When Congress created the New Starts fund for new rail transit projects in 1991, it required that the grants be awarded to projects that were “cost effective.” This same requirement was applied to the small starts fund, for transit projects costing less than $250 million, which Congress created in 2003. The Obama administration, however, is proposing to eliminate the cost-effectiveness test in favor of “livability,” “multi-modalism,” and “environmental justice.”
The Antiplanner’s comments on the proposed rules argue that these criteria are not authorized by law and, moreover, are vague and open to such broad interpretation that they are effectively meaningless. My comments focused mainly on livability and multi-modalism as I hadn’t ever heard of transit projects being justified based on environmental justice.
A recent series of articles in the Washington Times, however, reviews the administration’s infatuation with environmental justice in detail. As the first article in the series notes, seventeen federal agencies recently signed a “memorandum of understanding” agreeing to integrate environmental justice into all of their “programs, policies, and activities.”
Many cialis properien http://robertrobb.com/is-srp-following-aps-into-political-hot-water/ a times, people keep suffering for years before being properly diagnosed. These diseases curb one’s natural desire cialis sale http://robertrobb.com/az-conservatives-snooze-over-their-own-administrative-state/ to have sex.Solution: If you are under the age of 50 and you experience a consistent pattern of erectile dysfunction, you will not be able to engage in to flourish. A drug named levitra generika , brand name with the drug he/she has purchased. However, cialis 5 mg in some men, what appears to be good and effective for others might not be good and effective for you. But what does “environmental justice” mean? The second article shows that it can mean preventing a factory from opening in a low-income, minority neighborhood because that factory “might” emit toxic chemicals. (After later opening in a white neighborhood, the factory never emitted any toxic chemicals.) Environmental justice can also mean halting programs to relieve congestion in low-income neighborhoods because congestion relief might lead people to drive more and thus increase air pollution (never mind that relieving congestion reduces air pollution because cars pollute more in stop-and-go traffic).
The third article in the series shows how the environmental-justice mantra is used to halt a variety of projects based on scant evidence. “The marriage of environmentalism and civil rights has created a perfect storm of regulatory power that has the potential to control or kill any project anywhere in the United States,” says the writer.
The Times is often over-the-top when it comes to Obama. But a look at the “environmental justice toolkit,” developed with federal funding by the Environmental Justice in Transportation Project at Morgan State University, reveals that proponents of this policy focus on air pollution. Yet for the most part the problem of automotive air pollution has been solved. The average car on the road today emits less than 7 percent as much pollution per mile as the average car in 1970, and new cars emit far less, so the air gets cleaner with every new car purchased. This obsession with a problem that is either gone or fast disappearing is unrealistic.
Meanwhile, the construction of rail transit lines to middle-class neighborhoods has led to cutbacks in bus service to minority neighborhoods in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington, and several other cities. A major goal of building streetcars, which the Obama administration wants to fund, is to gentrify neighborhoods, pushing low-income families elsewhere to make room for yuppies who want to live in a mixed-use urban environment. How environmentally just is that? It is clear that the administration’s use of this concept is arbitrary and capricious.
Randall:
It is clear that the administration’s use of this concept is arbitrary and capricious.
Is it? Maybe you should read what Steve Sailer has posted about Obama and Chicago recently and the nexus of real estate development, politics, and money.
Its pretty obvious that the last 35 years have been all about pushing minorities out of center cities into older neighborhoods from the 1940’s and 1950’s and redeveloping the central core for wealthy people.
Sometimes, Environmental Justice concerns lead to better outcome.
At one point, federal environmental regulators wanted to route Maryland’s InterCounty Connector via an unplanned “Northern” Alignment to protect a watershed where brown trout (an alien species) have a reproducing population. In addition to this “Northern” route running though a source of drinking water, under some alternatives, sections of the highway would have run through areas owned by persons descended from the freedmen and their families – and the land on which these people live in some cases was deeded to them in the years following the Civil War.
So Environmental Justice concerns worked out in this instance, as the Northern Alignment was abandoned (over the protests of staff at the EPA Region III office in Philadelphia).
It was not the only reason that the Northern Alignment was abandoned, but it helped to kill a very bad idea.
The Times is often over-the-top when it comes to Obama. But a look at the “environmental justice toolkit,†… reveals that proponents of this policy focus on air pollution. Yet for the most part the problem of automotive air pollution has been solved.
*chuckle*
That explains why I haven’t seen any Ozone Action Days or Clean Air Alerts any more. Oh, wait: I have. And my niece was just hospitalized for an asthma exacerbation from too much exertion on a bad air day.
That is: the bolded** is bull—-. Blatant hokum.
DS
**http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/10/1/68
Despite the fact that Americans drive 2.7 times as much today as in 1970, total auto emissions are less than 20 percent as much as in 1970 and declining. The problem has been “solved” in the sense that pollution is declining through improved technologies (and regulation), while efforts to get people to drive less have failed miserably. To the extent that “environmental justice” aims at less driving, it is misdirected.
Oh, wow! So the public health and epidemiological communities can quit reporting public health effects of transport-related illness?!?
