How Can Greens Make Themselves Less White?
By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY A few days after Barack Obama's inauguration, the newly appointed head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, gave an interview to Essence magazine. Ms. Jackson explained that she planned to "elevate the issue" of "environmental justice" during her tenure. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, environmental justice is the sweet spot where the green movement meets the racial grievance industry. As the Essence interviewer put it: "The practice of locating polluting industries in minority communities -- and the consequent health impacts -- is well documented. African Americans are almost 80 percent more likely than White Americans to live in neighborhoods near hazardous industrial pollution sites."
The concept of environmental justice can be traced back to the early '80s, according to Robert Bullard, the director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. He cites a 1982 fight over a landfill in Warren County, N.C. Since then, the movement has blamed industrial plants across the country for skyrocketing asthma rates among inner-city blacks. But Mr. Bullard believes that environmental justice should also include a concern about the lack of public parks in inner cities and high childhood obesity rates among blacks (stemming from fewer supermarkets in their neighborhoods). He refers to those fights as "parks justice" and "food justice." Talk about defining justice down.
Minorities are also particularly victimized by global warming, it is claimed. (The mock headline comes to mind: "Global Warming Destroys Earth: Women and Minorities Hit Hardest.") As Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina told an audience at the National Press Club last July: "It is critical that our community be an integral and active part of the debate because African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change economically, socially and through our health and well-being."
Mr. Clyburn was drawing from a report put out last year by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative. The document has an oddly conspiratorial tone. The authors write that "the six states with the highest African American population are all in the Atlantic hurricane zone"; "African Americans spend thirty percent more of their income on energy than non-Hispanic whites"; "African Americans pay a heavy price and disproportionate share of the cost of wars for oil"; and "African Americans suffer heat death at one hundred and fifty to two hundred percent of the rate for non-Hispanic whites." Ultimately the message is this: The Man has conspired against minorities in so many ways -- and it turns out that destroying the environment is just another one.
But some racial minorities apparently remain unconvinced. An article in the New York Times last week documented how green groups are having trouble attracting black and Hispanic supporters. Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, noted that at a typical Sierra Club meeting -- despite the organization's best efforts -- "the people are mostly white, largely over 40, almost all college educated, whose style is to argue with each other. . . . That may not be a welcoming environment." Other green leaders quoted by the Times bemoaned their failure to draw a more rainbow-colored crowd, faulting themselves for not coming up with better outreach efforts. One diversity consultant complained that the dress code of environmental groups might be putting off minorities. "It's the tyranny of the fleece," he said.
The rueful tone of environmental leaders sounds not unlike that of proponents of gay marriage who -- noting a similar lack of success with minority "outreach" -- keep arguing that if they only frame the debate correctly they will be able to convince blacks and Hispanics that gay marriage is a good idea. If you buy into one element of the liberal agenda, the thinking goes, surely you'll like the rest of it.
But is this true? It may be mere condescension to assume that racial minorities don't understand what's at stake in such matters -- that it is the outreach effort that is failing and not the message itself. It could well be that minorities understand all too well. "Environmentalism doesn't appeal to minorities," says Steven Milloy, the publisher of JunkScience.com, because "it doesn't bring them anything." He explains: "Environmentalists scare companies from building plants where people could use the jobs, and the plants go overseas instead." In the late '90s, for instance, the greens managed to run the Shintech company out of Convent, La., where it had planned to build a chemical plant that would have created more than 150 jobs. Though three-quarters of the black residents near the site wanted the facility, the company eventually backed out, tired of the harassment from the Clinton administration's EPA.
Driving jobs away, particularly in today's economy, is much more harmful to the health of racial minorities than any presumed "environmental" threat. As Mr. Milloy explains: "People who have jobs have health insurance and a higher standard of living." As for what we might call "heat justice": People with jobs also have more air-conditioning units, which can presumably prevent heat-related deaths.
As for the claim about asthma, Mr. Milloy notes that childhood asthma rates have climbed in the past three decades as our air has become considerably cleaner. Moreover, he notes that asthma is not triggered by chemical fumes, but by allergens, which are not produced by industrial plants.
But the greens won't give up. They know that their public relations would improve if their membership wasn't simply rich and white. And maybe the Obama administration has found just the solution to this impasse. As Ms. Jackson explained: "The future economy . . . may well be a green economy. Black people need to . . . realize that the opportunities for jobs are going to be in energy efficiency, in fuel efficiency, in renewable power." Nothing like a stimulus package to get people's priorities in order.
Ms. Riley is the Journal's deputy Taste editor.
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