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Behind the climate-bond curtain – POLITICO  POLITICO
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Nathan Smith and his team achieved significant milestones by aligning various business lines within Cadmus to amplify their impact on climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.
With decades of experience, they’ve cultivated an interdisciplinary firm capable of tackling global climate challenges. Their focus now is on leveraging these capabilities collectively to address climate issues in exceptional ways.
Cadmus recently achieved significant milestones by collaborating between its water and homeland security teams to support EPA in enhancing resilience in the water sector.
Additionally, the company used its climate resilience team to assist FEMA in preparing for and responding to more frequent and severe natural disasters caused by climate change. Furthermore, Cadmus has prioritized climate equity in global projects like the Jamaica Energy Resilience Alliance and the Reconnecting Communities Institute.
“Nathan Smith has been essential to Cadmus’ growth throughout his tenure, both as a business leader and as a subject matter expert,” said Cadmus President and CEO Ian Kline. “He brings exceptional insight and strategies to help our clients address the myriad complex challenges and opportunities presented by climate change and fosters an environment within his division that empowers rising leaders to do the same. His vision and steady leadership in the dynamic public sector market are invaluable as Cadmus expands, builds new connections between practice areas, and continues to strengthen our capabilities.”
Why Watch
In 2024, Smith’s team is focused on accelerating and maximizing the impact of critical clean energy, climate and resilience programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Through this work, they’re helping federal, state and local government clients develop programs that will have a lasting impact, creating a legacy that continues to positively benefit the U.S. and its citizens far beyond the present moment.
“It has become abundantly clear that climate change is not limited to a single industry or issue,” he said. “For real progress to be made in reducing the impact from climate change and building resilience going forward, climate considerations must be built into everything we do. That interconnectedness is the beacon guiding Cadmus strategy and growth and will continue to be essential to our vision in the future.”
Fun fact: A significant part of Smith’s work centers on sustainable transportation, which remains both a professional and personal passion for him. He’s dedicated to biking the 60-mile round-trip commute to the office once a week and using his electric vehicle for the remaining days.
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Opponents say the pool is a waste of water.
Opponents say the pool is a waste of water.

This story was written by Associated Press writer Jennifer Sinco Kelleher. We’re now publishing some AP stories under a new partnership that will also see Civil Beat stories distributed nationwide by the AP.
HONOLULU (AP) — A judge has halted plans for an artificial wave pool until developers can revise an environmental assessment to address concerns raised by Native Hawaiians and others who say the project is unnecessary in the birthplace of surfing and a waste of water.
In granting a temporary injunction Tuesday, Hawaii Environmental Court Judge Shirley Kawamura ordered a new review of concerns including impacts on water supply and anticipated growth in the area.
A group of Native Hawaiians and other residents filed a lawsuit last year challenging the Hawaii Community Development Authority’s approval of the 19-acre Honokea Surf Village planned for West Oahu, which found that it will have no significant environmental impacts.
Opponents of the project say the wave pool, with a capacity of 7 million gallons, isn’t needed less than 2 miles from the ocean and another existing wave pool.
Project backer and renowned Native Hawaiian waterman Brian Keaulana has said artificial waves are useful for competitive surfers to train on perfect breaks that are sometimes elusive in the ocean.
Customizable surf, he said, can also help create ideal conditions to teach surfing and lifesaving skills.
“Our goal of creating a place that combines cultural education with skill-based recreation must be done in a way that does not harm our natural resources,” he said Wednesday in a statement. “The court’s ruling allows us an opportunity to revisit the environmental concerns, especially our water resources.”
The judge said in her ruling that there was “insufficient evidence for the HCDA to determine whether there is a likelihood of irrevocable commitment of natural resources and whether secondary and cumulative impacts of water use, injection, land use changes and wildlife mitigation would likely lead to a significant impact, thereby favoring an injunction.”
The current assessment is “ambiguous as to the specific manner, time frame, and actual daily water use implicated by the initial and periodic filling of the lagoon,” the ruling said.
However, the development authority did make sufficient assessment of potential impact on historic preservation and burials, it added. The HCDA declined to comment Wednesday on the ruling.
