Air Date: February 21, 2025

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EPA Freezes "Green Bank"


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The Trump EPA is trying to cancel $20 billion dollars of funding in what’s known as the “Green Bank”, which provides loans for local clean energy, energy efficiency upgrades and more. Without providing evidence, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin accused the program of being rife with fraud and waste. Jillian Blanchard, Vice President of Climate Change and Environmental Justice at Lawyers for Good Government, joins Hosts Steve Curwood and Jenni Doering to discuss the impacts to nonprofits and private contractors who are unable to access their funds. (12:58)

Climate Disruption to Lose Trillions


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As costly climate disasters multiply around the planet, some financial experts are raising alarms that proceeding with business as usual without sharply reducing emissions could cut global GDP in half as soon as 2070. Dr. Tim Lenton is a Professor at the University of Exeter and a co-author of the 2025 Planetary Solvency Report, and he joins Host Jenni Doering to talk about how human civilization can steer towards a more stable future. (11:37)

The Bog in Winter / Don Lyman


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Just under the ice at Pine Hole Bog north of Boston, diverse forms of life from dragonfly nymphs to turtles and frogs await the spring thaw. Living on Earth’s Don Lyman shares a reflection from a winter walk through this beloved place. (03:43)

Civil Rights and Environmental Justice


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For Black History Month, civil rights and EJ leader Rev. Benjamin Chavis joins Host Steve Curwood to connect the dots between the civil rights and environmental justice movements. He reflects on the first EJ battle, how he coined the term “environmental racism,” and the path forward for the EJ movement during a Trump administration that refuses to acknowledge environmental injustice. (17:47)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

250221 Transcript

HOSTS: Steve Curwood, Jenni Doering

GUESTS: Jillian Blanchard, Ben Chavis, Tim Lenton

REPORTERS: Don Lyman

[THEME]

CURWOOD: From PRX – this is Living On Earth.

[THEME]

CURWOOD: I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

In this Black History Month, civil rights and environmental justice are under attack, but organizers say all is not lost.

CHAVIS: We got to mend our broken hearts. We have to mend our broken spirits. We just can't go down in the dumps and fall down on someone who wants to be king of America. What we have to do is to mobilize and organize anew.

CURWOOD: Also, the diverse forms of life in a frozen New England bog lie dormant, for now.

LYMAN: The dragonflies that zip above the pond in summer and autumn are nowhere to be seen. Their nymphs are likely crawling along the bottom, waiting to metamorphose and take flight when the weather warms and the pond thaws.

CURWOOD: That and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

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[NEWSBREAK MUSIC: Boards Of Canada “Zoetrope” from “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country” (Warp Records 2000)]

[THEME]

EPA Freezes "Green Bank"

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

The Trump administration has brought a halt to major environmental initiatives established by the Biden administration, in part by attempting to freeze billions of dollars in grants and loans. Now the Trump EPA is targeting $20 billion dollars of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund or the “Green Bank” which provides investments for projects across the country.

CURWOOD: Without providing evidence, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin accused the program of being rife with fraud and waste. Joining us now is Jillian Blanchard, Vice President of Climate Change and Environmental Justice at Lawyers for Good Government. Welcome back to Living on Earth!

BLANCHARD: Thank you so much, Steve, it's nice to be here.

DOERING: So Jillian, we're looking to talk about this $20 billion in funding that the EPA is attempting to claw back. But first, what's the legal and political context of this?

BLANCHARD: The legal and political context of the $20 billion is that it's part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is part of the Inflation Reduction Act. So there's a lot of different factors at play. Number one, Congress approved the Inflation Reduction Act, which means the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is law. Number two, contracts were put in place very, very carefully by Treasury and by EPA and by many, many lawyers to prevent any kind of fraud, waste or abuse. And number three, the Inflation Reduction Act funding has been ordered by a court to flow during the pendency of a litigation. So there is an enforcement order out right now, under a temporary restraining order by Judge McConnell, ordering the government to allow all funding under the Inflation Reduction Act to flow. So any efforts to pause that federal funding is problematic, not only because the law requires it to flow, but because a judge has ordered it to flow, and because there is no current evidence substantiating any claims that the government may be making about fraud or waste related to that $20 billion.

CURWOOD: So now, as I understand it, the government has already deposited this money at Citibank in what's called a Green Bank, I think 14 billion for a Clean Investment Fund, and another 6 billion for communities. So that money belongs to those communities? Belongs to the government? Is being held up from these nonprofits? What's going on?

