President Trump’s recently proposed budget continues to slash spending for the federal government’s environmental justice programs. Eliminating such wasteful spending would be good news for taxpayers — and even better news for the low-income and minority communities that are the alleged beneficiaries of the environmental justice agenda.
There is out of touch, there is laughably out of touch, and then there is environmental justice. Communities struggling with crime, drugs, failing schools, few job opportunities, and broken families are getting government-funded solar panels, bike paths, and electric vehicle charging stations — not to mention an invading army of bureaucrats and others foisting their green wish list on people who never asked for any of it.
The fact that environmental fads are less popular in poor and minority communities is not an injustice that needs to be rectified with multibillion-dollar federal programs. If anything, it is a perfectly rational response from those who face real problems in their daily lives and can’t be bothered with fashionable causes.
Even worse than what the environmental justice crusaders want to bring into the community is what they want to keep out — jobs, and especially good-paying, blue-collar jobs. The 20th-century migration of poor southern Blacks to the industrial North is a success story worth retelling. There, millions escaped poverty by taking factory jobs that served as a gateway to the middle class and a better life for themselves and their children. That same opportunity awaits millions more today and is a major reason the administration has emphasized policies to expand domestic manufacturing. It can’t happen if the environmental justice crowd gets its way and blocks these industrial projects in the communities that need them most.
Environmental justice bureaucrats and lawyers treat manufacturing facilities as public enemy No. 1. Any company considering locating anywhere near any community of color would likely face a federally financed legal onslaught predicated on hype about pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
This is where the environmental justice agenda has it backward. Fearmongering about industrial pollution disproportionately harming these communities is built on weak evidence, to put it mildly. In truth, any manufacturing facility must comply with the most stringent air and water pollution requirements anywhere in the world, and such emissions have declined dramatically over the last several decades. The real problem is poverty, not pollution, and the solution is good-paying jobs — the jobs often blocked by the environmental justice bureaucracy.
Environmental justice is far from the first policy to harm the people it claims to help. Pulling the plug on as much of this as possible may well be the most important part of Trump’s community development agenda.
This article originally appeared at DC Journal
Image Fred Murphy / Creative Commons
Ideological idiots pave the road to hell to virtue signal their complete lack of understanding of how things work in the real world. Clueless zealots shouldn’t be making public policy.
Socialism has never been in the interests of the workers. It was always about pillaging and killing the owners of any business and seizing it for the State.
for the state and those that run the state.
Why does “Animal Farm” come to mind?
(The original book or even the old animated version rather than the most recent “PC’d” version of it.)
No, they are not “ideological idiots” as you say. With all my respect, please don’t be naïve. Those who have piggybacked “useful idiots” are even worse than Marxists – they are Trotskyists. They have simply adapted the terminology to the current situation. Therefore they use “Just Transition to a Low-carbon Economy” instead of “World Revolution”, and “Global Environmental/Climate Crisis” – instead of “General Crisis of Capitalism”. The “Proletariat” is now being replaced by “indigenous peoples”, “local communities”, “vulnerable groups” etc. who are supposed to be the firewood for this revolution. They only want an absolute power and they are ready to destroy the world on the way to the power. The do not really care about the environment/climate let alone “useful idiots”. In the essence, nothing has changed since a century ago.
Globalist subjugation of nation states has been the goal of oligarchs for over a century. The useful idiots that do their bidding were brainwashed by ideology hench the “ideological idiots” label.. I’m not naïve. The swindlers who run this planet are behind the psyops brainwashing indoctrinating so called intellectuals pushing climate justice stupidity.
Sure you are not naïve. Happy to be on the same page with you. Thanks a lot.
There is nothing more fearful than ignorance in action.
The abolition of Low Emission Zones (ZFE) has just been struck down in France by the Constitutional Council. We are therefore returning to the segregation of people who have no choice but to use their old cars to get to city centres. It is clearly urgent to reverse these rare common-sense decisions…
(I should point out that this is happening in France, just in case.)
I used the slash spending link to go to Whitehouse.gov, where the “environmental justice” cuts are enumerated. I was surprised there were so many in so many federal organizations. I hindsight, I should not have been. Obama and Biden had twelve years to imbed this sort of stuff, and Trump 45 was otherwise preoccupied. A freed Trump 47 is accomplishing much on many fronts—killing the Green agenda is but one of many.
I’m amazed that government mandated compliance to woke idiocy has been so completely reversed in such a short time. Entrenched policy makers are normally able to maintain their power to screw things up.
Reversed as policy but a lot will simply be hidden. Yes Minister it is all gone (fingers crossed behind back).
“I’m amazed that government mandated compliance to woke idiocy has been so completely reversed in such a short time”
Unfortunately not so true..
The woke agenda is still well and truly entrenched down here in Australia.
Tickle v Giggle – Wikipedia
“killing the Green agenda is but one of many.”
Unfortunately, it will live on in zombie form for a long long time, to be resurrected by every socialist/marxist government when they get elected.
If BBC, CNN, The Guardian etc. stop brain-washing the audience about a “climate crisis” every single day the indoctrinated aggressively-obedient majority will forget about this “global challenge” within few days. Once this happens the Green Agenda will be sidelined but, as you rightly say, will be kept alive “in zombie form” in the toolkit of neo-marxists. The one-million-bucks question is what next are they going to offer to BBC, CNN, The Guardian etc. to sell?
And he is making Washington DC beautiful again in his spare moments.
Very nice.
Some are speaking out about the CC scam …….
Try different URL ………..
https://floppingaces.net/most-wanted/gutfeld-nails-it-the-climate-scam-was-never-about-the-planet-always-about-the-money/
Thanks 🙂
Link saved to post to every climate troll that pokes their little head out of their little troll hole.
The people crying loudest for environmental justice are really lobbying for more subsidies to support unreliable alternate energies and mandates for overpriced and equally unreliable green products. In reality, their demands are just for opportunities to make a fast buck over the false climate change crisis and all the hardships it’s supposedly causing.
Right. They are simply after two things – the first one is money and the second one is money again. And they do not even hide this. Please look what Global Environment Outlook 7 report, the UN’s “environmental manifesto”, reads: “Transformation of the economic and financial systems would include delivering the estimated US$6-7 trillion per year of investment needed to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2050”. Thank you.
In old fashioned terms, the provision of food, clothing and shelter has long been the dominant social target. The newcomer of “environment protection” and synonyms is a recent special interest pressure group invention that is not really all that important because so many people already see it as a way to live, not an issue that needs big action.
There is a case that environmental justice is little more than a creature from the advertising sector. It is not a match for food, clothing and shelter. Put your minds and monies on these 3 important ones.
Geoff S
You should never forget that the Left side of politics now hates the working classes.
Lefties hate everyone, especially themselves
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/2ea5f320187440298c7b2d1746a2290f
The above link shows just how many billions of dollars were extracted from the budgets of Washington state residents that utilize fuel sources which generate carbon dioxide as a result of being burnt. These dollars, which would have otherwise stayed with families, farmers, truckers, and businesses have been sucked from thier collective pockets into a government system that an unelected panel then chooses where gift these funds, in the name of ‘overburdened communities’ (see map). It is a wealth redistribution scheme that operates behind the scenes, using public funding for pet projects of dubious good for public who’ve payed for them. What a major rip off of Washington taxpayers.
Clicked on a dot that described “Appropriation Title 2023-25 Community Solar Resilience Hubs”. Yeah.
I too want Climate Justice now. The ones pushing the climate scam need to pay for their crimes against humanity.