Developers say the project would be drawing from a private water company separate from Oahu’s water utility, using a supply that was committed decades ago.
But the judge noted that they draw from the same underlying aquifer.
“Thus, additional analysis is needed to fully capture the potential cumulative impact of anticipated growth and subsequent increased competing water demand,” the ruling said.
The state attorney general’s office said it was reviewing the decision.
Healani Sonoda-Pale, one of the plaintiffs, called the ruling a “pono decision,” using a Hawaiian word that can mean “righteous.”
“Much has been made about Hawaiians being on both sides of the issue,” she said. “Building a wave pool is not a cultural practice. The threat of a wave pool … is so immense in terms of how many people it could affect.”
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KYODO NEWS – 12 hours ago – 10:38 | All, Japan
Japan faces growing risks to its food security due mainly to climate change and a rapid decrease in the number of domestic farmers, an annual government report on the agricultural industry said Friday.
Also citing factors such as an unstable grain supply following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and high competition in food procurement amid an increase in global population, the report said Japan’s food security is “at a historic turning point.”
According to the report, endorsed by the Cabinet on Friday, the number of people in Japan who mainly engage in agriculture was some 1.16 million in 2023 down by more than half from 2.4 million in 2000.
Of the total, only some 20 percent were under 60 years of age, it said, noting the need for measures to boost the number of farmers and introduce more advanced technology into the industry.
The report said that more than 90 percent of Japan’s agriculture, forestry and fisheries products as well as foods were transported by truck in fiscal 2023, which ended in March, and that the use of trains and ships has been enhanced in the current year.
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KYODO NEWS – 2 hours ago – 20:41 | All, Japan
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Our next vehicle purchase will affect the planet’s future so we need information, says the show’s former presenter
Top Gear could reinvent itself as an eco-friendly car show advising people on how to make the right environmental choices, Richard Hammond has suggested.
Hammond, who presented the show with Jeremy Clarkson and James May until the trio departed in 2015, said that buying a car is a decision that affects the planet’s future.
The BBC announced in November that Top Gear would not return for the foreseeable future following the crash which left Freddie Flintoff with serious injuries.
Hammond, Clarkson and May now present The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime Video, and Clarkson recently confirmed that the show will end after the next series.
Asked if the disappearance of both programmes meant the end of the road for driving shows, Hammond told Radio Times: “I very much doubt it. Top Gear was on hiatus when we took it on so it’ll come back one day, although in what shape I don’t know.
“The decision to buy our next car is probably the most significant contribution we can make, as individuals, to the future, so we need to be informed. Maybe that’s the route it could take?”
He went on: “As for shows like The Grand Tour, I don’t think the human desire for adventure is ever going to be sated. It’ll continue in different forms, modified to suit its time.”
In the interview, Hammond recalled his own life-threatening Top Gear accident in 2006, and a second high-speed crash in 2017 while filming The Grand Tour.
They did not put him off driving stunts, he said, because he views them as “learning experiences. If everything always goes well, you never learn how to cope when something goes wrong.”
Hammond is not the first Top Gear presenter to suggest that the show should shift its focus to environmental questions and whether we need to drive cars.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme last year, James May said that there must be “another way of doing a show about cars that will embrace more fulsomely many of the questions being asked about cars that weren’t being asked about cars.”
He said that this could involve “greater scrutiny” of the way that cars are powered. “Like everything else in the world, cars are now under scrutiny: how they are used, how they are made, what they are made of, what they are used for, how we take responsibility for them, how they are powered.
“All these things make them a fascinating subject for this time.”
Clarkson, however, does not agree.
Writing in his column in The Sun, Clarkson said: “I sort of see what James is saying. But, naturally, I don’t agree with him. Because I think cars have never been more dull.”
He added: “The fact is that TV car shows appeal mostly to people who like cars. But it’s a struggle to like a modern car. It’s a struggle to review one as well because, if it’s electric, it’d be like reviewing a chest freezer.”