BLANCHARD: That’s right. So the federal government does this all the time with Treasury. They create what's called federal agent agreements where they have, like a third party agent, especially when it's important funding that they want to make sure has no fraud or waste. And they set up these third party agreements, typically with banks or financial agents. Here it was Citibank, and after a very, very rigorous process of selecting the eight most eligible nonprofits to be able to send this money down to everyday American people, to communities as you mentioned, to invest in American people and invest in new energy sources, that money was then transferred to Citibank to hold basically as a fiduciary. So they have a high duty of care not to release those funds unless they strictly meet the requirements of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. So Citibank has accepted that responsibility on behalf of the eight nonprofits, and then they are able to dole out that money when and if it's required, under the very clear terms of the legally binding agreements between the federal government and these eight nonprofits. So the idea that this can now just be frozen is not only legally challengeable, but it challenges the whole point of creating the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And the other thing that I should say is there are very clear processes that EPA and Treasury baked into the third party arrangements that if there's any substantial evidence of fraud in any way or abuse, they can submit what's called a Notice of Exclusive Control by showing that evidence, and then they can pull back the control. Because, of course, they wanted extra controls to make sure, even though they were very careful, if anything did happen, they had a very clear due process for pulling those funds back. That process is not being followed right now.

DOERING: And by the way, Jillian, what is this money going towards and what's at stake here? What are some of the programs that have been awarded, and what would they plan to use it for?

BLANCHARD: So these funds have been awarded to eight different nonprofits who rigorously met with communities, what are called CDFIs, which are local community lending institutions to figure out how best to get these dollars invested into communities that need it the most. The whole point was two main goals that this administration says they care deeply about. Number one, reducing energy costs for low income people, everyday Americans, by investing in new clean technologies to reduce the burden of energy costs, which is a significant cost in everyday households. And number two, investment. Creating market forces, leveraging market forces, to invest in these communities, not as a dole out, literally. In fact, that was one of the things that people pushed back on the Biden administration for. They wanted this money to be granted, but it's not. It's actually given out in the form of investment, of loans that require certain amounts of energy savings and cost savings in order to be created. So it's two very critical things that this administration says they really want to support. Market forces like investment in industry and local businesses and reducing energy costs and increasing energy dominance. So it is very hypocritical for this administration to be attacking this program now, because everyday Americans on the ground, communities, as an example, that were going to get a loan to build a Climate Resilience Project that reduces greenhouse gasses and it reduces energy costs and it sets up a place in the community for people to go when a devastating storm hits. Those types of projects are at risk and will not be funded because of this.

CURWOOD: So these are loans, ultimately. So what is the claim that the EPA is making to say, oh, government shouldn't even make these loans? What is their reasoning for trying to block the disbursement of this investment resource.

BLANCHARD: Well, it's a moving target. Steve. First they claimed that they had the authority, then Judge McConnell said that they don't actually have that authority - well, at least while the litigation is pending, because it causes too much harm on the ground, as we're seeing. But now they're claiming unsubstantiated, meritless claims of fraud, waste and abuse. There was a short video, I think that's now been taken down, posted by Lee Zeldin, bragging about identifying gold bars that were being tossed off the Titanic. And those claims? Completely unsubstantiated. In fact, the EPA employee that has been widely sent around, there's a video of him talking, he didn't even work on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program at all. And that is the basis, as I understand it, although you'd have to ask the government, that's the basis, as I understand it, for their unsubstantiated claims of fraud and waste. I have not seen any other shred or scintilla of evidence to identify any fraud or waste beyond that one video, that is irrelevant to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program.

DOERING: There’s also a claim from Administrator Zeldin that the Biden administration rushed these funds through. How accurate is that?

BLANCHARD: With respect to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds, it's not accurate at all. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds had a statutory deadline written into the Inflation Reduction Act, that the funds needed to be awarded by September, and it went through a very, very, very rigorous process of being reviewed and approved by many different lawyers, by in-house counsel, by outside counsel, by Treasury, by the EPA, by Citibank, who does these types of financial arrangements all the time in trust with very, very clear and rigorous requirements. All of that was done to make sure that this particular money would be very, very protected against any kind of fraud, waste or abuse. So the suggestion that it was this rush job at the very final days the Biden administration is not correct.

CURWOOD: So Jillian, as I understand it, if there is no cause found when the EPA is trying to take back these funds, the government might just run the risk of litigation for breaching these green bank contracts. What could happen then?

BLANCHARD: That’s right. At that point, each of the nonprofits, the eight of them in the National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, those two buckets with 20 billion. Each one of those nonprofits will have a claim against the federal government, a very valid claim, that they have breached their obligation to pay out their part of the bargain. These are legally obligated contracts that are now being breached on a baseless claim. To the extent that there is no cause, there is no fraud, there is no waste or abuse, these nonprofits will have a very clear claim against the federal government, which again, will cost the federal government money, will cost taxpayers money, and will cost these communities key months, key moments, key dollars in reducing their energy burdens and bringing in new technology and industry into the market.

DOERING: Sounds like a mess, Jillian.

BLANCHARD: It is a mess. And I think that's part of the point, is a shock and awe campaign to shotgun approach attack everything that the Biden administration attempted to do.

