Climate Break was honored to sit down with Dr. Robert Bullard, often called the father of the environmental justice movement, about how got started in the movement, what environmental justice really means, and his thoughts looking forward. For a transcript, please visit https://climatebreak.org/environmental-racism-with-dr-robert-bullard/
For a transcript, please visit https://climatebreak.org/environmental-racism-with-dr-robert-bullard/
Dr. Robert Bullard: We don't have 40 years. I've been doing this for 40 plus years. We don't have 40 years to get this right. Uh, the urgency of now we'll call for us to address this crisis, this emergency.
I’m Ethan Elkind, and you’re listening to Climate Break. You just heard Dr. Robert Bullard, professor of urban planning and environmental policy and the founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University. Often considered the father of the environmental justice movement, Dr. Bullard currently serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. He sat down with Climate Break to talk about what environmental justice really means, how he got involved in fighting environmental racism through scholarship and his hopes for the future of the movement. Here’s how it all started for him:
Dr. Robert Bullard I was asked to, uh, collect data for a lawsuit that Linda McKeever Bullard had filed, uh, challenging the location of a landfill that was being cited in a predominantly black community in Houston. And so she said that she needed someone to do a study and put the information on a map, as to who lives near these landfills and the income and the race of the people. And I said, you need a sociologist. That's how I got involved. It was accidental. It was not something that I planned.
Dr. Robert Bullard: Well, you know, this was 1979 and it was very laborious and time-consuming gathering the data, finding, uh, the landfills incinerators in the dumps and putting that information on a map and then overlaying. But I had ten students in my research methods class and we did it.
Dr. Robert Bullard: What we found is that five out of five of the city owned land. Six out of eight of the city owned incinerators and three out of the four privately owned landfills were located in predominantly black neighborhoods, even though blacks made up only 25% of the population from the twenties up until 1978.
Dr. Robert Bullard: 82% of all the garbage that was disposed of in Houston during that period of time was being disposed of in a population that only made up 25% of the pocket. And later I discovered this was not just a random isolated incident. What we found is that when you look across the country, um, you find the same pattern, where people of color are getting more than their fair share of locally unwanted land uses, meaning things that other people don't want.
Dr. Robert Bullard: And there's a name for that. It's called environmental racism.
Ethan: But for many people, the concept of environmental racism was a hard pill to swallow.
Dr. Robert Bullard: Environmental justice embraces the principle of that. All, all people and communities have a right to equal protection under our environmental laws. It's no different than equal protection under fair housing or the right to vote or employment, education.
Dr. Robert Bullard: A lot of people say, I don't understand what environmental justice is. Uh, there's no such thing. The environment is neutral. That's what I was told in 1989. When I tried to get Dumping in Dixie Publix, I showed them the data, showed them the findings, I showed them the children information, they said, well, the environment is neutral. Everybody is equally impacted, and I said, No, here are the data.
Dr. Robert Bullard: There's this misunderstanding that environmental justice is, uh, just about race. It's not, it's more than. A big part of it is, but environmental justice also includes the disproportionate impact of pollution and lack of enforcement on, uh, of laws and regulations on poor white people in Appalachia.
Dr. Robert Bullard: Environmental justice is basically a basic right to breathe, clean air, drink, clean water, and have our kids go outside and play on playgrounds that are not built on top of dumps.
Ethan: As Dr. Bullard looks ahead, he stresses the importance of making environmental justice principles front and center in climate change mitigation and adaptation policy.
Dr. Robert Bullard: Climate changes right now. It's not, we're not talking futuristic. And so I think the fight will be over resources and the fight will be over adjust, transition to a clean energy economy that will not leave behind, economically or geographically populations that, that are already marginalized
Dr. Robert Bullard: What we have to do as we transition is to include at the inception all the way to the end – Uh, creative to the cradle, it’s not just cradle to grave – cradle to cradle in terms of infusing this equity and justice lens throughout this whole process. And in terms of where benefits get distributed and where externalities are, or, or costs get distributed, right now, it's very predictable which communities are most likely to benefit, uh, and which Communities are most likely to be paying a greater cost. We have to make sure that the justice and equity lens, uh, will drive this just transition and not just look the other way and say, let market forces drive it. If market forces will drive it, we'll end up having, you know, a green or cleaner economy, but the populations that are left with that dirty side of it and not getting those benefits will look more like what we have right now.
Ethan: According to Dr. Bullard, this will require stronger national laws than those currently in place.
Dr. Robert Bullard: I think the major barrier today is that we do not have environmental justice legislation. There is no law right now, national federal. We have some states that have environmental justice laws, but we have 50 states and all states are not created equal.
Dr. Robert Bullard: That means that we have to, uh, we have to overcome the hurdles to voting, and again, these issues are connected. If our vote is suppressed that means we may not be able to get the kinds of people elected, which means we may not get the kinds of laws enacted. And so I tell people, environmental justice is also about addressing voting. And it's also about addressing health inequities. It's also about addressing issues around transportation and clean energy. And so when we look at, you know, advancing environmental justice from that standpoint, it means we need a lot of people who see environmental justice touching all of those areas and not just say, oh, I just work on water issues.
Dr. Robert Bullard: No, we have to work on all of these issues. It doesn't mean that we have to be experts on all of them, but we have to know how each one of those areas touch each other, how they intersect, how they connect so that we can be more powerful as a collective, as a movement.
Ethan: Despite the challenges posed by climate change and systemic racism, the activism of the last few years brings Dr. Bullard hope.
Dr. Robert Bullard: You know, as Dr. King said, years ago, the arc of the universe bends toward justice. I do think there – we see today, uh, the last couple of years, we see that arc bending toward justice and not just environmental climate justice, but criminal justice. And after the murder of George Florida and Brianna Taylor, um, and the uprising that took place, you know, a couple of years ago, we can see more and more people seeing justice as coming together around all of these things.
Dr. Robert Bullard: Such as I can't breathe. I can't breathe as just as important, uh, in terms of the knee on the neck that's choking Joyce flawed as the, the chemical companies in the police, that's causing so many of our young people with asthma and other people having breathing problems, uh, in, in those fence line, frontline communities. The same underlying conditions that have created these environmental sacrifice zones is the same underlying conditions that create the conditions for all these police killings of black people and people of color. The underlying condition is racism and systemic racism.
Dr. Robert Bullard: And that's what we need. And address it from criminal justice, all the way to environmental justice.
Ethan: To learn more about Dr. Bullard’s work and how to get involved addressing environmental justice in your community, visit climatebreak.org. I’m Ethan Elkind. Thanks for listening.