Clarkson said that driving is now a “chore” anyway, thanks to the spread of speed cameras, 20mph speed limits and Ulez charges.
In another column, Clarkson said “the problem with environmentalism” is that “it’s never rooted in reality”.
He explained: “They tell us to sell our cars and use a bicycle instead, which is fine if you’re going to the shops for a pint of milk but not if you’re going into town to buy a fridge freezer. Or if you’re going to Glasgow.”

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EXPERT OPINION
In defense of our legal system, the law that is developed in courts and legislatures quite regularly reflects the wisdom of the average citizen. When it does not, we should be skeptical.
May 30, 2024 at 02:44 PM
5 minute read
Environmental Law
In defense of our legal system, the law that is developed in courts and legislatures quite regularly reflects the wisdom of the average citizen.  When it does not, we should be skeptical.
For example, who should set national energy policy?  If you ask average citizens this question and give them a choice between the Hawaii Supreme Court or the U.S. Congress, I think you’d be hard pressed to find many people who would place that responsibility to five individuals in black robes sitting in a courtroom in Honolulu.
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Yale Climate Connections
In an empty wind-swept field in Richmond, California, next to the county landfill, a company called RavenSr has plotted out land and won permits to build a factory to convert landfill waste to transportation-grade hydrogen for powering vehicles. Six miles away, Moxion Power has laid the concrete foundation for a factory to make energy storage batteries for freight trucks and mobile uses.
RavenSR and Moxion Power are among more than 300 companies across the U.S. launching clean energy manufacturing projects with the help of tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, consumers have used the law’s tax credits to purchase 1.46 million climate-friendly electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel cell cars.
The most far-reaching climate law in history, the Inflation Reduction Act is catalyzing a transition in the U.S. economy toward cleaner energy and cleaner transportation — a shift the International Energy Agency, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others say must happen for the world to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases to the levels scientists say would avert the most catastrophic and irreversible climate chaos.
Those safeguard levels are a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 from 2010 levels and net zero emissions by 2050 to limit global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius — a target that 195 countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The Biden administration’s Department of Energy estimates that the Inflation Reduction Act along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will drive down U.S. emissions by 40% from 2005 levels by 2030, a conclusion also reached in an independent study in Science.
Combined with new Environmental Protection Agency rules restricting tailpipe emissions from future trucks and cars, limiting power plant emissions, and requiring capping of methane leaks from oil and gas exploration, as well as state and private sector action, the U.S. is on track to reduce emissions 50% by 2030, the Department of Energy forecasts.
But what happens if these climate laws are gutted or reversed?
2030 is less than six years away. What happens in the next four of them will affect our chances of avoiding the worst climate chaos, experts say.
That’s why 2024 is a climate election.
“Why this election is so important and why it is a climate election is because we are out of time,” said Lori Lodes, executive director and co-founder of Climate Power, a nonprofit working on protecting climate policy, speaking to reporters recently.
The climate is changing, and our journalists are here to help you make sense of it. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter and never miss a story.
Read: Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
“The choice in this election could not be more stark and the stakes could not be higher,” said Pete Maysmith, League of Conservation Voters senior vice president of campaigns, in an interview.
“Biden has taken 322 positive actions around climate and the environment. A recent one is the rules issued for power plants,” he continued. “Donald Trump basically auctioned off our climate and environmental laws — auctioned off our future — to the tune of $1 billion to oil executives when he met them in Mar-a-Lago.”
Maysmith was referring to a meeting Trump had with chief executives of major oil companies in which, according to the Washington Post, he told the executives that if they donated $1 billion to his reelection campaign, he would prioritize reversing President Biden’s environmental laws and rules once back in office.
In Trump’s first term as president, he overturned an estimated 100 environmental regulations and pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. He shrank the EPA and required that the words “climate change” be removed from its website. On the campaign trail this time, he has repeatedly said one of his top priorities is to boost oil and gas production and free up more public land to “Drill, baby, drill.”
Not everyone gives Biden high grades for his climate work.