DOERING: So if you wouldn't mind peering into your crystal ball, what do you think the chances are that these grantees will actually get the money that they've been promised?

BLANCHARD: If we're just talking about the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, I do think they have very strong legal claims, but unfortunately, the way this federal government is operating, it will require them to bring their own individual lawsuits, which will cost them and their communities millions of dollars. In the end, I do believe that justice would prevail, but it will waste months, potentially years, and different programs will just die out. Nonprofits that were relying on these loans to build these projects will go under. They don't have financial buffers to wait it out for litigation, and I do believe that's what this administration is banking on, that the American people will suffer enough that they'll just stop trying.

DOERING: By the way. Jillian, how might gumming up this funding hurt the private sector?

BLANCHARD: Oh, it's causing immense impacts to the private sector. The funding that was coming through these nonprofits goes to many, many different private contractors. In fact, there's so many private contractors that are hurting right now, not just because of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction funding issues, but the stop-start that has happened over the past three weeks on billions of dollars of grant funding. There are contractors who have been laid off. There are contractors who did not get their invoices paid, there are contractors who can't have equipment paid for. It is devastating the private market. In fact, many of them are closing up shop as a result of this, because even if they win on the merits of these cases, and they have very, very strong legal arguments, they just can't bear the financial burden of waiting for these things to play out in the courts.

CURWOOD: Jillian, give us the bottom line here. To what extent are we seeing a battle between the authority of the White House versus the authority of the courts and Congress, for that matter.

BLANCHARD: It’s a really important moment in history, really. This executive seems to believe that they have and should have more power than both Congress and the courts. With respect to Congress, they have essentially acted as if they control the power of the purse, but very clearly written into the Constitution is the separation of powers that grants Congress and Congress alone the power of making funding decisions. The executive's only job is to enforce that law. They are the enforcers. They are not the arbiters of whether or not the law should be enforced. And on the court side, this executive is also suggesting that they're the ones who have the ability to interpret federal agency law, and the courts have said very clearly, all the way back to Marbury v. Madison, that the court system, the judiciary, Article Three of the Constitution, is the only one that has the right and the authority under the Constitution to interpret the law. Not the executive. So everything this executive is doing, whether it's executive orders that expand far beyond their executive authority, or whether it's attempts to freeze federal funding that's in legally obligated funds that have been approved by Congress is this executive's effort to push past their legally authorized executive authority under the Constitution, and that should concern us all.

CURWOOD: Jillian Blanchard is the Vice President of Climate Change and Environmental Justice at Lawyers for Good Government. Jillian, thank you so much for joining us today.

DOERING: Thank you so much. Jillian.

BLANCHARD: Absolutely, thank you for having me.

Related links:
- E&E News by POLITICO | “Zeldin’s $20B Take-Back Bid Risks Plunging EPA Into Legal Peril”
- Inside Climate News | “Climate and Environmental Justice Programs Stalled by Trump Freeze, Despite Court Orders”

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[MUSIC: Cory Wong, “Meditation” on Elevator Music for an Elevated Mood]

CURWOOD: Just ahead, climate disruption could hurt global GDP by as much as 50% towards the end of the century if the world doesn’t curb emissions. Keep listening to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Cory Wong, “Meditation” on Elevator Music for an Elevated Mood]

Climate Disruption to Lose Trillions

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

2024 was officially the world’s warmest year since records began in 1850. In fact, the average global temperature rise last year was just shy of 1.5 degrees Celsius since then, the target set by the Paris climate agreement. As costly disasters multiply around the planet, some financial experts are raising alarms about what even more climate disruption could mean for the global economy decades in the future. Economic modeling by the University of Exeter and the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the UK, projects that proceeding with business as usual without sharply reducing emissions could cut global GDP in half as soon as 2070. Dr. Tim Lenton is a Professor at the University of Exeter and a co-author of the 2025 Planetary Solvency Report. Dr. Lenton, welcome to Living on Earth!

LENTON: Thank you, Jenni, nice to join you.

DOERING: One of the really interesting or attention grabbing things about your report is that it really drills down and looks at the numbers here in terms of potential hit to global GDP. You find that there's an up to 50% loss in global GDP between 2070 and 2090, I mean, that's just a staggering number. Why is that figure so high, and what is at risk economically?

LENTON: Well, the figure is so high because I'm not the only climate scientist who would tell you that if we go to three degrees centigrade of warming later this century, which is roughly where we're heading on current policies, or, if we're unlucky, and the climate is more sensitive, and that turns out to be four degrees C, or even more, well, we see such fundamental changes in the habitability of large areas of the planet that we find it hard not to conclude that there could be some kind of major social disruption breakdown, and thus an economic breakdown. Perhaps you could think of it also like a 50/50 chance of losing everything or having a major social collapse, because you've got to be careful here. I mean, economists, some of them, have already responded saying, oh, 50% reduction is not so bad if we're going to be three or seven times richer later this century. But what we're really highlighting is a major loss of economy and societies and productive capability.

