>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

>> Our connection this hour was made this past March when the new Trump administration announced that DEI initiatives would be terminated in the federal government under the DEI umbrella.

The Trump administration cited the Biden White House's efforts to pursue environmental justice, specifically The White House Council on Environmental Quality, or Ceq, had prioritized environmental justice and hired Dr.

Jalonne White-Newsome as its federal chief environmental justice officer, while in March, the new EPA director, Lee Zeldin, announced, quote, President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people.

Part of this mandate includes the elimination of forced discrimination programs under the Trump administration.

EPA is affirming our commitment to serve every American with equal dignity and respect.

Some believe that so-called environmental justice is warranted to assist communities that have been left behind.

This idea sounds good in theory and receives bipartisan support, but in reality, environmental justice has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities.

End quote.

Now, in reality, most Americans did not know much about what the Ceq did or how it tried to prioritize environmental justice.

Some might still be confused by that term environmental justice.

And despite what Administrator Zeldin says, the work in this field goes on.

It goes on across the country.

It goes on with Dr.

White Newsom.

It goes on here in Rochester.

And we're going to talk about that.

Dr.

Jalonne White-Newsome is in Rochester today and is kind enough with her time to join us on Connections to talk about what environmental justice means from her perspective, along with the current state of affairs in this field.

The former federal Chief Environmental justice officer for The White House, also the CEO and founder of Empowering a Green Environment and Economy.

Dr.

Jalonne White-Newsome, welcome.

Thank you for being on the program today.

>> Thank you so much, Evan.

>> And welcome as well to Dr.

Katrina Korfmacher.

Dr.

Korfmacher is a faculty member in the UR Institute for Human Health and Environment.

Welcome to you as well.

Thanks, Evan.

One way I think about it, I will say Dr.

Korfmacher is in Rochester.

One of the most prominent stories for decades was the issue of lead paint and what communities were most affected by that.

And probably for years we would cover that story.

And I don't know if we said the words environmental justice at the time.

Maybe now we would, but that's got to be in that category, right?

>> Absolutely.

We've done that work for decades.

And when we first mapped lead poisoning in Rochester, it was really clear where it was concentrated.

And so that's where we concentrate our efforts and work.

And the data shows that there are fewer disparities now than there were in the past.

But that remains to be the pattern.

>> Well, I'm grateful, first of all, for anyone's giving us the time to come on this program.

And it's always a great pleasure for our audience to hear from folks who served, serve, or served in a White House.

And so, Dr.

White Newsome, let's start with this.

Here, take us to your path to The White House.

Tell people a little bit about your background.

>> Sure.

Thank you so much, Evan.

my goodness, I had not planned to go to The White House.

I am a native of Detroit, Michigan, but have also had this passion for protecting the environment and people since elementary school.

But the one thing that I learned in high school is environmental justice is something that is not just a coinkidink.

it is actually something that is systemic.

and that unfortunately, there are communities across this country that have to deal with dirty air and dirty water every day, and their lives are actually impacted.

And so when I think about the work that I've done across many sectors, whether it's philanthropy, I worked in private industry or state government academia and at The White House, it was to protect those communities, to give those communities a voice that are often invisible in society.

And so the path I had no idea that that's where I would end up.

But I was very honored and privileged to serve in the Biden-Harris administration that actually made environmental justice a priority, made climate change a priority, and made people a priority.

>> I suspect President Biden spent most of his career, even if he was looking at policy, looking at issues related to the environment.

Environmental justice was probably not a term that he came to until later in his career, given the years he spent in government.

how much time did you spend with him, or was it someone else in The White House who hired you?

I'm not saying the president himself wasn't concerned with this.

It's just I'm curious to know who your interaction was with.

>> Well, sure.

I think what's really cool about President Biden and Vice President Harris both is that they actually listened to the folks on the ground.

So a part of the team that helped create the agendas that we had to initiate in my office was really created by the people.

So they went around and talked to folks to understand, like, what are the issues?

What are the concerns?

And so the initiatives that we had in The White House from the Justice40 initiative to the Environmental Justice Scorecard to creating an advisory committee of National environmental justice leaders to help tell us how to implement policy.

That was nothing that the president pulled out of the air.

It was created from the voices of community.

And so that's very important when you think about good policy making, it's based on what is actually happening in community and really thinking about what are the best ways and what are the best solutions.

In collaboration with community that can actually be implemented.

>> I think you just referred to we Jack The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Committee.

I've watched enough of Dr.

White Newsome to know that there's a lot of acronyms out there.

Yes, I'm starting to learn them, but but now, the interesting thing is I'm finally starting to learn them.

And had the election a year ago gone differently?

