Biden’s FERC ignores racial justice
Almost two years ago, I implored federal energy regulators to start taking environmental justice considerations seriously, but since then the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission continues approving fossil fuel projects with little to no regard for systemic injustices.
Indeed, in early March when FERC unanimously approved four new gas projects, acting chair Willie Phillips explained his goal is to get methane gas projects like these built. The commission offers little more than pleasantries with regard to justice and equity as it races to approve more polluting facilities in Black, Indigenous, Latino and other communities of color across the country. Nothing has changed. Our communities are still being sacrificed.
Last year at this time, FERC proposed rules and guidance requiring the commission to consider new gas projects’ effects on climate change and environmental justice.
The effort barely lasted a month, as FERC caved to the fossil fuel industry and withdrew both. FERC’s quick retreat and silence since then speak volumes about its commitment to justice.
In its latest move,
FERC hosted an Environmental Justice Roundtable last week “to better incorporate environmental justice and equity considerations into its decisions.” But the fact that the fossil fuel industry had almost as many participants as frontline communities told me all I needed to know about FERC’s environmental justice charade.
FERC named the American Petroleum Institute and Cheniere Energy (one of the largest producers of methane gas in the world) to the roundtable. The fossil fuel industry has caused most of the environmental injustices in our country. True environmental justice would mean holding the industry accountable for treating our communities as “sacrifice zones.”
FERC refuses to acknowledge that our country is segregated and so is the fossil fuel industry’s bootprint. Race and class are tied to fossil fuel pollution, unequal protection and vulnerability. Reducing environmental, health, economic and racial disparities must be a priority for all of us.
Instead FERC’s failings over the last year and, indeed, its approach to the
roundtable itself, reveal that environmental justice is not embedded in FERC’s decisionmaking. It is an afterthought or worse, it is a performance aimed at giving the appearance that FERC is rectifying its decadeslong exacerbation of systemic racism and economic disenfranchisement.
Communities of color and low-income communities have long felt the adverse impacts of the fossil fuel industry and the climate crisis it caused, but most of those communities didn’t have a seat at the environmental justice roundtable. By way of example, roughly 20 new or expanded gas export terminals are slated to come online in communities across the Gulf Coast within the next decade.
Representatives from just two of those communities were invited to participate in the environmental justice roundtable, so it warrants learning what those two — the sister cities of Lake Charles, La., and Port Aurthur — reveal about FERC’s environmental justice commitment. Here are the kinds of concerns they shared that are typical of communities across the Gulf Coast:
In Lake Charles, where roughly half of the 80,000 residents are Black, there is a large number of fossil fuel and petrochemical companies, including seven of Louisiana’s worst polluters. The gas industry wants to build four new gas export terminals within miles of one another. And, true to form, late last year FERC commissioners unanimously approved one of those gas export terminals despite the adverse climate and environmental justice impacts.
Across the border, Port Arthur is the poorest city in Texas. The highest rate of cancer risk caused by industrial air pollution in Port Arthur is 190 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s acceptable risk. The cancer mortality rate for Black people in the surrounding county is about 40 percent higher than the state rate, according to a 2017 report of the Environmental Integrity Project. Undaunted, the fossil fuel industry plans to make Port Arthur one of the nation’s largest gas export hubs in the country. Just last month, a gas company announced it had reached a final investment decision on one of the gas export terminals FERC approved.
Based on long-standing principles of environmental justice, FERC should have taken a dramatically different approach to the roundtable. Dozens of community leaders, climate and environmental justice advocates, and frontline organizers applied to participate and share their perspectives about FERC’s opportunities to address environmental racism and systemic energy inequity, but they largely were rejected and ignored in favor of government, industry and wealthier interests.
If FERC was doing what was fair, just and equitable, we wouldn’t need the charade of an environmental justice roundtable. If FERC was taking environmental justice seriously, it would stop approving export gas projects immediately, once and for all.
Simply put, we’re tired of FERC’s performance of environmental justice. In the enduring words of Maya Angelou: “You don’t have to think about doing the right thing. If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.” Federal energy regulators are making decisions about the future of communities. Justice demands that they listen directly to, and learn from, those communities.
As part of the roundtable, members of the public and communities can provide written comments to FERC until May 15 to share their perspectives on how federal energy regulators should be incorporating environmental justice and equity into energy permitting processes.
Robert D. Bullard is the founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University. He received his Ph.D. degree in sociology from Iowa State University.