DOERING: And by the way, why was it important for you and your colleagues to focus on GDP?

LENTON: Well, actually, we would rather not, I suppose I would rather not frame the results in terms of GDP, because GDP is well known to be a really flawed measure of human progress, shall we say, or utility or well being. But given that everybody, or culture in general, seems to be speaking this narrow economic language, we felt it was perhaps in order to get the message across, important to stress impacts on GDP, even realizing how flawed a measure it is. But one can get a sense of the the risks to capital and to productivity just by observing today there's large scale withdrawal of insurance from real estate, and real estate is what props up the economy, as we all observed in 2007-8, when there was a financial crisis because of real estate values and expectations were mispriced.

DOERING: Yeah, I mean, and thinking back to 2007 and 2008 that recession that followed, that was a pretty bad time for the world economy, and we might be heading for much worse, it sounds like you're saying,

LENTON: Yeah, we're saying, you can certainly see scenarios where things could be a lot worse. So yeah, we're looking, we're really trying to look here at existential, you might say, risks to the viability of life or economy as we know it.

DOERING: So of course, we're talking about potentially huge economic toll... what are the climate risks that we run as we continue to change the climate?

LENTON: Well, we're probably all now aware that there was a big uptick in climate extreme events, and we've all just seen some good candidate examples at LA wildfires and last year Valencia flooding. But in the broader sense, we're risking crossing tipping points in the climate, which would mean that we trigger a self-propelling, often rapid and hard to reverse change in some major bits of the climate that are doing good things for us at the moment but will be causing trouble if they tip and that means, like the loss of major ice sheets leading to much larger, faster and longer term sea level rise. It means tipping the loss of the Amazon rainforest and replacing it with some kind of degraded forest or savanna. And then there's tipping points in the circulation of the ocean or the atmosphere, or the two of them coupled together. For example, if we have a big tipping point in the Atlantic Ocean's great overturning circulation. We calculated the knock on consequences for production of major crops like wheat and maize would be like a 50% reduction in the viable area for growing those stable crops worldwide. So a huge food and water security crisis in other words.

DOERING: Wow, just staggering impacts. What's the gap between the findings of your report and other commonly used predictions of climate risk?

LENTON: There's a large gap from some of the scenarios or predictions that have been used. The early ones, for example, said that only activities in the economy that were happening outdoors could be impacted by climate change, like agriculture and maybe a bit of opencast mining, and that was only a small percentage of the total economy, something like 10% and the other 80 something or 90% was immune. But we know that that's nonsense, because we all have to get to work for example, we also all got to eat, and somebody's got to grow your food. So you have to think in a more systemic way clearly.

DOERING: So if you're right about the scale of the risk here and the potential for such widespread economic pain, why is the world seemingly in denial?

LENTON: Some are and some aren't, I think would be a fair appraisal not everyone's in denial, and in fact, public surveys across the world typically show that at least three quarters of people think not only is climate change real and due to human activities, but that their government should be doing something more decisive about it. So I think there's a silent majority who absolutely aren't in denial. But why do we struggle with the issue in general? Because we've tended to perceive, well, climate change, firstly, is due to invisible gasses that we can't see. A lot of its impacts unfold over long ish time horizons. So even if they're really big, big risks, they're not like a saber toothed cat running towards us in the Savannah, which is where our brains evolve to deal with risk, and that's the brain we've brought into today's world with all its complex problems of our own making. And then there's enormous vested political and economic interests in the status quo, and one should never underestimate their power.

DOERING: I mean, yeah, one observing the political landscape right now, whether you look just in the United States or outside of it, might say that, you know, things aren't looking super hopeful in terms of tackling this crisis.

LENTON: Indeed, I'd have to agree with you there, but I would remind listeners that there are other forces at work in the world, like the fact that in the energy system, the cheapest form of power worldwide now is renewable energy. And in fact, it makes economic sense in over half the world to close existing fossil fuel power stations and replace them with new renewables and battery storage. The more we deploy solar panels or wind turbines or battery storage, the cheaper it gets as well as the better it gets. And that's a really powerful reinforcing feedback that I would argue is so strong now that we might have passed a positive tipping point where the transformation to a renewable energy economy is to some degree unstoppable, although there's still battles to be won there. I mean electric vehicles, there's a backlash against those where there really shouldn't be. You know, they're close to the tipping point of being the obvious, cheaper and better option, but they're not quite there yet, certainly not in the US market. But these we're getting towards what I call positive tipping points in major sectors the economy, major activities.

DOERING: How should we as individuals prepare and what should we know about how our day to day lives may change under these scenarios that you're looking at?