Probably why Jack is still there.

You're probably still in The White House.

Do you think in an Harris administration.

>> You know, I would hope so.

But, you know, here's the thing.

The we Jack.

So I was taught very quickly to not use acronyms.

But you've done your homework.

So so that's great.

But the we jack or The White House environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Yes, was very much so disbanded in this, this new leadership.

But the cool part about it is that the people have started their own we Jack.

And so there are still public meetings going on across the country to do the thing that the Jack was, was formed to do, listen to the voices and figure out at this time what is the local and state level policy actions that can happen even in the absence of leadership from the federal government?

So even though a lot of stuff got, you know, disseminated or not disseminated, decimated there are still a lot of folks that are doing the work on the ground.

>> So in a moment, I, I want to try to engage to the extent that there is substantial substantive criticism of the idea of environmental justice.

Not all of it is sort of the some of the headline stuff that we've seen this year.

There are some members of Congress and the U.S.

Senate who have been critical.

And I want to get your take on some of their comments, but I want to start with your own definition.

Maybe both of you can offer a definition of environmental justice.

Dr.

White Newsome.

>> When I think about environmental justice, it's two things.

It's a movement, and it's an aspiration.

So it's a movement because environmental justice wasn't just some technical term or some research thing that people did.

It started with people protesting to get the healthy communities that they deserve.

It started in Warren County, North Carolina, with the protest of an African American community that said, you are not bringing PCB waste into our communities just because we're poor and low income and people of color.

So environmental justice is a movement started by people.

The second thing, it's an aspiration.

It's basically simple things that we deserve.

Regardless of who you are, where you live, what color, how much you make at the end of the year, how connected you are that you deserve to live in an environment where you can have healthy water, clean air, and not live in land that actually contaminates you.

So it's just basic human rights and environmental justice.

That is what we're striving for.

what I would tell my staff is that our job is to make the impossible possible, and that is to one day lead us to this North Star, which is environmental justice.

So it's a movement and an aspiration.

>> Dr.

Korfmacher you want to add to that?

>> Yeah.

So I would add that it's also a process and outcome.

So one group of thought, one thought about environmental justice is if you look at exposures across the population that there are inequities and that some people have health outcomes that are associated with environments.

And our research shows the mechanisms by which that happens.

If you are exposed to multiple contaminants, they can have multiplicative effects and you have fewer resources.

So you see patterns in both exposures and outcomes.

And then as a policy scientist, the process what are the processes that led to that distribution of outcomes in our society?

And what are the processes that can help remedy it.

So I tend to focus on it in terms of the processes and the outcomes.

And then thinking about also the, the, the movements in the advocacy and the actions that that may need to happen to change those things.

>> When Dr.

White Newsome was in The White House, the presentations you would give, you would often ask, you know, the audience, how many of you know what the sick is?

How many, how many of you know what the Council on Environmental Quality is?

How many of you know?

What about the work they were doing?

And often it was not a lot.

And you're doing a lot of educational outreach, but you're doing it and there's momentum and there's federal support.

There's different funding available for communities in need.

There's an emphasis on this idea of environmental justice.

And then the election happens.

And not only does a lot of that shift the funding priorities, the staffing, but you've got people like Lee Zeldin basically coming out and saying, yeah, that was a bunch of woke nonsense.

You know, that's in the DEI umbrella, and we're not doing that anymore.

And I wonder what that is like for you to hear that.

>> Well, you know, this isn't the first time.

And I tell everyone you know, we have been in this space before where we've had folks discount the real life experience of real people.

And to me, as the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is called to protect the health of the public for you not to acknowledge and recognize that there are certain communities that are dealing with more of a negative impact or a disproportionate impact than others.

is is a little bit it's it's a little bit it's scary because you're ignoring reality.

And so rather than spend my time trying to convince someone it's more important that we focus on the things that we can change and shift.

And so it's concerning because I know that anything that seeks to give people power that have been in some ways disempowered is scary.

And that's what that's what environmental justice is.

It's, it's making sure that the invisible become the visible, that capitalism.

And, you know, corporate profits don't you know, I don't want to say the word, but but Trump the health and welfare of communities and people are scared of that.

And unfortunately, we have some folks in this country that believe that certain folks just don't deserve to live in the environments that that are healthy and safe and sustainable.

>> What's what's interesting to me is the EPA chief, Lee Zeldin, in his statement, acknowledged that the support for environmental justice initiatives has become bipartisan, that there is an idea that that it's hard to deny that you look at Rochester, as Dr.

Korfmacher mentioned, you can look at a map of where the lead issues have been, and it's disproportionately in neighborhoods that have been I would, as a layperson say, underserved poor neighborhoods, neighborhoods that are struggling with resources.

if you look at the the Flint story that everybody knows, of course.

