By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2024-11-14 21:59:54 | Updated at 2024-11-23 01:06:21
1 week ago
President Trump’s second administration has the chance to make fast changes when it comes into office Jan. 20.
Some of the Biden administration’s most pernicious policies were enacted, not through Congress, but via executive orders and other non-legislative maneuvers.
That means the Trump team can reverse many of those policies using the same procedures.
It should do so immediately upon taking office.
Biden’s environmental-justice agenda belongs high on the list.
In his first week in office, Biden signed Executive Order 14008, directing agencies to “secure environmental justice and spur economic opportunity” for “marginalized” communities.
Trump should issue a new EO rolling back those environmental-justice requirements and dismantling EJ departments and policies within the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies.
Such a move will be met with outrage: Like many progressive policies, “environmental justice” sounds superficially appealing. Who could be against giving minorities and the poor equal protection from pollution?
But much of Biden’s EJ agenda is a Trojan horse designed to smuggle unpopular progressive social goals into broadly supported environmental programs.
Here’s how it works: Biden’s executive order established a guideline, the Justice40 Initiative, which requires 40% of the “overall benefits” of most environmental and infrastructure programs “flow to disadvantaged communities.”
Under this vague mandate, a “benefit” might be defined, not as lower emissions, but as forcing contractors to hire expensive unionized labor, requiring solar energy projects to be built in poor neighborhoods (which raises costs) or issuing grants to community activist groups.
The mandate diverted resources away from traditional environmental priorities — such as reducing air and water pollution and lowering greenhouse gas emissions — toward amorphous social goals.
In many cases, EJ policies made problems worse. By making infrastructure more expensive, EJ rules ensure that each federal dollar spent on a project yields a smaller environmental improvement, without appreciably boosting the economies of poor communities.
Nonetheless, Biden’s EJ mandates demand that hundreds of billions in federal spending must be allocated according to these confusing, counterproductive metrics.
They also entangle virtually every federal agency in skeins of red tape.
Even the Defense Department and other agencies devoted to national security must “embed environmental justice in all aspects of their work.”
Instead of focusing on their core missions, federal officials are now tasked with “stakeholder consultation,” collecting data on how programs benefit disadvantaged communities and filing lengthy reports to the White House Office of Environmental Justice — sand in the wheels of government.
Ironically, some of the worst delays are hitting the very clean-energy projects the administration claims are vital to saving the planet.
For example, in 2021 Congress allocated $7.5 billion to build electric-vehicle charging stations; Biden promised 500,000 chargers would be built by 2030.
But as his administration comes to an end, only a handful of stations have been built.
Biden’s cumbersome environmental-justice rules — which require “meaningful public involvement” and can expose builders to lawsuits — are a key obstacle.
Biden’s EJ program also funnels billions in block grants to loosely supervised activist groups, some of whom dabble in radical politics.
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, tasks the EPA with distributing $3 billion in grant money for grassroots organizations — “a slush fund for far-left organizations,” congressional critics correctly charged.
To help distribute that bounty, the EPA turned to educational institutions and nonprofits like the Berkeley, Calif.-based Climate Justice Alliance, a consortium of far-left groups that espouses a radical ideology.
Concern for the environment requires allegiance to the full suite of left-wing causes, CJA claims: “The path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine,” its website asserts.
Some grants flow to groups primarily dedicated to political action.
For example, last year the EPA awarded $13 million to the New Orleans-based Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and other groups fighting against the petrochemical industry in the Gulf region.
If citizen groups want to protest job-producing factories in their region, that’s their right.
But why should taxpayers be subsidizing activism against projects that federal regulators have already approved?
Unlike Biden’s Justice40 rules, the programs showering tax dollars on NGOs and activist groups were approved by Congress in bills including the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.
Trump can’t unwind these with the stroke of a pen.
But the administration can demand radical transparency and proctologically intrusive audits.
The public must know where every dollar has gone.
And the EPA administrators doling out the funds should be replaced on Day 1.
The new administration should also disband the White House Office of Environmental Justice and allow federal agencies to focus again on their core missions.
For its part, Congress will need to begin the painful work of trimming back these monstrously bloated programs.
Trump and his team should expect intense pushback as it starts dismantling the EJ juggernaut.
The media will portray each step as a betrayal of environmental values.
But his administration should be clear on this point: the environmental-justice paradigm — which buries green initiatives in bureaucracy and diverts money to left-wing activism — is the real enemy of environmental progress.
James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Adapted from City Journal.
