Overview
Dante LaRiccia
Concepts like energy justice and environmental justice were popularized through grassroots movements during the 1970s and 1980s. Joining environmentalism with critiques of social and racial justice, these concepts became powerful tools for frontline communities to highlight the disproportionate environmental and health burdens placed on low-income and minority groups. During these decades, community organizations and activists mobilized against the environmental effects of energy systems, from petrochemical refineries along the Gulf of Mexico to nuclear waste facilities in Nevada.
Many of these activists demanded more input for frontline communities in energy development discussions and deference for justice principles among policymakers. By the 1990s, they scored a major victory. This started with more centralized organizing efforts that consolidated the environmental justice movement. In 1991, the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice convened a group of civil rights, grassroots, and environmental organizations and leaders for a summit in Washington, D.C. The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit allowed these activists to come together to articulate a list of environmental justice principles and share lessons learned from their respective campaigns.
These developments garnered quick responses from policymakers and elected officials. The 1991 gathering helped push President Bill Clinton’s administration to look seriously at the issue of environmental justice and incorporate justice principles into federal agency activities. In 1994, Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which instructed federal agencies to incorporate environmental justice considerations into their operational mandates. EO 12898 was a major victory for environmental justice organizations, who had worked to gain federal recognition for years. However, it was far from the final step in turning a protest movement into a durable framework for justice-oriented policymaking.
But translating a protest movement into a policymaking framework was not without its challenges. Environmental justice activists often had far more robust definitions of concepts like environmental racism and environmental justice, and demanded more involvement in policy making, environmental review, and approval processes than federal officials could guarantee. Existing laws, meanwhile, curbed the utilization of efforts like Executive Order 12898.
Environmental justice concepts and procedures thus left a mixed legacy in recent federal policy making. On the one hand, actions like Executive Order 12898 helped inspire more concerted attention to, and action on, environmental justice issues. Federal agencies like the Department of Energy were required to incorporate justice considerations into their everyday operations. And agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency made environmental justice a prominent new area of activity. EJScreen, one of the primary sources included in this unit, demonstrates how the EPA put justice concerns into practice. This interactive mapping tool aggregated massive amounts of spatial data and allowed agencies and the public to view the overlapping geographies of socioeconomic inequality and environmental risk.
However, if environmental justice became a prominent new consideration for federal agencies, it was not always an overriding concern. Federal courts ruled, for example, that while environmental justice could be a consideration in agencies’ reviews of their activities, that it didn’t have to be an overriding concern that shaped ultimate decision making. And while environmental justice principles insisted that government action avoid disproportionate impacts on marginalized communities, courts ruled otherwise, stating that disproportionate effects could not be challenged in court without proof of specific intent to cause those uneven effects. Due to judicial restraints, environmental justice had limited power to shape federal action.
And in recent years, environmental justice has become a highly politicized framework subject to the swings of domestic politics. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14008, which reaffirmed the commitments to environmental justice made by President Clinton’s Executive Order 12898. The Biden administration also launched the Justice40 initiative, which aimed to channel forty percent of economic benefits for sustainability projects to low-income and disadvantaged communities.
Four years later, in early 2025, President Donald Trump repealed the Biden executive order and ended the Justice40 initiative. Citing the need to produce more domestic energy and drill for oil and gas on federal lands, Trump’s executive order for “Unleashing American Energy” characterized environmental justice initiatives as “burdensome and ideologically motivated.” Environmental justice, the Trump administration argued, is incompatible with a strong domestic energy sector and cumbersome for American fossil fuel producers. For the time being, the Trump executive order signals an elimination of environmental justice from federal agencies and policy.
Cite this overview:
LaRiccia, Dante. “Overview: Justice and Policy Making.” Energy History Online. Yale University. 2025. https://energyhistory.yale.edu/justice-and-policy-making/.
Library Items
Principles of Environmental Justice
In 1991, the United Church of Christ convened the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. The idea behind the summit was to gather community leaders and environmental activists who had previously been working largely in their own local contexts. Among the many results was this document: The Principles of Environmental Justice. The Principles document enumerated for the first time a set of values and priorities that environmental justice activists foregrounded in their advocacy activities. What are some of the core tenets of The Principles of Environmental Justice, and what does the document express about these activists’ views on history, economics, and ecology?
Statement of Pat Bryant, Executive Director, Gulf Coast Tenants Association
In a House of Representatives hearing on environmental justice, Pat Bryant, the head of the Gulf Coast Tenants Association, demonstrated how energy industries exacerbated environmental disparities. In his statement, Bryant describes the toxic discharges from petroleum processing facilities along “Cancer Alley” between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. While noting the disproportionate environmental burdens on Black and Latino communities, Bryant also criticizes federal environmental agencies, which he argues actually permitted the pollution to take place. What role does Bryant instead argue that federal agencies should play in regulating environmental pollution?
Executive Order 12898 (February 11, 1994)
Environmental justice activists scored a major victory in 1994 when President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898. In the order, the Clinton administration instructs federal agencies to incorporate environmental justice considerations into their operating procedures. In this regard, executive order 12898 represents a major attempt to translate the priorities of a social movement into federal policy. How does this executive order reflect the influences of the environmental justice movement, and in what respects does it differ from the points laid out by the “Principles of Environmental Justice” document?
EJScreen Mirror
EJScreen is a tool that shows environmental justice priorities put into practice. First developed in 2010 during the Obama administration, EJScreen was adopted by the EPA in 2012, peer-reviewed in 2014, and launched for public use in 2015. As the photo slideshow demonstrates, the tool aggregates spatial data on demographics and environmental hazards to allow users to view interactions between socioeconomic status and environmental risk. Follow the link to use it for yourself.
Executive Order 14159: Unleashing American Energy (January 20, 2025)
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14159, aimed at “unleashing” the domestic energy sector. Among other things, it also announced a departure from environmental justice priorities. The executive order rescinded an early order signed by President Joseph Biden that reemphasized the environmental justice commitments made by the Clinton administration. The justification for the rescinding is that environmental justice is incompatible with strong domestic energy production. For now, the executive order signals a termination of the federal government’s commitment to environmental justice.
Additional Reading
Robert D. Bullard, Dumping In Dixie: Race, Class, And Environmental Quality, Third Edition (Routledge, 2018).
Idna G. Castellon, “Cancer Alley and the Fight against Environmental Racism,” Villanova Environmental Law Journal 32 (2021): 15.
Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement, vol. 34 (NYU Press, 2001).
Kirsten Jenkins et al., “Energy Justice: A Conceptual Review,” Energy Research & Social Science 11 (January 1, 2016): 174–82,
Kirsten Jenkins, Darren McCauley, and Alister Forman, “Energy Justice: A Policy Approach,” Energy Policy 105 (June 1, 2017): 631–34, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.01.052.
Eileen McGurty, Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the Origins of Environmental Justice (Rutgers University Press, 2009).
David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature (OUP Oxford, 2007).
Author Bio
Dante LaRiccia is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Yale University. His research explores the entangled histories of U.S. colonial expansion and the globalization of the carbon economy during the twentieth century.