Right.

That's not happening in Pittsford, New York.

No offense to Pittsford.

That's not happening in where I grew up in Westlake, Ohio.

That's happening in Flint.

That's happening in the city of Rochester.

And so Zeldin is sort of hinting at the fact that everyone acknowledges that there is a disproportionate impact.

The substantive criticism comes, and I want to read a little bit here from a piece in the Washington Examiner from Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Congressman Dan Newhouse of Washington State.

They wrote a piece called Exposing the Hypocrisy of Environmental Justice.

And they also seem to acknowledge that there is a disproportionate impact.

It's a question of what's the policy that's effective?

And so here's what they say.

They say, quote, one of the more extreme left wing ideas you may have heard is environmental justice.

Contrary to its name, this buzzword is yet another effort by the Biden-Harris administration to block traditional energy and infrastructure projects.

If the administration cared about bringing prosperity to low income communities, it would drop its insistence on a forced green transition and support affordable and reliable energy sources that power the West and the rural United States.

The term environmental justice has been deployed to falsely advocate a healthy environment for underserved or low income communities.

However, it is clear that the goal of environmental justice is to threaten traditional energy projects and manufacturing facilities located in or near low income communities.

This is a tool for extreme environmentalists to force a transition to less affordable and less reliable energy sources on the very communities that they claim to be helping.

End quote.

So they're acknowledging there's definitely underserved communities or communities that are struggling.

But what they're saying is, if we go away from fossil fuels too quickly, we actually do disproportionate harm to those communities.

More so than even anybody else here.

What do you make of that criticism?

>> Yeah, I mean, you know, the whole goal of the Justice40 initiative, which was the Biden-Harris administration's game changer initiative to make sure that these disadvantaged communities, those communities that were historically underinvested in over polluted you know, got a chance to grow and thrive.

And so 40% of the billions of dollars that came through the administration were prioritized for these areas.

Now, the thing that I fail to hear sometimes from, you know, those that that disagree is that it wasn't just black and brown and communities that received these justice40 funds, it was white communities.

It was rural communities.

It was communities in red states.

And so Justice40 initiative was not based on race.

It was based on, again, the underinvestment and the over pollution, which brought everybody up.

So I think that this notion of, of clean energy actually being a bad thing and, and disproportionately hurting the folks that is trying to help is is false you know, clean energy and the efforts through the Justice40 initiative, through the Department of Energy to bring billions of dollars to support this transition from dirty extractive energy to clean energy helps everyone because it cleans the air, and air has no boundaries.

So I find it concerning it's not the first time, but again, the Justice40 initiative was not a thing about race, which is typically what these questions come to.

It's about getting clean energy in the places where it's needed to make the environment healthy for everyone.

>> I know you've heard this is not the first time you've heard people in politics talk about we're moving too fast away from fossil fuels, and I don't want you to play armchair psychologist.

I'm curious to know if you have an idea of what might if if what they're saying in this piece is just wrong, that underserved communities are not going to be wounded by a move away from fossil fuels.

then what do you think motivates them to take that position?

>> You know, I mean, when you think about fossil fuels and you know, the impact of plastics and, and all these things in our environment, you know it's about money and profit, right?

I mean, you know, we live in a society where profit, you know, sometimes is more important than people.

And when you talk about, again, taking away the power in the profit from those that have held on to it for a while.

that's a little scary, because part of the Biden-Harris administration's part of the goal of this clean energy transition was to actually provide more access to those to push clean energy in a way that was different, but also to to black and brown entrepreneurs to others.

So, I mean, it's losing power.

It's the fact that you're not going to have these big coal, you know, gas fired production plants.

you know, that, again, are polluting communities that are right on the fence line.

So I think it's every transition takes time.

And I don't think there's any way that we can transition away from extraction.

Super duper fast, because our lives are so dependent on, again, the fossil fuels and the plastics.

So what we tried to do in the administration was do it in a way that was thoughtful, intentional.

it wasn't perfect because there were still processes that you know, communities had some concerns with in terms of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.

And, you know, trying to reach these goals of, you know, reducing our emissions, you know, so, you know, it's it's not much I can say, like, it's really I think this fear of losing control and power and unfortunately, they try and make it into something where we're, you know, giving more to people that, you know, don't deserve it when they've actually been on the short end of the stick for a long time.

>> Well, here's an email.

I think both of our guests can perhaps weigh in on.

This comes from Michael, who says Evan, I think it's interesting that we often hear terms like underserved or disadvantaged communities.

Who decides what makes a community disadvantaged right now?

