Environmental justice

Also highlighted is the percent of the population near each facility that are people of color, low income, and with limited English language proficiency.

In most cases, these percentages are higher, sometimes much higher in the surrounding county, a stark example of environmental injustice and inequity.

The data clearly shows that people of color bear a disproportionate burden of ethylene oxide emissions.

Blue cities highlight the 23 commercial sterilizers that emit ethylene oxide at levels that definitively contribute to an elevated cancer risk for surrounding communities, as determined by the Environmental Protection Agency.

to talk about?

i mean this is the whole uh idea behind um like environmental justice right so this is not just a data center thing this is systematically true um i mean a local example for me is uh like rocky flats uh was a nuclear uh trigger power plant or not power plant nuclear trigger plant that was near me and there was a fire there uh in the 70s i believe And so then everywhere around it was designated as land that couldn't be built on for the next 150 years or something like that.

Recently, they removed portions of that.

So now there are portions that can be built on.

We can get to Colossus when we have all our questions discussed.

Maybe we can do a speedrun.

But I just wanted to mention that environmental justice is its own thing and it's important to know about that kind of stuff because it's happening a lot more than people expect.

Also related to where is it is the legal question, which I think you had some more specifics on.

Todd is a nationally leading appellate and environmental litigator now at Pillsbury Law.

He most recently served as the Assistant Attorney General leading the Environment and Natural Resources Division, recently renamed the Energy and Natural Resources Division at the United States Department of Justice, where he oversaw more than 600 staff and shaped federal enforcement priorities across climate change, environmental justice, PFAS, and public lands.

Previously, he served as the first Solicitor General of the District of Columbia, arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and presenting oral arguments more than 60 times over his career.

Todd, thank you so much for joining us today.

I'll turn it back to Rishabh.

Delving a little more on your tenure at NRD.

And during that time, the division basically took on some really important matters such as climate change, PFAS, environmental justice, right? And those are some things that we still are trying to debate and figure out how we deal with those issues.

So looking back on that time, how do you think those issues impacted the evolution of environmental enforcement? And well done, you

So joining us is the multi-award-winning environmental scientist, Dr. Shakobi Wilson, who runs the Health, Environmental, and Economic Justice Lab at the University of Maryland College Park School of Public Health, where he's also a professor.

He's an active member of his community and directs the Center of Engagement, Environmental Justice, and Health Empowering Communities and co-founded the Mid-Atlantic Justice Council.

He's a former member of many boards, including for the EPA and the National Academy of Sciences, and is currently the editor in chief for the publication Environmental Justice.

So thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me today.

We That's basically, we don't have a working EPA right now.

And we're seeing this wild, wild west when it comes to data center development across our country.

I believe it was under President Biden that the Environmental Justice Department of the EPA was founded? Yes.

Coyotes in the Hollywood Hills live a completely different life than coyotes in Englewood, and it's not random.

Dr. Chris Schell studies how urban wildlife develop differently depending on the neighborhood they're born into, and how that maps directly onto environmental justice and human inequality.

You're listening to Wild Connection, where every conversation is a journey into what it means to be part of this wild and complicated world.

I'm your host, Dr. Jen, and I talk with scientists, authors, and changemakers about people, nature, and the surprising connections that tie us all together.

I hated it.

I couldn't do it.

And then the thing that really kick-started it all, right, that made sort of going into wildlife sciences and animal behavior and and evolutionary biology and the intersections of human-nature interactions and environmental justice.

That whole trip started the summer after my freshman year where I did this two-month engaging experience in the Dominican Republic where my first study species ever were tarantulas.

As I read through your resume, every job description or title seems to have first in front of it.

First Program Officer for Environmental Justice at the Ford Foundation.

You were the Founding Director of the Environmental Justice Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Co-Founder of the legendary We Act for Environmental Justice, the great New York City environmental justice organization, and on and on and on.

Author of Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.

Well, contributing author.