When President Clinton signed executive order 12898 in 1994, there were only four states with any kind of policy resembling environmental justice — policies that are designed to protect people of color and low-income from being exposed to pollution and other environmental ills at levels higher than other populations. Today, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have “some type of environmental justice law, executive order, or policy,” Robert Bullard, one of the field’s top scholars, boasted in the report, “Environmental Justice Milestones and Accomplishments: 1964–2014,” released last year.
Similar policies have been upgraded and downgraded across the states over the years, as noted in the “Environmental Justice for All” reports produced every few years by the American Bar Association and the University of California’s Center for State and Local Government Law. “States continue to innovate in tackling environmental justice issues, and the range of approaches is growing, showing that this area of law and policy continues to mature,” reads the latest edition, produced in 2010.
[For more of this story, written by Brentin Mock, go to http://grist.org/politics/are-...ir-justice-policies/]
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