Come now. We all know there’s no tap-dancing away from the problems associated with internal combustion engines.
The phenomenon is simply too well-studied and well-known to pretend the problem is ‘solved’.
DS
The phenomenon is simply too well-studied and well-known to pretend the problem is ‘solved’.
Dan, my point is this – air quality in most of the United States has gotten much better (and is forecast to improve) independent of efforts by governments to force residents to use transit instead of driving.
This paper appears to not mention the favorable impact of ultra-low-sulfur Diesel fuel (link to Shell Oil site) on air quality in most of the United States.
Consider Southern California, traditionally having some of the worst air quality (a/k/a “smog”) in the U.S. Because of greatly improved vehicle emission controls, it is now possible to see the San Gabriel mountains from San Pedro (and nearby Palos Verdes) nearly every day. That was not possible in the 1970’s.
Dan, my point is this – air quality in most of the United States has gotten much better (and is forecast to improve) independent of efforts by governments to force residents to use transit instead of driving.
This paper appears to not mention the favorable impact of ultra-low-sulfur Diesel fuel (link to Shell Oil site) on air quality in most of the United States.
CPZ, the paper was a review of the literature regarding the continuing multifold negative health impacts of internal combustion transport, not about anything else other than the studies detailing the negative impacts that continue to persist.
It is true a good deal of our built environment is auto-dependent and resists amelioration, but this difficulty doesn’t mean that internal combustion transport doesn’t have impacts. That is: internal combustion transport has impacts. Sure air pollution is getting better (due to gummint regulation), but it is not “solved” nor are internal combustion transport externalities a small problem.
DS
Hey, Dan, are you still living in Aurora and driving a Jeep to the Rockies for fun? Still taking pleasure trips up Evans even though exhaust from cars hurts the poor widdle kiddie widdies? (BTW, you were probably putting your kid at more risk by snapping that photo than the risk she was exposed to from the pollution from your tailpipe.)
Fact is, there’s no excuse. You’re an internal-combustion-engine hypocrite.
Hi Frank!!!!! your tawdry attempts at cheap intimidation is cheap and tawdry, and falsely accusing me of hypocrisy is both craven and tawdry.
If you don’t like the fact that I pointed out the problems with the standard industry line that air pollution is OK, then don’t blame me for pointing out the obvious. Lashing out in fear won’t solve anything, nor likely will it make the cognitive dissonance go away.
HTH.
DS
Cognitive dissonance? Whatever, Dan. See, I live in the densest part of a dense city in a dense development. You live in Auruora in a SFH. It’s a known fact touted by the EPA that “energy consumption tends to be higher in…suburban areas”.
Oh, by the way, tell me how many thousands of air miles your traveling this year? Speaking of which, see you in Portland!
Hi Frank!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1one!
If you need to make yourself feel better by making up stuff like our driving to Mt Evans in a SUV with the kid, as long as the fiction makes you feel better, I’m all for it!!! \m/ \m/
Also, too, if you need to make yourself feel better making up fictions that I advocate transit/density/poverty for thee but not for me, I’m all in on your fiction to keep away, like, um, the cognitive dissonance, dude! Fer shurr! I’m all in on your fictions, buddy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And if you need to believe that people can’t fly to share knowledge and if they do they must be hypocrites, golly that’s great! Fantastic! Good for you! Good job! Way to go!
DS
“Low-density development has 2.5 times the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and twice the annual energy use of high-density
development on a per capita basis; on a per unit living area basis, low-density development has 1.5x the annual GHG emissions and equivalent energy uses as the high-density development.”
Well, Dan, handflap away, but you’ve chosen to live in low density. The density on the land I live is 11 times greater than the density on the property you live.
I’ve been on one flight in four years. I’ve bet you’ve been on dozens. All to conferences that could be held over the Internet; but wait, you wouldn’t get a swanky hotel and huge buffets of fruit imported from Mexico and a rental car to go hiking.
See, Dan, truth is, your carbon footprint and other effects of burning fossil fuel far surpasses mine.
So, until you move to a high-density area and cut your GHG emissions…
/ignore
See, Dan, truth is, your carbon footprint and other effects of burning fossil fuel far surpasses mine.
Hi Frank!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m soooooooooooo glad you must make things up to make yourself feel good! That’s great you make it up! Good job at grasping at straws to feel good! Good job! That’s great you make things up! It’s important to feel good! Yay feeling good!
DS
See article in the current issue of the Journal of the APA, entitled “Growing Cities Sustainably.” It concludes that current planning policy strategies for land use and transport have virtually no impact on the major long-term increases in resource and energy consumption. What little change they create in CO2 emissions is more than offset by adverse social consequences attributable to higher densities. I think Randall came to this conclusion several years ago.
What little change they create in CO2 emissions is more than offset by adverse social consequences attributable to higher densities.
I agree that extant American plans do poorly at “sustainability” (compare to the Brits’ ‘Green Plan’ – albeit that is likely to suffer with austerity), but it is generally known that the positives outweigh the negatives in general (note I am not advocating forced warehousing or any Agenda 21 lunacy).