The flight of manufacturing and jobs in rural America makes those communities pretty seriously disadvantaged.

And yet, I would think your guests are primarily not focused on poor rural areas.

Doc.

Dwight Newsome, do you want to start?

That's Michael who writes that.

>> Sure.

No, I mean, I appreciate that comment, Michael.

And and not the first time that that I've heard it.

I here, you know when we talk about environmental justice, I think people assume in my experience, that it is, you know, we're talking about African American or Latino folks, environmental justice also counts for our white brothers and sisters in Appalachia.

It accounts for the folks, again, in indigenous populations that their environment is not fit for them.

So it's not that we are leaving out any group that is being impacted in some way.

It's not a color thing.

It's the level of impact.

So if you're talking about, again, rural communities that are transitioning, particularly again in the coal industry, you know, from coal to other things, you know, that is an environmental injustice.

That is something that that community is dealing with.

So to me, you know, and to those in the movement, environmental justice encapsulates, encapsulates, you know, more than just the black and brown communities.

It is those folks that have been impacted in some way by a transition, by industry, by climate change.

and, and that's not leaving the communities that you're talking about, Michael, out of that.

>> Okay.

Dr.

Korfmacher.

>> Yeah, some of the rural communities that we've worked with in this, this area are both rural farming communities where people might be exposed to pesticides more likely to be outdoor workers.

So as we have more air pollution and more heat days, their their health can be compromised.

And being in rural areas, they may not only be exposed to some of those hazards more but also have access to fewer resources so not have access to healthy foods, not have sidewalks so they can exercise easily.

So that's one example of rural communities we've worked with here.

just down the road from us, some of the small canal town towns, particularly have brownfield sites.

And you know, legacy of industrial contamination that we might not think of as being a feature of, of outlying rural communities, but because there are fewer resources to deal with them, they are suffering disproportionately.

>> My first job out of college was in Charleston, West Virginia, for the CBS News affiliate there.

And I was living in a little town called hurricane, West Virginia, and I was assigned to cover the coal industry 22 years old, go tackle Massey Energy, which is, you know, just this behemoth was was the behemoth and still is.

And I, I was just, you know, kind of a overwhelmed by the work.

What I found was we were covering, for example, I had to learn what coal impoundments were slurry impoundments.

So when you make when you mine coal, you have to clean it with a chemical process.

There's waste.

There's both waste rock and waste liquids and or a sludgy material they call slurry.

If you fly over it in a chopper, as we did, it looks like a lake from the air.

And in a way it looks kind of far away.

It looks beautiful.

And then you get over and it's kind of this kind of steel gray shimmering, and you realize that's coal slurry.

And in October of 2000, one of the biggest environmental disasters in the southeast happened in Ashland, Kentucky, right over the West Virginia border, where one of these impoundments breaks into the underground mines and then goes out into the waterways.

So I was I was examining at the age of 22.

This paperwork, these that the coal companies would say, okay, well, we've got 150ft of bedrock before we get to the mines.

So there will never be an impoundment burst here.

We're going to have 7 billion gallons of coal slurry in this huge impoundment.

But it'll be safe.

And then you actually see what the inspectors say, and the inspector say, well, there's actually only 25ft.

It's 150ft.

It's a lot less safe.

But then it gets greenlit and all the people in the DEP, it's the DEP, their Department of Model Protection.

It's a revolving door from the coal industry to the DEP.

And then these blowouts happen.

And rivers get destroyed and property gets destroyed.

And sometimes people get very sick.

And I'm trying to cover this at 22 years old, feeling overwhelmed, I bring this up to you because I met people who work in the coal industry, and they were wonderful people, coal miners I met miners, children, people who suffered from lung conditions.

They were not bad people.

They were working in a job that Multi-generations had worked, and they also didn't see anything else in their future.

And then I moved away.

And I hear the way people talk about West Virginia, and it's like, we gotta get rid of those coal mines that backwards state, you know, and I don't disagree that a future of cleaner energy would be good for everybody, but they're all worried about when you shut down the mines.

Is that the last of our jobs?

Yeah.

Is that the last of our way of life?

And how did you approach the idea when you worked in The White House that said, you know, whether it's with justice 40, for example, or any other initiative that says to these communities, we are on your side here, we're not trying to destroy your way of life or your community.

We're actually on your side because the perception that a lot of them have is you are not on our side.

You know you're coming in, you're going to take our jobs, you're going to take our way of life away.

>> Yeah.

I mean, so my stepfather's from Charleston, West Virginia, and the what the the challenge you name is very real.

