The Biden administration is allocating $600 million toward “environmental justice” projects across the U.S. in a move critics say will benefit the president’s political allies.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the money will be given to grantmakers who will then oversee the distribution of the funds. The EPA said projects might include programs aimed at “reducing greenhouse gas emissions” and “environmental workforce development.”
“For too long, however, low-income communities, immigrant communities, Native communities, and communities of color have endured disproportionate levels of air, water, and soil pollution. That is why President Joe Biden and I have put equity at the center of our nation’s largest investment in climate in history,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement.
Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of energy worker advocacy organization Power the Future, criticized the announcement, saying that the money was being used for political purposes.
“It’s Bidenomics by a different name: using a green slush fund to dole out Christmas gifts to his political friends ahead of 2024,” Turner said. “No matter if they are dubbed grantmakers or climate corps, the mission is the same: use taxpayer dollars to build networks of political support. And while Biden sends $600 million to his eco-friends, energy workers are stalled by Washington while families pay more for everything.”
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The EPA-designated grantmakers include a number of different activist groups including the Climate Justice Alliance and Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE).
The Climate Justice Alliance has a “Free Palestine” section on its website because the group says that it wants to “mobilize additional sectors of the climate movement for the fight to free Palestine, and to begin to shift the politics of the mainstream climate movement from carbon fundamentalism to climate justice.”
The organization has also campaigned against the construction of a police training facility in Atlanta, saying stopping the construction of “Cop City” was crucial to “the abolition and climate justice movements.”
One of the projects of SEE, an organization based in California, is to reduce the prison population of Kansas City through the “reimagining of public safety.”
“We are a multiracial, multigenerational organization that centers those impacted by incarceration and policing in order to end the reliance on incarceration and policing and build a safer Kansas City for all,” the organization says.
The Biden administration has dumped billions of dollars domestically and internationally on climate projects this year as part of its emphasis on climate spending and bringing about a “transition” to green energy.