DS
“Yet for the most part the problem of automotive air pollution has been solved. The average car on the road today emits less than 7 percent as much pollution per mile as the average car in 1970, and new cars emit far less, so the air gets cleaner with every new car purchased. This obsession with a problem that is either gone or fast disappearing is unrealistic.”
Does this reduction require a catalytic converter? If so, is this the case from cold, or only after the catalytic converter has warmed up?
Does this reduction require a catalytic converter?
Yes. But they have been required on most U.S. passenger vehicles and light trucks since the mid-1970’s, so the number of vehicles without them is very small.
If so, is this the case from cold, or only after the catalytic converter has warmed up?
There are different calculations used in the so-called air quality conformity determination process.
There are the miles (or kilometers) run up when the engine (and catalytic converter) are cold, called the “cold start rate.” Once everything is warmed-up, a “stabilized rate” is used. For vehicle trips started with the engine already warmed-up, a “hot soak” rate is used.
The above is over-simplified, but it gives you an idea of what is involved.
Randall got it right on this post. “Environmental justice” is an Orwellian term trying to find common ground between the extreme left “civil rights” folks and “environmental” folks.
Most people don’t realize that when the extreme left says “justice” they mean racial spoils for minorities, the exact opposite of treating people equally regardless of race.
Most people don’t realize that when the extreme left says “justice†they mean racial spoils for minorities, the exact opposite of treating people equally regardless of race.
I don’t agree with much of what goes in to the environmental justice “movement,” but it was a response to abuses (many real, some perceived) of the past.
Certainly there were some land uses and industrial activities that ended up in neighborhoods where poor people (minority and non-minority) resided. One of my absolute favorites is the long-shut-down Georgetown [trash] Incinerator (Google Maps here, more about the incinerator’s current use here), built long before the Georgetown area of the District of Columbia was the fashionable and expensive neighborhood that it is today.
Now the District of Columbia ships its municipal refuse out of the city (by tractor-trailer) to other places (including an incinerator south of the city along I-95 in Fairfax County, Virginia).
Certainly there were some land uses and industrial activities that ended up in neighborhoods where poor people (minority and non-minority) resided.
I hear ya. Waste and water are our biggest environmental problems. Someone who can solve these two problems will be a trillionaire. There is no money in avoiding dumping where poor people live.
DS
Dan, I think you might have missed my attempt to point out something opposite the “victimization” of traditionally majority-minority jurisdictions like D.C.
The trash was burned in Georgetown when there were poor people living there. As it turned fashionable (a trend that started in the 1950’s when then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy moved there), the trash was shipped elsewhere.
Now much of that trash generated in D.C. gets trucked to the largest jurisdiction (and by some measures, the most-affluent) in the Washington metropolitan area, Fairfax County, Virginia, for incineration. Where’s the environmental justice in that?
There is almost no electric power generated in D.C. these days either. The federal government has a few plants that generate heat and power for its own buildings (notably the U.S. Capitol and nearby office buildings for the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and I believe the General Services Administration still runs one or two plants in D.C.), but claims of environmental justice have helped to have nearly all other power generation moved to places relatively far from the city (and in the East, most power is generated at coal-fired generating stations).
Is that fair to the places that host large-coal-fired generation to power D.C.?
CPZ, I’m sure there are a few instances where non-poor have ‘come to the nuisance’, to use a land-use law phrase. There are exponentially more instances where the powerless receive our waste.
To reiterate my point, however, soon everyone will be enjoying our waste, as the earth is fast running out of absorptive capacity. The dead zones in the ocean are probably the most easily seen phenomenon.
DS
Any time “justice” follows a word (like social, economic, or environmental), it’s essentially a code word for Marxism. “Justice” here means theft from those who have to redistribute it to those who have not.
Environmental Justice does not refer to “taking” anything “from those who have,” but rather that companies cannot simply drop/emit their pollutants where it is most expedient (which is often in poor communities that have little voice to protest/political muscle to flex).
Furthermore, I’m not sure there’s anything “Marxist” in having CEOs pay the same effective tax rate as their secretaries (perhaps an “economic justice” argument) or having the same sentences for crack and powder cocaine (perhaps a “social justice” argument). These are all real issues that happen to real people in this country we all love.
“The Times is often over-the-top when it comes to Obama. But a look at the “environmental justice toolkit,†developed with federal funding by the Environmental Justice in Transportation Project at Morgan State University, reveals that proponents of this policy focus on air pollution.”
You seem to be making an argument that if not for one “environmental justice toolkit” that the Times’ series would just be another “over-the-top [attack on] Obama” — that the Administration is wrong/naive to focus on air pollution. But you fail to mention that this one toolkit is specifically for transportation. Environmental Justice consists of way more than transportation and way more than air pollution, which you even reference when mentioning the Times’ second article on preventing a factory from opening.
A timeline of Environmental Justice can be found on the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) here.
When I first heard “environmental justice” I thought it was laws allowing deer to sue wolves and mice to sue cats.