“Biden hasn’t been a climate panacea,” said Jeff Ordower, North American director of 350 Action, a part of the advocacy group 350.org, criticizing the Biden administration for allowing a record number of new oil and gas drilling permits and greenlighting of the Willow Project oil exploration in Alaska.
But Ordower emphasized that the presidential contest taking shape is not between Biden and some stronger environmentalist. It is between Biden and someone who would “walk us backwards” on climate progress and who blatantly dismisses climate science.
“We have an opportunity to really push for climate solutions at the scale and scope we need with an administration that’s been friendly towards solutions and that is persuadable towards pausing fossil fuels, versus an opponent who is not either of those, an opponent that pulled us out of the Paris Agreement and who will walk us back,” Ordower said in a telephone conversation.
It is not just warnings from environmental leaders that describe what could happen under a Trump second term. Trump’s own advisers and conservative economists and policymakers have spelled out a plan for a new Trump administration. Their Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project is a self-described playbook of what a new Trump presidency would do in its first 180 days.
Among Project 2025 priorities: “Support repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which established new programs and are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests, and support the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs.”
Regarding Department of Energy reforms, it would: “Unleash private-sector energy innovation by ending government interference in energy decisions,” as well as “Stop the war on oil and natural gas,” and “Refocus FERC on ensuring that customers have affordable and reliable electricity, natural gas, and oil and no longer allow it to favor special interests and progressive causes.”
As to the Environmental Protection Agency, Project 2025 states: “EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government. This will require significant restructuring and streamlining of the agency.” It calls for downsizing the agency.
Project 2025 calls for reversing the bans on exports of liquefied natural gas and on the use of hydrofluorocarbons or refrigerant chemicals that even manufacturers favor.
A recent report from Carbon Brief, an international clearinghouse of climate research, calculated that reelecting Trump to a second term would result in 4 billion tons of climate-warming gases added to the atmosphere by 2030 – an amount it said is equal to the yearly emissions of all of Europe and Japan combined.
“A second Trump term that successfully dismantles Biden’s climate legacy would likely end any global hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5C,” Carbon Brief said.
Given these dire predictions, a strange paradox exists in voting data. According to the Environmental Voter Project, a bipartisan get-out-the-vote nonprofit, people for whom climate change and the environment are top concerns are statically less inclined to participate in voting than the general population.
“In the 19 states we work in, we’ve identified 4.8 million individuals who are registered to vote and highly likely to call climate and environment their number one worry, but they are unlikely to vote in November,” said Executive Director Nathaniel Stinnett in an interview. “Why? Because we looked at their voting history and they didn’t vote in 2022 or in the last presidential election.”
So the Environmental Voter Project has been conducting a massive get-out-the-vote campaign, with volunteers going door to door convincing identified environmentalists to vote — but not advocating for any specific candidates.
Read: ‘Basic peer pressure’: The plan to turn out millions of pro-climate voters in the 2024 U.S. election
“We turn nonvoting environmentalists into consistent voters, that’s it. We are not in the mind-changing business, just in the behavior-changing business.” Stinnett said. He wants people who care about the climate and environment to go to the polls, for all elections — local, state, and federal — because time is of the essence.
We help millions of people understand climate change and what to do about it. Help us reach even more people like you.
Longtime journalist and communications specialist Barbara Grady is a freelance writer focusing on sustainability, the climate crisis, and what we can do about it. She returned to reporting after retiring… More by Barbara Grady

ACCESSIBILITY AT YALE

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Forrester received 278 client inquiries on sustainability from August 2022 to October 2023. While people sometimes use the term “sustainability” to encompass poverty, health, and other societal issues, all 278 of our client inquiries centered on environmental sustainability. This demonstrates not only a growing sense of urgency but also a collective acceptance that the primary focus of sustainability must be the environment. This report provides insights about inquiries across practices, people, technology, and the market. Sustainability leaders and risk pros can use this report to better understand the state and trajectory of the sustainability market, challenges clients face, and initiatives they are pursuing.
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A majority of Oregonians say the environment should be given priority over economic growth, 2021 survey shows. (Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service)
Despite our green reputation, Oregon lags far behind other Western states when it comes to environmental protection, and Oregon Democratic leaders are doing little to make it better. 
