June 2024

Connect the Dots

Companies

Influence

Climate Policy

Welcome back to Connect the Dots, a newsletter from ClimateVoice focused on exploring the connection between companies, influence, and climate policy in the United States.

In this issue we’re looking at how companies can be allies for environmental justice, and how recent climate policy battles, along with the distribution of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding, have climate and environmental justice implications.

Long before I became a member of the ClimateVoice Advisory Board and an investor at Powerhouse Ventures, a leading early-stage climate tech venture capital firm, I was a girl growing up in the heart of Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. As a child I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, “Nalí”, and aunts, cooking outside, herding sheep, and roaming our family’s land. As a young person, I was acquainted with complex environmental and social justice conflicts going on between the Navajo people and the large companies developing uranium and coal on Navajo land.

For example, you may have heard of Navajo Generating Station, a large coal-fired power plant that provided power to the Southwest — the Phoenix, Las Vegas and LA metro areas — while promising jobs and prosperity for the Navajo Nation’s government and people.

The plant has since been decommissioned, but during its lifetime it had a tremendous negative impact that lingers to this day. As a kid, I heard about livestock poisoned by contaminated groundwater. Companies also used pristine aquifer water to process coal, which depleted water wells across hundreds of miles. Many of our community members continue to deal with lung and respiratory illnesses from inhaling sulfur dioxide, mercury, selenium and arsenic — the result of burning coal bricks to cheaply heat their homes.

Fossil fuel and mining projects leave a complicated legacy on Navajo land. These projects provided a steady paycheck to a portion of Navajo people, but the projects promised to bring transformational economic gains that never materialized, leaving immense social, cultural, and environmental losses in their wake.

This was the dynamic I grew up with: trying to reconcile cultural teachings and economic livelihoods with the ongoing environmental disaster happening around us. And I’m not alone: marginalized communities across the country (and world) have long been on the frontlines of social and environmental destruction and climate change. With these experiences, though, we have so much to give in terms of climate action, labor, and ingenuity — which is why we must be front and center in collective efforts to stabilize the climate and build a better future.

Action Items

Support Climate Action Campaign’s request for Congress to defend the carbon standards and soot standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency and halt attacks on this important public health measure. If you are a leader in your community, sign this one; if you are authorized to sign on on behalf of an organization, sign this one.

Learn more about the “LandBack” movement, which aims to return swaths of land back into tribal ownership and care, as well as protect land, restore access to sustainable food systems and water, revitalize cultural identity, and achieve tribal sovereignty. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognized that Indigenous rights and climate action are inherently intertwined. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of acres have been returned to Native communities across the U.S. and Canada, a win for natural carbon sinks, biodiversity, and social wellness.

Encourage your company to support environmental justice in the communities around its offices, data centers, factories, and other places where it operates. For ideas on how, read ClimateVoice Founder and Chief Strategic Advisor Bill Weihl’s piece in GreenBiz, “How Companies Become Allies for Environmental Justice.”

The Big Picture

What Is Environmental Justice and How Can Companies Become Allies?

I see environmental justice as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in the development and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Within this larger movement, climate justice highlights the fact that the climate crisis is disproportionately impacting low-income communities and people of color — often those least responsible for creating the problem, and with the fewest resources to address it. For me, true climate justice means that civil rights regarding climate impacts are being honored, and communities are not only “acknowledged” but are significantly invested in and given seats at decision-making tables.

Successful climate policies must center environmental justice; frontline communities have lived experiences that are vital to the process, and failing to tap into their generational knowledge, thriftiness, and ability to problem-solve and adapt is a huge missed opportunity.

For example, Indigenous peoples have been practicing regenerative agriculture, a climate strategy that has gained recent popularity, for thousands of years. Regenerative agriculture uses farming and grazing practices to rebuild soil organic matter and restore degraded soil biodiversity — and stores carbon in the process. By involving Indigenous people in deploying this solution, governments, companies and communities can maximize the chances of success while uplifting the people who are already experts.

Another major opportunity for Tribes in the United States is the role Tribal lands can play in scaling up renewable energy. The sunny, windy plains where many Tribes reside represent about 6.5% of the country’s utility-scale renewable energy potential. However, Indigenous communities face several barriers currently limiting their involvement in renewable energy solutions, including gaining access to capital (both monetary and technical), and finding trusted partners that understand cultural protocols and the history of Native peoples being taken advantage of time and time again by economic projects foisted upon them by outsiders.

So what role do corporations have in all of this? ClimateVoice has urged companies to speak up and be allies for environmental and climate justice in the communities in and around where they operate. Some of my favorite organizations tackling this head on include:

Navajo Power (utility-scale renewables): A leading Native-led renewable energy developer that specializes in large-scale projects on Tribal land
Native Renewables (residential-scale solar): partners with Tribes (specifically Navajo and Hopi) to implement solar projects including hands-on training
Honnold Foundation: A funder that partners with marginalized communities to expand and accelerate equitable solar energy access. They are really cranking up the dial to make sure organizations like Native Renewables (one of their grantees) can scale and maximize their impact.

For a Deeper Dive

Recent Climate Policies with Environmental Justice Implications

Improved soot standards: In February, the White House and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revised their previously announced clean air and public health standard for particulate matter (soot) pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, improving the standard from a level of 12 micrograms to 9 micrograms per cubic meter. This is a win for both communities and the climate (and ClimateVoice helped by asking companies and their employees to support). Not only is soot pollution deadly for vulnerable populations, but black carbon (of which soot is one form) is the second-biggest contributor to climate change after CO2. However, since this victory, more than 25 states, along with obstructive business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Manufacturing Association, have filed lawsuits against the EPA’s updated soot pollution rules. How can you help? By ensuring that your company is speaking up in support of the strictest standards, which will go the furthest to protect public health.
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) support for tribes: The IRA directs over $722 million specifically to Tribal and Indigenous communities, and includes another $46 billion that Tribal and Indigenous communities are eligible to apply for. This segmentation is critical because Indigenous communities have historically been overlooked or targeted with predatory/extractive policies. In May, the EPA announced that more than 200 Tribes, plus American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, have published climate action plans made possible by this funding. This is great news, but these IRA opportunities require more promotion to ensure that community groups know there is money earmarked for them.
Impact on the ground: In some cases, funding, infrastructure, and community resources are already being proportionally invested in impacted communities. For example, three Tribal communities in Alaska and Washington recently received $75 million from the Biden administration to help relocate to higher ground due to rising sea levels.

It’s not enough for sustainability professionals to “stay in our lane” — we have to be policy advocates as well, as policy impacts everything. How can you help Indigenous and other marginalized communities? You can support efforts to facilitate a “just transition,” meaning that communities where fossil fuel projects are being shuttered, and those where renewable infrastructure is being proposed or built, are treated as true project stakeholders, even shareholders. This includes securing free and prior informed consent, creating easily accessible vocational and training programs, hiring local labor for field and management positions (to ensure that new knowledge and skills stay in the community), and ensuring that a portion of profits flow directly into the community’s pockets.

Let me be clear: Without these provisions, climate tech and the clean economy are no better than their traditional energy predecessors. We have a tremendous opportunity to change the world for the better — let’s make sure we don’t squander it.

Coming soon...

Stay tuned for our next issue where we’ll continue digging into corporate climate policy advocacy and how companies can lead the charge.

Have a specific question about Corporate Political Responsibility that you’d like us to address? Shoot your questions to us with subject line "Connect the Dots."