I mean, when you talk about these industries that are embedded in community that pay for the food on folks table, that fund the uniforms of the local baseball team, you know, so oftentimes you are, you know, surviving because of these companies, but those companies are also killing you because you've been sucking in, you know, the coal and the ash and and, you know, folks dying because of black lung.

So it's kind of scary and crazy.

And like you said, it's generational, but as a part of the Biden-Harris administration, knowing that that reality of that transition in some places is extremely hard.

Yeah, they were very sensitive.

And a lot of my colleagues in the climate Policy office spent a lot of time figuring out what is the appropriate just transition plan that, that that would again, help to deal with some of those issues.

So just because, you know, we say we're going to try and shut down all the facilities where you have to have a, you know, like what do people do now?

And so a lot of the focus was on like, how do we reskill or upskill these folks that were working in the coal mines to do something different?

training.

you know, getting them health support.

So it wasn't just like, let's close the mines down and figure it out.

It was, what is that?

That new pathway, clean energy pathway that we can help support and create.

And so I think the Biden-Harris administration did a good job of being sensitive to those real issues, because that is scary when that is all you know.

And and that is your community.

>> But why do you think in communities like those communities in West Virginia, there still isn't trust, and it's reflected in a number of different ways.

But I think one of the ways, of course, is political.

When I was working in West Virginia, Bob wise was the governor.

He's a Democrat.

Joe Manchin became the governor, became a senator, a Democrat.

Now it is almost impossible to imagine a Democrat winning an office like that in West Virginia.

And there isn't that trust of what you're describing.

So how do you how do you bridge that gap?

>> I mean, trust takes time.

And when when I think about the places and really the people that you know, I've worked with across the country where they have been hurt by government, they have been hurt by folks that they've put in office that didn't stand up for them.

You know, it takes time to rebuild trust that's been broken.

And so, as with everything whether it's going into a community to begin some research or you know, that that reconciliation is, is critical.

So again, you have to, you know, be sensitive and acknowledge what has happened and really figure out or the way that I approach it is, you know, what are the things that are, you know, what are the things that are keeping us from moving forward?

and what's most important to you now and really figuring out, like, like, you know, how do we move from this point to the next?

So trust is is again, it takes time, particularly when you have been burned.

And I'm thinking about that from not only some of my experiences in The White House where, you know, we weren't able to fulfill all of our promises.

My experiences in state government, where, you know, folks are like, well, we thought you were going to do this.

And it didn't happen.

So I think as a government official we have to be in what I tried to do is be very clear.

and not give false hope or false expectations, but also know that we are going to be here right with you as you go through this transition.

As as we figure out together what is the best next step.

So it's hard and and it's not easy.

And, you know, folks don't change overnight.

>> you want to jump in on that doctor Korfmacher.

>> Jalonne White-Newsome and I have been talking quite a bit over the last day about that interplay between federal action, state action and local action.

And I've been privileged to work at the local level, mostly here in Rochester, for 25 years.

But last week we went to Kentucky to visit our sister center, and they showed us a film called The East Kentucky Flood.

And it really encapsulated stories of when a natural disaster hit a community.

And the federal government wasn't showing up to help.

It was neighbors and neighbors who often had very different political ideas or different places in the community, literally coming together to clean out people's houses, to provide food, to get the kids educated, and that the kinds of trust that started being rebuilt in the wake of that community was something that that gave them hope for the future.

>> Well, let's let me grab another phone call here.

This is Mariana in Rochester.

Michael, thanks for that email.

This is Mariana on the phone.

Hey, go ahead.

>> Hey.

Good afternoon.

I'm calling as just a couple of comments because I worked as a technical assistance provider on climate change grants, community climate change grants, which which are in the in the realm of EJ and wanted to point a couple of things regarding the question about like, who is considered disadvantaged community.

There was a map, which I can't because I'm in my car now.

I can't remember off the top of my head, but there was an amazing map that was available through, so EPA, which showed very clearly what the disadvantaged communities are in terms of pollution, in terms of health, in terms of economic position and everything.

So when people were applying, when communities were applying, applying for grants, they had to show exactly the map where they will conduct the activities.

So it's not some theoretical term.

It's a very, very specific, very statistically and census and health informed database.

And the second thing, this whole program I worked on, this community change grants, it was shot immediately in February of this year.

And it was stopped.

But I just to the last point, what was interesting that one of the projects I supporting was in Kentucky, and it had to do with flood, and they were trying to create the create the system to prevent the people dying, basically drowning with the flood and everything.

And as the program was stopped, they, they submitted the grant, but they were never funded.

But that flooding really happened after a couple of months.

And it was like very heartbreaking.

It was a very, very poor community in Kentucky.

>> That's it.

Mariana, thank you for that.

doctor, white Newsom, you want to start there?

>> Yeah.

