on equity — acknowledging the lasting mark racism has left on the health and wealth of Black and brown communities while defending against inflammatory and misleading attacks from Republicans that she advocates for racial preferences in public policy.

“I am running to be a president for all Americans,” she told radio host Charlamagne Tha God on his podcast last week. “That being said, I do have clear eyes about the disparities that exist and the context in which they exist, meaning history.”

Harris’ legislative history holds some clues about her approach to environmental justice. In 2020, she was the lead Senate sponsor of the “Environmental Justice For All Act,” which would allow some communities to legally challenge federally funded projects.

The bill was first introduced in the House by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who was then chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, and then-Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.). It was the product of a lengthy consultation process with dozens of community activists and environmental justice leaders from across the country

“We look at that as an example of where her values lie,” said Angelo Logan, senior director of environmental justice at the Los Angeles-based Liberty Hill Foundation. “It would be obvious to me that the ‘Environmental Justice for All Act’ and all the elements within that would basically be the blueprint for her environmental justice agenda. And that EJ advocates across the country would hold her accountable to that and push her and persuade her to continue to move on those elements from an administrative position.”

Logan was part of the original working group that co-wrote the bill. While Grijalva and McEachin were involved in that process, Harris was not, Logan said. Participants in the process said that Ike Irby, Harris’ climate adviser, attended some meetings.

The bill never made it into law but has been reintroduced in subsequent congresses and is now named for McEachin, who died in 2022.

Taking on ‘very complex’ cases

Cahn said Harris’ involvement in the bill signals she has an in-depth understanding of the inadequacy of legal protections for neighborhoods that worry a history of racist policies will resign them to a future as default dumping grounds for industrial pollution. The bill would allow such communities to challenge a federally funded project’s permit in court if they believe the project would harm them.

“This Act gives them a really strong tool to protect their communities from the impact of that development by allowing those people to go into court to allege the harms that they think will result from that development,” said Chandra Taylor-Sawyer, who heads the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Environmental Justice Initiative.

Under current law, which is itself undergoing legal challenge, these so-called disparate impact cases are adjudicated by civil rights offices within federal agencies. Communities have filed such cases — which are brought under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — for everything from highway projects to pipelines.

The result is usually a negotiated settlement between the federal agency and the federal grant recipient involved. Agencies can withhold funds, but they more commonly negotiate for some accommodations for the impacted community, Taylor-Sawyer said.

The ability to challenge permits in court — and potentially recover fees if the court agrees that discrimination has occurred — makes it more likely that an under-resourced community will find a lawyer to help them build their case, she said. And it would be a powerful arrow in the quiver for any minority community seeking to prevent carbon pipelines or CO2 sequestration sites from being sited nearby.

In an email, Grijalva said that that Harris was a natural choice to sponsor the bill because of her track record in California.

In 2011, Harris, then the attorney general of California, took the somewhat unusual step of directing the California Department of Justice to intervene in a lawsuit against Riverside County. The department argued that the county hadn’t adequately weighed the environmental and public health impacts of a massive warehouse project planned for a majority-Hispanic community already suffering from high levels of diesel pollution.

The settlement two years later required the city of Jurupa Valley and project developers to install air filtration systems in the homes of residents, beef up local air monitoring and take other steps to mitigate the health impacts of traffic pollution.

“The cases that she intervened on are very complex,” said Logan. “They’re not cases that very many people in those positions would take on, because you have to have a really strong understanding of the kind of the cornerstones of environmental racism, which have to do with race and class and who bears the burden from and who is benefiting from the projects.”

He said Harris’ performance in California led him to believe that if Harris wins the presidency, her administration wouldn’t back carbon capture pipelines or projects that posed a danger to the public.

Grijalva, now the House Natural Resources Committee ranking member, said he hoped a potential Harris administration would promulgate federal standards to ensure agencies account for the cumulative impacts of proposed actions, including how it would interact with other pollution sources or environmental stressors in a community.

That could build, he said, on the the Biden administration’s April 2021 executive order on environmental justice. The order incorporated several provisions of the “Environmental Justice for All Act,” including a directive to agencies to conduct a fuller accounting of the possible “disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects” of their proposed actions.

“Signing ‘EJ For All’ into law is the ultimate assurance for a safer, healthier future for all Americans, no matter your ZIP code, but strong executive action can help lay a sturdy foundation,” Grijalva said.