A raft of unfortunate recent headlines prove the point.
Earlier this month, fish and wildlife officials said three wolves, two golden eagles and one mountain lion were all poisoned in the latest episode of what has become an epidemic of poaching. Residents in Morrow County have been forced to endure toxic drinking water after state regulators fell asleep at the wheel and let corporate agriculture interests pollute the groundwater. Amid a global extinction crisis, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has decided that trapping and trucking endangered salmon around dams is the same as fixing those dams to allow fish to freely navigate their homewaters.
Even the most high-profile recent improvements to Oregon’s environmental laws, the sweeping updates to private forest standards called the Private Forest Accord, took the threat of a ballot measure to enact. 
What happened to the Oregon that pioneered environmental protection?
The explanation is clearly not due to voters demanding dirty water and dying salmon runs. The Oregon Values and Beliefs Survey found in 2021 that 77% of Oregonians said that protection of the environment should be given priority over economic growth, making protecting our forests, wildlife, clean air and clean water. Still, Oregon’s elected officials, including Democratic leaders, view land, wildlife and water not as state treasures but as trading stock for cutting deals. Today’s leaders behave more like Joe Manchin than Tom McCall. Manchin is the U.S. Democratic senator from West Virginia who’s blocked bills on renewable energy while McCall, Oregon’s legendary former governor, was a big supporter of Oregon’s landmark bottle bill. 
Despite the Oregon logging lobby having a terrible history with steep-slope clear-cutting, toxic aerial chemical sprays and huge campaign contributions to far-right candidates and causes, Democratic leaders often look to curry favor with them by blocking legislation to strengthen environmental protections or appointing their political allies to key legislative committees and citizen commissions.
This sort of cynical politics was on display recently when Gov. Tina Kotek was set to nominate Heath Curtiss, a professional lobbyist for a logging company,, to the Board of Forestry until conservation groups pushed back. Curtiss works for Hampton Lumber, a company with a vested interest in weak state forest logging rules. The Board of Forestry writes and oversees those rules.
It’s bad enough that Kotek would think to reward this particular company with a board seat given that Hampton Lumber donated $250,000 to her opponent, Betsy Johnson, in the 2022 gubernatorial election. While that is bizarre, more troubling is that the governor somehow thinks that a lobbyist for a logging company will be able to represent the Oregon public and not the financial interests of his employer.
Oregonians should be even more frustrated that the governor side-swiped a nomination for another prospective Board of Forestry member, Bob Van Dyk, when conservation advocates rightly opposed the logging lobbyist. Instead of thanking wildlife and clean water advocates for blowing the whistle, she pulled the nomination for a better qualified candidate – someone whose values on the environment actually align with the voters who put Kotek in office.
It’s painful to watch Oregon’s elected leaders stumble around on environmental policy when problems like climate change, extinction crisis, polluted groundwater are so urgent. It’s unclear where Kotek will go next with Board of Forestry appointments, not to mention important upcoming appointments to the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission.
What should be clear is that the environmentally minded voters who supported her in 2022 and helped her overcome the millions of dollars logging companies and other far-right entities spent trying to defeat her, didn’t vote for this.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
 
by Daniel Robertson, Oregon Capital Chronicle
May 29, 2024
by Daniel Robertson, Oregon Capital Chronicle
May 29, 2024
Despite our green reputation, Oregon lags far behind other Western states when it comes to environmental protection, and Oregon Democratic leaders are doing little to make it better. 
A raft of unfortunate recent headlines prove the point.
Earlier this month, fish and wildlife officials said three wolves, two golden eagles and one mountain lion were all poisoned in the latest episode of what has become an epidemic of poaching. Residents in Morrow County have been forced to endure toxic drinking water after state regulators fell asleep at the wheel and let corporate agriculture interests pollute the groundwater. Amid a global extinction crisis, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has decided that trapping and trucking endangered salmon around dams is the same as fixing those dams to allow fish to freely navigate their homewaters.
