For too long, we have deprioritized marginalized communities that have taken the brunt of the environmental impact from climate change, while not enforcing existing environmental protection laws or punishing those that break them.
We need to substantially update and modernize our environmental protection laws to meet the challenges of today and enforce stronger consequences that actually dissuade people and corporations from violating these tougher standards. Corporations have shown us time and time again that when the penalties are too light, they will not always act in the public welfare. That is where strong government enforcement must come in, and in the Senate, I will fight for more stringent environmental guardrails.
As we fight climate change, we must remember that communities of color too often bear the brunt of its devastating effects, while sharing in few of the economic opportunities presented by the clean energy economy. We cannot have environmental justice without racial justice, and it is clear that racism has been ingrained in every part of our governmental system. Equity must be at the center of reshaping of this new economy so that America can truly be a land of equal opportunity, not a country where the zip code you’re born into can define your health outcomes.
Original source can be found here.
