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President Joe Biden (left) greets John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, on Jan. 27 as he arrives at the White House to speak on climate change. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
In February, Beverly Wright linked the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era with energy development. In March, President Joe Biden appointed Wright to his White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Wright, the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, is joined on the council by Jade Begay of the Indigenous Environmental Network, who co-wrote a 2018 op-ed in EcoWatch contending that climate change is “colonialism” and “cultural genocide.”
The key idea is this, and it’s already being actively explored: Take Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which requires that all federally funded programs that impact human health or the environment do not discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin and integrate it into the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This, according to policy experts, would begin to “dismantle the environmental inequities rooted in systemic racism that communities face.”
NEPA was signed into law in 1970 to protect environments from pollution and contamination, and to give communities more input over major decisions about siting things like highways and publicly owned facilities likely to have major impacts on quality of life. Fifty years after becoming law, the act is due for a much-needed civil rights update, which can happen without Congressional approval.
Key Takeaways
The PFAS litigation landscape – already involving PFAS manufacturers and purchasers of PFAS-containing fluoropolymers and firefighting films – is in the process of expanding, which is putting new companies and new industries in the spotlight, a process that may be accelerated by regulatory developments at the federal level.
Public and regulatory attention to the ubiquitous PFAS is also growing in the United States, as reflected by the Biden Administration’s avowed commitment to regulate and study these chemical substances.
Companies whose operations and products use, or historically used, any PFAS would be well-advised to consider strategies to evaluate, address, and mitigate legal risks and potential litigation.
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