Mariana.

Thank you for for those points.

And and I will say the the the the tool that you're speaking of is the climate and economic justice screening tool, better known as the Cjis.

And you are so right.

part of the my office was responsible for developing this geographic information system or GIS mapping tool that definitely used socioeconomic, environmental and and other indicators to really identify those disadvantaged communities.

Right.

so, yes it is not just something that we pull out the air and, you know, pick the community of our choice.

It was something that was very scientific and technical and legally durable, which is why it didn't have race in that tool.

So thank you, Mariana.

And I will just say, you know, the thing about this is that when we think about Mariana, to your other point, you know, the billions of dollars of funds that have been stolen from communities that have been literally clawed back at the start of this new administration, funds that were promised to community organizations from programs like the EPA's environmental, you know, environmental justice, community change grants it has real impact.

And so you know, there are communities that I still hear from across this country that are unable to, you know, finish the projects that they've started, that they've had to shut their doors, they've had to lay off staff.

you know, and that is a real thing.

and that impacts all of us.

So it has real consequences.

What this current administration has done and decided to do, I think very haphazardly and not really be intentional about the seeds that the previous administration planted and then importance of supporting that work, particularly community work.

That, again, is just trying to make life better.

And like, again, the folks in Kentucky and many other places build a more resilient infrastructure, both physical and social.

So thank you for your comments.

>> Dr.

Korfmacher is someone who's a faculty member in the UR Institute for Human Health and the environment.

I just wanted to ask you briefly all throughout this year, whenever we've talked to people who work in research in various ways, our listeners have been very curious to know if your work has been affected by any of the changes that have happened nationally, or if there's any.

>> well, maybe less work, less funding.

I don't know if anything's changed for you.

>> I think looking towards the future, there's a lot of concern about cuts to and changes in the way research is funded.

And remembering that, especially in our field, research is like a tree.

You know, we think about the the cures and the problem, problem solving strategies that that affect us on a daily basis.

But those are all under leaned by understanding mechanisms and basic research that has helped us learn how to do those things that are problem solving.

And so the cuts that are affecting everything from basic research to applied research eventually you're going to have real impacts on our lives.

That's concerning.

>> When we come back from our break, we're going to ask Dr.

Korfmacher.

We're going to ask Dr.

Jalonne White-Newsome what their work entails going forward now.

And just because Jalonne White-Newsome is not in The White House anymore doesn't mean she's not working on the issue of environmental justice.

And we're going to talk about everything from corporate responsibility to some of the work that if you watch Dr.

White Newsom's speeches, she often talks about the disparity in things like urban heat and where we have real problems with climate change and disparities in different communities.

Dr.

Korfmacher working on a number of different things.

So we'll come right back and continue the conversation on Connections.

Coming up in our second hour, the Rochester community players are celebrating 100 years with one of their most famous stars, Mimi Kennedy is known for her work in films like Midnight in Paris or CBS sitcoms, or her appearances on The Merv Griffin Show.

She's a Rochester, grew up here, got into the RCP when she was just 12 years old, and she will join us to talk about the value of community players next, our.

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Mary Cariola.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson all right.

Dr.

Jalonne White-Newsome is with us.

The former federal chief environmental justice officer for The White House worked in the Biden administration in a job and really in kind of a department in an effort that was very quickly dismissed by the Trump administration.

But you heard Dr.

White Newsom talk about what it was like not only working for the president and the vice president, but trying to see how initiatives like Justice40 could be carried out with equity, you know, with success all across this country.

So now you're in a different role, but you're still working in this field.

Here.

Take me through some of what your next goals are and what you're doing now.

>> Sure.

So a couple months ago, I started as an associate professor at the University of Michigan's School of Environment and Sustainability, working in the Environmental justice specialization.

And so really excited to be with a group of folks that get it and have, you know, very committed, had one of the first environmental justice programs in a university across the country.

So what I'm digging into now, I'm focused less on federal stuff and focused on local and state action.

and part of the research that I'm building is going to really focus on two things.

One, around corporate responsibility and basically what that means to me, having I'm a trained engineer, and I spent about 15 years earlier in my career in private industry and really saw the impacts that industry can have on community.

And what I want to do is really encourage corporations to level up their sustainability goals, make sure that environmental justice is a part of it, and really think about, you know, corporations create these goals, but they don't create them in conjunction or in collaboration with the communities that they are actually in.

And so part of what I want to do is figure out what are the metrics, what are the indicators, what are the values that communities you know, really share and want to see corporations do better in meeting as they produce and kind of do their thing.

So really build this table between corporations and communities.

to, to to coexist and to make sure that environmental justice and sustainability remain a priority.