LENTON: Well, it's a great question, because I have to answer it myself, with my own kids, you know, and family. I think the first thing to say is, there are these climate risks escalating, and we're not sure we're going to avoid them, but we're stronger together, that we all have got some agency to make the changes that are going to be good for us in lots of ways. They're going to bring all sorts of co-benefits, like clean air from electrifying transport. At the same time, we can be part of social movement to make those changes, and if you like, democratically, try and force our governments to act more decisively, if we choose. I could give a raft of examples of how we've all got some agency to tackle the underlying drivers of climate change at the same time, we've got to admit that we're already seeing nasty damages, and we're not going to be able to avoid all of those. So then it's what agency have we got to cope with nasty events that unfold, and in social resilience, well, that's often built on trust. Building trust in our communities and our societies is a crucial part of building resilience and adaptability, the capability to respond to a changing world.

DOERING: You said you have kids. I don't presume to know how old you are, but I imagine that when we're into the 2070s 2090s, you'd be certainly getting up there in age, but your kids would still be around. What's the world you hope that they would be living in in that later part of this century?

LENTON: Yeah so for reference, my two are 14 and 15, nearly turning 16, so they certainly will be around then. And I'm doing everything in my power to communicate the possibility for us all to get involved and have the agency and exert the agency to make the change, the transformation, that means they'll be living in a future world that whilst it might be somewhere between one and a half and two degrees warmer than the pre industrial level, as we technically call it, and there will be some climate challenges we they will have made the transformation to clean energy and to stopping the destruction of nature, and to be in a situation where we're regrowing or regenerating nature whilst enjoying like the cheapest electricity and ever, we've electrified most of our activities. So we've got a more efficient economy, which is almost certainly a more productive one, with better jobs and better real economy. So I think about that a lot, because it's the actions and the decisions now and through to 2050 that make all of the difference in which of those worlds my kids are going to end up in.

DOERING: Dr Tim Lenton is Professor and Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and a co author on the planetary solvency report, thank you so much, Dr Lenton.

LENTON: Thanks, Jenni.

Related links:
- Read the Planetary Solvency Report
- The Guardian | “Global Economy Could Face 50% Loss in GDP Between 2070 and 2090 From Climate Shocks, Say Actuaries”
- Inside Climate News | “Peering Into a Bleak, ‘Uninsurable Future’”
- The Guardian | “Record-Breaking Growth in Renewable Energy in US Threatened by Trump”

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[MUSIC: Lance Allen, Judson Hurd, “Imagine” on Imagine, guitarlancer]

The Bog in Winter

CURWOOD: The days may be getting longer but winter still has its grip firmly on us here in the Northern Hemisphere. Living on Earth’s Don Lyman shares this reflection from a winter walk through a beloved bog.

LYMAN: It’s a bitterly cold December day — 19 degrees, with a wind chill in the single digits. The woods of the Charles W. Ward Reservation north of Boston are blanketed with a few inches of snow from a recent storm.

I follow a short icy trail from the parking lot through the woods to the Pine Hole Bog boardwalk. The lush green growth of summer is gone. The sedges, rushes, and grasses that grow straight and tall near the bog’s entrance, when I bring my Merrimack College biology students here in September, are bent and brown. A dozen or so snowcapped cattails stand beside the boardwalk like silent sentinels.

The cranberries and tiny carnivorous sundew plants that line the edges of the boardwalk just past the cattails are hidden beneath the snow. Here and there, an occasional tuft of emerald sphagnum moss pokes through. Most of the bog’s many shrubs -- swamp azalea, highbush blueberry, and pepperbush -- are bare. The only shrub that defies the winter is sheep laurel. Its three-leaved whorls are still dark green, but they droop in the bitter cold.

The numerous puddles around the boardwalk are frozen solid. I stand on one to test the ice. Not even the slightest sound of cracking. The pond at the end of the boardwalk is frozen too. The dragonflies that zip above the pond in summer and autumn are nowhere to be seen. Their nymphs are likely crawling along the bottom, waiting to metamorphose and take flight when the weather warms and the pond thaws. The turtles and frogs my students delight in seeing on our late summer excursions are somewhere under the ice as well, their metabolism slowed to a trickle, just enough to keep them alive until the spring thaw reinvigorates them.

The late afternoon light is fading rapidly on this day after the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. My toes and fingertips are numb, and my nose is running from the cold as I turn and head back toward my car.

I pause briefly before I leave the bog and think of my friend, colleague, and mentor, Larry Kelts, who invited me to join the biology faculty at Merrimack almost three decades ago. He loved this place, and taught me much about the bog, and the plants and animals that inhabit it. Larry was a popular biology professor who took several generations of students on field excursions to this bog as well as to far flung places including Africa, the Brazilian Amazon, and Australia. Someone once said that a teacher affects eternity because he or she never knows where their influence stops. Larry passed away recently, but his lessons and love of biology and nature endure in all those whose lives he touched.