Even the most high-profile recent improvements to Oregon’s environmental laws, the sweeping updates to private forest standards called the Private Forest Accord, took the threat of a ballot measure to enact. 
What happened to the Oregon that pioneered environmental protection?
The explanation is clearly not due to voters demanding dirty water and dying salmon runs. The Oregon Values and Beliefs Survey found in 2021 that 77% of Oregonians said that protection of the environment should be given priority over economic growth, making protecting our forests, wildlife, clean air and clean water. Still, Oregon’s elected officials, including Democratic leaders, view land, wildlife and water not as state treasures but as trading stock for cutting deals. Today’s leaders behave more like Joe Manchin than Tom McCall. Manchin is the U.S. Democratic senator from West Virginia who’s blocked bills on renewable energy while McCall, Oregon’s legendary former governor, was a big supporter of Oregon’s landmark bottle bill. 
Despite the Oregon logging lobby having a terrible history with steep-slope clear-cutting, toxic aerial chemical sprays and huge campaign contributions to far-right candidates and causes, Democratic leaders often look to curry favor with them by blocking legislation to strengthen environmental protections or appointing their political allies to key legislative committees and citizen commissions.
This sort of cynical politics was on display recently when Gov. Tina Kotek was set to nominate Heath Curtiss, a professional lobbyist for a logging company,, to the Board of Forestry until conservation groups pushed back. Curtiss works for Hampton Lumber, a company with a vested interest in weak state forest logging rules. The Board of Forestry writes and oversees those rules.
It’s bad enough that Kotek would think to reward this particular company with a board seat given that Hampton Lumber donated $250,000 to her opponent, Betsy Johnson, in the 2022 gubernatorial election. While that is bizarre, more troubling is that the governor somehow thinks that a lobbyist for a logging company will be able to represent the Oregon public and not the financial interests of his employer.
Oregonians should be even more frustrated that the governor side-swiped a nomination for another prospective Board of Forestry member, Bob Van Dyk, when conservation advocates rightly opposed the logging lobbyist. Instead of thanking wildlife and clean water advocates for blowing the whistle, she pulled the nomination for a better qualified candidate – someone whose values on the environment actually align with the voters who put Kotek in office.
It’s painful to watch Oregon’s elected leaders stumble around on environmental policy when problems like climate change, extinction crisis, polluted groundwater are so urgent. It’s unclear where Kotek will go next with Board of Forestry appointments, not to mention important upcoming appointments to the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission.
What should be clear is that the environmentally minded voters who supported her in 2022 and helped her overcome the millions of dollars logging companies and other far-right entities spent trying to defeat her, didn’t vote for this.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
 
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.
Daniel Robertson is a retired museum director and attorney. He is an historic preservationist, conservationist and former president of the Oregon Wild Board. Daniel is a native Oregonian and lives in Douglas County on 50 acres of forest and farmland.
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Fawn Dendy, a resident of Brown Grove in Virginia, talks with Adam Ortiz, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic region, about pollution and land use concerns in her community.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin spoke at the Environment Virginia Symposium in Lexington, VA, on April 10, 2024.

Fawn Dendy, a resident of Brown Grove in Virginia, talks with Adam Ortiz, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic region, about pollution and land use concerns in her community.
Some environmental justice advocates in Virginia have denounced recent actions by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin that they say undermine efforts to protect vulnerable communities in the state.
The governor has appointed a half-dozen members to the Virginia Council on Environmental Justice whose professional or business interests, advocates say, may put them at odds with the council’s mission. He also recently vetoed a bill that would have given the council additional authority and more funding to travel around the state to communities affected by environmental justice concerns.
In March, Virginia legislators narrowly passed a bill that would have provided additional travel funding and authority to the council. A fiscal impact statement for the bill suggested that the additional travel would have increased the council’s travel costs from $1,500 to about $10,000 per year. The measure also would have required Youngkin to fill vacancies on the council by the end of August.
Former Gov. Ralph Northam revived former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s version of the council as an advisory panel to help the administration “protect vulnerable communities from disproportionate impacts of pollution.” Northam signed a bill making it a permanent body of the executive branch in 2019 — as environmental justice issues in the state reached a boiling point over infrastructure projects with a disproportionate impact on underrepresented communities. 