>> Is there an example in the corporate world that you would point to and say this, this is doing it right?

>> So, I mean, I think there are some corporations, particularly those that are be certified that have taken steps to acknowledge the the life cycle of impacts that a company can have in communities.

I think we can go a little bit deeper.

and so you have these, you know, voluntary certifications that a lot of corporations take on, whether it's ISO or kind of like the B Corp certification.

But what I, what I haven't seen is where it's been more of a community driven process that says this is what's really important to me in this community.

As you sit here and operate, and how do we make sure that my values and the things that I want are a part of your standards?

so I don't have a example, but I think that's something that, you communities can actually you know get excited about.

And I'm excited to delve into that a little bit deeper.

>> And what do you say to leaders in the corporate world who might say, look, I want to get on board, but what you are describing in my company is too expensive.

That is not a change we could make.

We often hear that in issues like producer responsibility, packaging, and I know people who've worked to get those bills passed.

I know people who work in companies that, they really feel pretty squeezed.

Their margins are real thin.

They're really worried about staying in business.

So it's not always like, you know, the to me, it's not always that literally.

The guy who lives on top of a mountain, Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy in West Virginia, who has to take a helicopter to his mountain mansion while people are struggling and dying below him.

It's not always that.

And so what do you say to the corporations who are going like, I want to, we can't afford it.

>> I mean, here's the thing.

It's it's going to cost you in one way or the other.

you know, I think about it doesn't cost you to have a conversation.

it doesn't cost you to really sit down and understand.

if you are, which corporations have these websites that say we're for the community, we're in the community, you know, what does that really mean?

So to me, if you take a little bit of time to build relationships with the folks that are around you, you know, when it comes to some of the lawsuits that that might happen because of the way you're producing when it comes to you wanting to expand production having those relationships with the communities that you're in, I think it there's, there's cost that you avoid if you have these conversations up front and figure out the best way to coexist and understand what each other's values are.

so yeah, I mean, it's always going to be this thing of, you know, unfortunately, you know, if it doesn't affect, you know, it needs to, you know, either increase my bottom line or save me some money or you know, reduce my reputational risk.

Like, I know those are the things that companies value, but I want to push us to do a little bit more.

And I and I know that there are people in these companies that that get it.

And I think what I'm trying to do with my research is make it an easy way to start that conversation.

>> Also on your list is working on issues related to extreme flooding, which we've talked some about, and extreme heat.

And even in Rochester, you know, we get 100in of snow a year.

But when we have summers like this one, very hot, long extended stretches, we hit July here and we had the driest stretch we've had from July to Halloween that we've ever had.

And that included in July and August, 9697 degree days, on and on and on.

And in a place where it's pretty well documented, there's less green space in the city.

There's less green space in the poorer ZIP codes.

Can you just describe a little bit when you think environmental justice and you think about extreme heat in communities, what you describe for audiences and what you want them to know?

>> Yeah.

You know, so this is pretty personal for me.

And you know, the only reason that I got into extreme heat research is because of my grandparents.

They were in their 70s and 80s living on the west side of Detroit.

And I saw how the heat was impacting their health, even being in their homes.

and so when you think about folks that you know, in many cases low income, particularly seniors don't want to turn on their air conditioning because of the cost, because they're on a limited income.

And so they're sitting in a home that is like 90 to 95 degrees.

that is a public health risk.

when you think about oftentimes they're in these locations, like you said, that are urban heat islands, which basically means not a lot of trees.

And it's just a concrete jungle that's sucking up the heat and making the whole environment hotter.

you know, these are the realities.

And that's why extreme heat is still the number one killer of folks across this country.

Which is a shame that people shouldn't be dying from heat.

So as I watch my grandparents struggle with that and realized that the city infrastructure, both the physical and social infrastructure was doing nothing to protect people, we needed to do something different.

But then you add on again, these same areas that are dealing with heat, and then you throw in a flood that happens during the summer.

And again, my parents, their home flooded five times in two years.

And you know, when a flood happens, it particularly in a place where you don't have an abundance of resources to to move or just it becomes, again, another burden.

So when you think about the cumulative burdens of extreme heat and flooding, and then you think about all the other environmental stressors that are happening in communities that are dealing with pollution.

And some of the things that Katrina is working on.

You know, that is a lot.

And so part of what I want to do in my research is really quantify that burden.

But then think about what is the local infrastructure that we need to put in place that actually allows people to recover when they're hit from all these different things?

Because we're not going to be able to rely on the federal government.

So that is a charge for us locally to step up our game.

>> I've been feeling for the last ten days or so that, if what has happened in Jamaica was Florida or Georgia or South Carolina, it would be in our consciousness every day.