I’ll be back next September, God willing, along with my students, when the sun is warm, and the bog is filled with life once again. And I’ll remember who taught me about this beautiful place, and so much more, and gave me the opportunity to follow in his footsteps, and perhaps to leave a few footsteps of my own.

CURWOOD: That’s Living on Earth’s Don Lyman.

Related links:
- Learn more about the Charles W. Ward Reservation
- Obituary for Larry Kelts

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[MUSIC: The Tallest Man On Earth, “Rivers” Single, Gravitation]

DOERING: Coming up – a veteran of the civil rights movement says this is no time to give up the fight for environmental justice. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from Friends of Smeagull the Seagull and Smeagull’s Guide to Wildlife. It’s all about the wildlife right next door to you! That’s Smeagull, S - M - E - A - G - U - L - L, SmeagullGuide.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Cory Wong, “Airplane Mode” on Elevator Music for an Elevated Mood]

Civil Rights and Environmental Justice

DOERING: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Jenni Doering.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.

Today for Black History month we are meeting a living legend. Back in 1981, civil rights leader the Rev Ben Chavis coined the phrase environmental racism after he was arrested for protesting North Carolina’s decision to dump tons of toxic waste in poor, Black Warren County. Six weeks of demonstrations failed to stop the toxic dump, but the publicity sparked a movement that’s now known as environmental justice. North Carolina’s governor Jim Hunt eventually apologized, but it took until 2004 before the PCBs in Warren County were finally cleaned up. And environmental racism in America is still a problem. Older black people die three times as often as whites from pollution related diseases, Puerto Ricans have nearly double the asthma incidence and 75 percent of the water for Hopi Native Americans contains arsenic. The Biden administration made environmental justice a key part of EPA policy, but the Trump Administration is cutting EJ budgets and its very mention. EJ pioneer Ben Chavis joins us now from Baltimore, welcome to Living on Earth!

CHAVIS: Well, thank you very much. I am pleased to be on the program with you. I tell people all the time, the best way to celebrate black history is to make some more history. And certainly, after looking at the Super Bowl, we know that Black history is American history. You know, there are a lot of people thought that Black history is not a part of America, or America or America is not a part of Black history, but from the earliest days of the Revolutionary War, African Americans have participated in trying to gain and strive toward a more perfect union in what's now known as a democracy as fragile as it is.

CURWOOD: So let's spin the clock back to 1981. So in 1981 you found yourself in rural Warren County, North Carolina, not doing a voting rights protest, but something else. What were you doing?

CHAVIS: We were protesting the unjust, unfair and what we believe was illegal dumping of tons of PCB contaminated soil. PCB is polychlorinated biphenyls, very cancer causing carcinogenic substance. Warren County was the poorest county of the 100 counties in North Carolina, but also Warren County was the most predominately black county in North Carolina, agricultural, rural, and the water aquifer level is very shallow. What I mean is most of people got the water in one kind from well water. Did not have public source of water. So that's the last place where you want to dig a hole and dump 10s of carcinogenic, cancer causing material. This is 1981-1982 and, of course, there was debate. Reagan is president, and you had a head of the EPA at that time who didn't believe in environmental justice, who didn't believe in environmental racism. And quite frankly, my background was civil rights. So this is the first time that the Civil Rights Movement intersected in a formal way with the environmental movement.

CURWOOD: By the way, PCBs, which are dangerous chemicals, are just one set of chemical bonds away from dioxin, which we know is really bad for us. Yes, so what happened when you started marching to protest the dumping of this really toxic stuff in this black community.

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CHAVIS: Well, ironically, firsthand, I got calls from some of my civil rights colleagues saying, Ben, this is an environmental matter. It's not civil rights. I said, Oh no, it is civil rights. And of course, some of the people in the environmental movement said, Well, this is a black protest. Has nothing to do with environment. So because 500 people, including myself, were arrested in Warren County in 1981-1982 it brought national attention to this landfill in Warren County. And as a result of the national attention, we begin to hear from the southwest part of the United States, from Mississippi, Alabama, Flint, Michigan, all over the country. People say, you know, we have environmental problems here, Cancer Alley in Louisiana, very famous place, but nobody was paying attention. Everybody saw all these spots as isolated incidents. After Warren County, people began to connect the dots, and that's why we say Warren County is sort of the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.

CURWOOD: How fair is it to say you coined the term environmental racism?

CHAVIS: Well, it's very fair, because it's true. One night in the Warren County Jail, it just came upon me. You know, this is, it's racism, but it's, it's environmental racism. And I got a little sheet of paper and jotted out a definition: environmental racism is racial discrimination and environmental policy making and environmental enforcement and environmental remediation, but it's also the exclusion of people of color in the decision-making around environmental justice, environmental hazards and environmental policy making and close now, today, in 2025, there's a connection between environmental justice and climate justice. Some are similar aspects of both connect.

CURWOOD: Tell me, looking back over these last 40 plus years, what were some of the lessons you felt that you learned from the Warren County struggle?

