Focus
Biden administration prioritizes environmental justice funding without mentioning race, hoping to fend off legal challenge
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. But it notably leaves out race as a factor to determine whether a community is eligible for the initiative, prompting some pushback from environmental justice advocates who say the point of Justice40 is to address environmental racism.
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News
U.S. judge strikes down Biden climate damage cost estimate
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 the Western District of Louisiana sided with Republican attorneys general from energy producing states who said the action threatened to drive up energy costs while decreasing 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 bars the Biden administration from using the higher cost estimate, which puts a dollar value on damages caused by every additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.
California sues East Oakland metal foundry over cancer-causing toxins emissions
East Bay Times – February 15
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against a pipe fitting factory in East Oakland, accusing it of illegally emitting carcinogenic toxins into the surrounding community. The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, accuses the AB&I Foundry, a subsidiary of McWane, Inc., of failing to provide state-required warnings of the release of hexavalent chromium, a toxin that can cause lung and other forms of cancer. This is the second time in the last three months that McWane has been the target of a lawsuit over emissions from the AB&I Foundry. The two lawsuits come after the Bay Area Air Quality Management District released a draft Health Risk Assessment last year that said the cancer risk to workers at the AB&I Foundry was four times what the air district considers acceptable. And for residents in the neighborhood, the district said the cancer risk was twice as high as what it considers acceptable.
Biden administration finalizing a waiver for California to set its own vehicle emissions standards
CNN – February 16
The Biden administration is finalizing a waiver to allow California to adopt its own, stricter vehicle emission standards, with a final decision expected soon, according to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spokesperson. In 2019, the Trump administration rolled back California's decades-old waiver that allowed it to set its own air pollution standards. The Biden administration announced last year that it would start the process of putting the waiver back in place. California Air Resources Board member Daniel Sperling has said the state won't use its waiver to implement stronger standards for cars and light trucks than the Biden EPA's recently-adopted standards, but will likely apply stricter standards to heavy duty trucks.
California judge restores federal protection for gray wolves in 44 states
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 the 2020 decision was based only on recovered gray wolf populations in the Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains, and did not take into account threats to the species in other portions of the U.S. The decision does not include Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Congress delisted Montana and Idaho in 2011, and Wyoming in 2017, according to the Associated Press. New Mexico's wolves never lost federal protection.
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