And what happened in Jamaica was in our consciousness.

I mean, I say, who's covering it?

Is it in in your newscast for a little while?

But a lot of Americans have moved on.

And if that was on the American, you know, sort of mainland, which it will be again, you know, it's hard to even look at those pictures and think what the future must be like for those communities.

I'm talking about.

In the short term, just surviving it.

And then the long term rebuilding from it.

So Dr.

Korfmacher, when you look forward in your own work here or.

Well, what's going on right now?

What's going on in the future that you're excited about?

>> Well, actually, related to to heat, it's ironic to be talking about heat in a place like Rochester, which is pretty famous for being cold.

But when you think about the kinds of housing that we have here, people are actually more vulnerable to heat in some ways than they might be in Miami.

>> So interesting.

>> Because our housing stock was built for a colder environment, because when we've done surveys most low income households in the, in our area do not have air conditioning, whereas if you live in Atlanta, you probably have air conditioning.

So we're actually pretty uniquely vulnerable to increases in heat.

And it's it turns out that when heat is worse, air quality is worse.

We are projecting more heat and worse air quality, which have multiplicative health effects.

And research at our center.

Turns out that the University of Rochester in our area is a hub for air pollution research.

And as someone who focuses on community engagement and addressing community needs, most of our community has generally thought our air quality is really good.

So we haven't been worried about it.

We haven't worked on it, but those wildfire incursions of the last couple of years have really raised air quality in people's minds as as of concern.

So we are moving forward with a couple of projects that I'm very excited about.

Most recently working with the Worker Justice Center to develop educational materials for farmworkers on the dual risks of exposure to extreme heat and air quality, and how to protect yourself.

we're working to try to continue the the program that the city piloted when they were doing their new urban forestry plan of tree ambassadors and helping people understand the importance of the tree canopies that the city is.

This city is trying to plant lots and lots of trees.

Right.

helping people understand the importance of those trees for their health and also talking with the city about trying to build up our network of air quality sensors so that people can get real time information about the kinds of, of air quality that we're experiencing, what measures they might take to protect themselves, especially during the summer when we're also exposed to heat.

So those are three things that I'm really excited about partnering in the next couple of years.

>> You and your colleagues are welcome back.

Anytime you want to talk about these at length, it's really important.

And let me close with this.

Dr.

Jalonne White-Newsome has spent the hour with us.

The former federal chief environmental justice officer in the Biden White House.

And that's a position that has been eliminated for now.

We'll see in the future what changes.

There's a parallel universe in which a lot of what we've talked about this hour is not inflected with politics, you know?

So if it's air pollution, if it's urban heat, extreme flooding, climate change preparations, the coal industry and its environmental effects and its and its health effects.

But but everything is political now.

What's what's a way that in the next ten years, when we're talking about this, it doesn't feel so political.

What has to happen?

Do you think there's any path to that?

>> So I think inherently there's some politics that's a part of anything.

But I think what's most important over these next couple of years, like I've said this, next 1100 days, is that communities across this country figure out what is it that they really want.

how do we rebuild to the community that we want to see and that people, corporations, foundations and others step up to make that a reality?

I think that still takes a little bit of politics because it takes your your local politicians, your city councils, the folks that are crafting policy and pushing it.

but what I've seen across the country is that despite what's happening, there is a movement that continues, you know, in communities there are local community leaders that are stepping up and running for offices in these political positions.

and so I'm quite hopeful that the next ten years we are going to be hopefully primed and ready to build out that vision that we want to see for communities across this country.

>> I just saw a video this morning as as Nancy Pelosi announces her retirement saw a video of when she was first speaker and President George W. Bush at the State of the Union introduced her as Madam Speaker.

And it was beautiful.

I didn't remember the moment.

It was really beautiful.

It was really he told this beautiful story about her dad and what an incredible achievement it was.

Both parties stood up and applauded.

Bob Inglis, former congressman, Republican from South Carolina, has been on this program, talked about talking to his children about climate change and realizing he needed to change and do the work.

There's these moments where you go, like, we don't have to be so divided all the time, and then you're like, well, we lost that.

But but we don't have to lose it forever.

I just want to thank Dr.

Jalonne White-Newsome for taking the time to come in.

It's always amazing to have people who've worked for The White House and worked for the federal government at a high level, and thank you for sharing your expertise and coming in and talking to us about these important issues.

Appreciate it.

And I want to thank Dr.

Katrina Korfmacher, a faculty member in the E.R., Institute for Human Health and the environment, for helping set this up and for coming in here.

And I look forward to our next conversation.

>> My pleasure.

I look forward.

>> To more Connections coming up in just a moment.

>> Oh.

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