CHAVIS: So, number one, we learned the importance of grassroots organizing. Number two, we learned that we have to be more definitive in how we define what is the movement of environmental justice. And I'm so pleased that at that the first People of Color Environmental Summit in 1991 in Washington, DC, we established the 17 principles of environmental justice. I teach a course now at Duke University on environmental justice using those 17 principles, which still applies the vision that we had back then, being a multiracial, multilingual,multicultural movement around this issue and those principles. And we really thank the leaders in the Native American community during that time to help us to see the sacredness of the Earth. You know, I'm a preacher, so I gotta quote this Bible verse, The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. That's from the Psalms. So if the earth belongs to the Lord, that means that the Earth does not belong to the government. The Earth does not belong to a petrochemical company. The Earth does not belong to people who want to do things to harm the Earth or to harm the environment, or to harm the planet or to harm the atmosphere. And then the third thing we learn is that each movement has to regenerate itself. Young people, I'm very encouraged by millennials and Generation Z that have a stronger consciousness of the importance of climate and environment over against what it was 40 years ago.

CURWOOD: Where are some communities where you have seen the most flagrant cases of environmental racism?

CHAVIS: While in America, the most flagrant is cancer alley in Louisiana, cancer alley has gone on for decades. That's between Baton Rouge and New Orleans because of the proximity to those companies that emit poisons into the atmosphere, into the water and to the land, and obviously it gets into the people and core. More recently, Flint, Michigan. So the people in Flint, Michigan who have been lead poisoned because of bad lead pipes and poor environmental policy and even the denial of the state of Michigan one point that they had a problem those poor people, and they say, Oh, well, we have fresh water now, yes, but they're going to have to live for the rest of their life with the contamination of their body to lead portion. That's why, in a number of cases, the struggle for environmental justice is a matter of life and death. The struggle for climate justice is a matter of life and death, and there'll be consequences.

CURWOOD: So we're talking about something that began in history back in 1981- 82, but tell me what's going on today? What percentage of African Americans are more likely to live in areas situated near hazardous waste facilities these days?

CHAVIS: Thank you. It's a very good question, and I would like to go to first 1987 where the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial justice. I was the director at that time. We commissioned the first national study to ask that question. It's interesting, when you do research, it's not so much counting numbers; it's what questions do you ask of the numbers. No one had ever asked Blacks or Latinos or Native Americans or Asian Americans or even poor whites disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards. And what we found was that it wasn't poverty, it was race that was the number one factor that determined where all these sites were around the United States, and that's what led to the first People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991. But to answer your question, today, I'm very pleased to tell you that what started as a small rural environmental justice movement in Warren County is now a global movement. It's not only a movement throughout the United States, but the United Nations now cites environmental justice. I know they're dismantling the EPA now, but until recently, the EPA had an official Office of Environmental Justice in the Environmental Protection Agency. So we've done a lot. We've made a progress. We still haven't gotten to where we should be, but we've made a lot of progress over the number of years as a result of Warren County. So today, African Americans are still disproportionately exposed. From our current research, we believe that 20% of all African American families and communities are exposed to environmental hazards.

CURWOOD: And how does that compare to white America.

CHAVIS: White America is less than 2%. So racial discrimination, keep in mind, housing discrimination, racial discrimination, voter discrimination, all these things are connected, and that's why you can't just be focused on one aspect, because the others will come back to bite you. And that's why we have to have a more holistic view of what the movement is about, what the freedom movement is about, what the equal movement is about, and this whole debate now about diversity, equity, inclusion, I think, is a diversion, because the truth of the matter is, there's only one race, and that's the human race. We're all part of one human family, but we we've been so divided, been so pitted upon one another. And this whole thing of white supremacy is also like a cancer that is in desperate need of healing.

CURWOOD: Within the last month or so, we've seen the incoming President of the United States shut down the environmental justice programs at the Environmental Protection Agency. To what extent is that racism, in your view?

CHAVIS: Well, I think it is an example of environmental racism. I think it's an example of climate injustice as well as environmental injustice. And what's going to happen is some of the very people that voted for Trump are also going to suffer as a result of these policies. When you dismantle the CDC, when you dismantle the EPA, when you dismantle even the Department of Education, who is that going to hurt? It's going to hurt the majority of not only American children, young people, but it's also going to put our families and communities in greater jeopardy. I come from a movement perspective. I think these harsh and unjust policies that we're witnessing today is going to cause a groundswell, not just to react, but also to demand that we have to learn from our history. This is Black History Month. What do you mean by that? When you learn from the history, not to repeat the history, you have to learn from it.

CURWOOD: So you're a minister, Yes, Ben Chavis. It was people of faith who really led the Civil Rights Movement. But when I go to a gathering of environmental activists, mostly white ones, yes, I don't hear a whole lot of prayers. Right. To what extent is there a spirituality gap in the environmental movement in this country? Do you think?