Virginia code states that the council should consist of 27 members, 21 of them citizens that represent American Indian tribes, community organizations, the public health sector and civil rights organizations, among others.
After the bill was passed by the legislature — but before the veto — Youngkin appointed five individuals to fill some of the vacancies on the council. At the end of March, he filled another vacancy, adding a total of six appointees to the council.
The appointees each work for companies or represent companies that are regulated entities whose projects — such as landfills and natural gas facilities — have historically impacted environmental justice communities.
“None of the … appointees represent any of the seven constituencies [that] council members are required by law to represent,” the letter stated.
The governor’s appointments include Lisa Kardell, director of public affairs for Waste Management Inc.; Courtney Malveaux, principal of Jackson Lewis PC; Eddie Ramirez of Ramirez Contracting, which specializes in construction site preparation; Morgan Whayland, director of government affairs for Virginia Natural Gas; and Ronald Olswyn White, vice president of Southside Electric Cooperative. At the end of March, Youngkin appointed Elizabeth Cherokee Williamson, a partner at Richmond-based Balch & Bingham, LLP, who served as lead counsel in a case opposing Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
When asked how the appointees further environmental justice in the state, Youngkin’s press secretary, Christian Martinez, responded via email.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin spoke at the Environment Virginia Symposium in Lexington, VA, on April 10, 2024.
“The governor’s appointments reflect a variety of communities and stakeholders across Virginia who are committed to furthering Governor Youngkin’s efforts to protect our natural resources and vulnerable communities throughout the commonwealth,” Martinez wrote.
In his veto of the bill that would have expanded travel opportunities for the environmental justice council, Youngkin said that he opposed the specific provisions of the bill but recognizes “that environmental issues can have varying effects on different communities.”
“In a broader context, however, the theory of the council conflicts with its duties as a state-level body capable of obstructing local projects,” he wrote in the veto. “The proposed top-down approach would perpetuate past disparities, preventing the construction of infrastructure in underserved communities, hindering permits necessary for the advancement of clean energy and imposing regressive costs that disproportionately affect Virginia’s poorest citizens.”
More than two-dozen environmental organizations and individuals signed a letter in late March condemning the governor’s stance on environmental justice. Youngkin, they wrote, mischaracterized the role of the council as a body that is “obstructing local projects.” Rather than wanting additional infrastructure projects, the letter pointed out, many “Black, non-White and low-income Virginians [have opposed] infrastructure projects that would pollute their communities, disturb or destroy cultural heritage sites and degrade their health and quality of life.”
The letter pointed to recent examples in Virginia, such as local opposition to a gas pipeline compressor station at Union Hill, power plants and a landfill in Charles City County and a grocery distribution center in Brown Grove.
The letter urged Virginia’s General Assembly to reject the governor’s appointments and asked the governor to reappoint existing council members whose terms have expired but still wish to serve. The council, which currently has 20 out of 27 positions filled, held its most recent meeting including the new appointees on May 14. The meeting included discussion about community issues and a status update on the council’s 2023 annual report.
Separate efforts to focus on environmental justice within the state Department of Environmental Quality also seem to have stalled out in recent years. The agency had appointed a director for a new office of environmental justice in 2021, but she  left the position by late 2022. A guidance document detailing how environmental justice would be worked into the agency’s permitting processes was completed in 2023, and the office of environmental justice is now run by a program manager, Danielle Simms. The guidance document is still waiting for review by the governor’s office.
Melanie Davenport, director of regulatory affairs and outreach at DEQ — a position that includes oversight of the environmental justice office — represented the agency during a recent panel discussion on the subject as part of a virtual summit hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 
“There’s an interesting twist, in that our [environmental justice] statute is not within any of DEQ’s organic statutes,” she said during the panel, comparing Virginia’s approach with that of other states. “It’s in this general part of the code that talks about how we do business in Virginia, which means it’s not quite as authoritative in terms of what [DEQ] can do and not do.”
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