Focus
CNN – February 18
CNN – February 18
The Biden administration announced today that 40% of federal funds for climate and clean energy initiatives would be prioritized for underserved communities – a key pillar of President Joe Biden’s environmental justice agenda, known as “Justice40.” About 29% of the U.S. population is eligible for those prioritized funds. The White House Council on Environmental Quality’s methodology accounts for income, health and climate risks, and a community’s proximity to polluting industries or wastewater. It notably excludes race from the criteria for determining whether a community can be eligible for the initiative. This is causing some backlash from environmental justice advocates, who claim Justice40 is about addressing environmental racism.
News
Associated Press – February 11
A federal judge last Friday issued an injunction barring the Biden administration’s attempt to put greater emphasis on potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for industries that generate large quantities of carbon emissions, including for oil and gas drilling, automobile manufacturing, and other industries. U.S. District Judge James Cain of Louisiana sided in favor of Republican attorneys general from energy producing States who claimed that the action would drive up energy prices and decrease state revenues from energy production. President Joe Biden on his first day in office restored the climate cost estimate (known as the “social cost of carbon”) to about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions after the Trump administration had reduced the figure to about $7 or less per ton. The injunction prevents the Biden Administration from using the higher-cost estimate. This estimates the dollar value of the damage caused by every additional ton greenhouse gas emitted into this atmosphere.
East Bay Times – February 15
Rob Bonta, California’s Attorney General, filed Wednesday a lawsuit against East Oakland’s pipe fitting factory. The suit alleges that the factory illegally released carcinogenic chemicals into the community. The lawsuit was filed in Alameda County Superior Court. It accuses McWane, Inc.’s subsidiary, the AB&I Foundry, of failing to warn the state about the release of hexavalent chromium, a toxic substance that can cause lung cancer and other forms of cancer. McWane has been sued twice in the last three month for emissions from the AB&I Foundry. These lawsuits follow a draft Health Risk Assessment by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District last year, which found that the AB&I Foundry’s cancer risk was four times greater than what the district considers acceptable. Residents in the area were also warned by the district that the cancer risk was twice the acceptable level.
CNN – February 16
According to an Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson, the Biden administration is currently finalizing a waiver that will allow California to adopt its own stricter vehicle emission standards. A final decision is expected to be made soon. In 2019, the Trump administration reversed California’s decades old waiver that allowed it set its own air pollution standards. Last year, the Biden administration announced that it would begin the process of restoring the waiver. Daniel Sperling, a member of the California Air Resources Board, stated that the state will not use its waiver in order to establish stronger standards for cars or light trucks than the recently adopted standards by the Biden EPA. However, it will likely apply stricter standards for heavy duty trucks.
CBS News – February 11
Senior District Judge Jeffrey S. White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled last week that gray wolves should be protected by the Endangered Species Act, undoing the Trump administration’s action to remove them from the list of protected species. The court found that 2020 was based on only gray wolf populations recovered in the Great Lakes, Northern Rocky Mountains, and did no consideration of threats to the species in other parts of the U.S. The decision does NOT include Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. According to the, Congress delisted Montana in 2011 and Idaho in 2017. Wyoming was removed from the list in 2017. Associated Press. New Mexico’s wolves have never lost federal protection.
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