CHAVIS: Well, yes, the answer is yes, there is a spirituality gap. Because keep in mind, prior to 1991 the environmental justice movement was not integrated, it was not desegregated. So while we have one of my colleagues Ben Jealous, now over the Sierra Club, I'm just using that as an example. Faith is important. In my view. You have to believe in what you're doing, not just have an intellectual exercise or debate. I think there's a cause of faith that people want to be aligned to what is righteous against what is perceived to be unrighteous, and that's where faith comes in. I call upon the Black church today to renew its front line position in civil rights; to renew its front line position in environmental rights or climate rights. I think some of our churches, I'll speak for the Black churches, have become so prosperity oriented, the sense of commitment to social justice or the social gospel is not as strong as it once was, but I think that can be renewed and revitalized.

CURWOOD: So, it's a personal question, but how tired are you now of fighting this same fight over and over again?

CHAVIS: Good question. Well, you know, I'm 77 years old. I've been involved in civil rights movement since I was 12. And I can say without any fear of contradiction, that I look back over the years and look where we are now, I see enormous progress. I think a lot of times, if we only see our deficits, if we only see our disappointments, if you only see our failures, you won't see our triumphs, our successes, our overcoming. We used to sing we should overcome in the 1960s. We were not overcoming, but we sang that song because we knew one day we will overcome. And so the way I look at I ain't tired. In fact, when I teach this course at Duke, I get rejuvenated seeing young people who have open minds, who are hungry and thirsty for truth. And so that gives me a sense of not only hope, but it gives me a sense of perspective that our world is changing despite all what is going on. There are more people today conscious of the oneness of our humanity than it was 50 or 60 years ago, and for that, that makes me optimistic.

CURWOOD: What's your advice to America at this juncture about the climate and environmental justice emergency, as some would say?

CHAVIS: My famous quote from Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, my favorite quote.

CURWOOD: This is somebody you worked with, by the way. I mean, people should know that you were, you were a kid when you were involved.

CHAVIS: As a teenager, I was the youth coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference my home state of North Carolina. I was 14-15, years old. Put my age up. I was driving before I should have been driving. Had mobility. And I learned a lot from Dr King, from Abernathy, from Andrew Young, from a long list of mentors that I was blessed to have. But Dr King said, “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” So I would say an environmental justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I would say a climate Injustice anywhere is affected climate justice everywhere. So I think that what I've learned in the movement is change is possible to the extent to which people get involved and stay involved and not let their spirit get broken. You asked me earlier about the importance of faith. One of the things I tell young people, and I tell people my age, whatever happens to you in life, there will be disappointments, there will be trials and tribulations, but at the end of the day, never let anyone or anything break your spirit. Having that strong spirit to stand up, to speak out, to organize, to mobilize, is something that is really needed today. A lot of people had their hearts broken because Kamala Harris did not win the election. Well, we got to mend our broken hearts. We have to mend our broken spirits. We just can't go down in the dumps and fall down on someone who wants to be king of America. What we have to do is to mobilize and organize anew. And I believe that the God of our ancestors will be the God of our future, and answer our prayers. But in order to have the prayers answered, you got to pray, you know, you got to have faith. And so that's what keeps me going every day. I work every day, even though I'm 77 and I'm glad to still have the strength and the good health to work and continue to make a contribution.

CURWOOD: Reverend Ben Chavis is still fighting the fight of environmental racism that he helped begin back in Warren County, North Carolina in 1981 thanks so much for taking the time with us today.

CHAVIS: Thank you for the opportunity.

Related links:
- The Washington Post | “I Helped Start the Fight for Environmental Justice Nearly Four Decades Ago. We’re Still Fighting.”
- The Washington Post | “‘This Is Environmental Racism’ How a Protest in a Small North Carolina Farming Town Sparked a National Movement”
- Grist | “The Event that Changed the Environmental Movement Forever”
- More on The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit

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DOERING: Next time on Living on Earth, Marketplace Morning Report host David Brancaccio lost his home in the Los Angeles wildfires this January.

BRANCACCIO: There’s rebuilding houses, but there’s also rebuilding communities. So, we’re starting to see the seeds of a really interesting conversation in which people are coming together and asking the question, what kind of community do we want to be? What were the parts of what we lost that we want to preserve? What community institutions do we want to support? And that is something that I’ve been lecturing on for many decades. It’s called social capital. It’s this resource that is worth real money. And that same conversation, in which people have decided we’re not just going to rebuild, we’re going to talk about what we want to rebuild together, we can do some hardening of infrastructure to try to mitigate the possibilities as this would happen again, and I think that Altadena, California could become a model community that people could look to, look what they did there, look how they saw the existential threat of another fire in the future, and responded with new ways of living.

DOERING: David Brancaccio, next time on Living on Earth.

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