Lauren’s guest is Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Peggy has a long history of organizing and engaging Northern Manhattan residents in community-based planning and campaigns to address environmental protection and environmental health policy locally and nationally.

Read more about WE ACT for Environmental Justice at www.weact.org/

Lauren Lavin:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to From the Front Row. My name is Lauren Lavin and I’m the host of today’s episode with Peggy Shepard.

Peggy Shepard is a co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Peggy Shepard was visiting the University of Iowa College of Public Health in order to receive the Hansen Award for all of the work that she’s done in environmental justice.

In addition to all of the work and being executive director of WE ACT, she’s been named co-chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the chair of the New York City Environmental Justice Advisory Board. She’s also the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the US Environmental Protection Agency. She also serves on the executive committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, and on the board of advisors of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. She’s received broad recognition for all of her work in environmental justice, and we are honored to have her on the podcast today to talk about these topics.

Peggy Shepard, welcome to From the Front Row.

Peggy Shepard:

Hi, I am Peggy Shepard. I’m executive director and co-founder of WE ACT for Environmental Justice. We are a community-based organization based in Harlem in New York City, and we have a federal policy office in Washington DC. We are an organization that works to organize the most affected people by environmental policy to engage in helping to develop more sustainable policies in order to really create healthy, sustainable communities.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, and when did you start WE ACT?

Peggy Shepard:

We are now celebrating our 35th year.

For the first six years we were an all volunteer organization working on a number of issues. One was a sewage treatment plan that had been recently constructed as a part of the Clean Water Act to ensure that every time you flushed a toilet, it no longer went into the river.

Lauren Lavin:

That seems important.

Peggy Shepard:

That’s pretty important. So the federal government told New York City, “You got to create a sewage treatment plant. That’s got to stop.”

Lauren Lavin:

That didn’t happen until 1988 or after that?

Peggy Shepard:

That’s correct.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh my gosh, that’s crazy. Okay, mind blown.

Peggy Shepard:

Yeah, the plant was actually constructed in 1986 and began operating. We began organizing the community because right away the people who lived right across the street from the plant on Riverside Drive were complaining about odors and about emissions that were creating asthma attacks for some of their children.

We were able to organize for about six years against a mayor who really did not like uptown communities. Did not work with elected officials of color. And so he stonewalled us and said, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong. You must be imagining it.”

And so we had a very credible state senator who was working with us, and he finally said to the mayor, “Do you really think that I am not telling you the truth? I just came from that area and it’s a real problem.” So once Mayor Koch got out of office and David Dinkins, the first Black mayor of New York City, came into office, Dinkins said, “There’s a problem and we’re going to fix it.”

So that’s how we got started. But even though David Dinkins was the friend of the progressive community, we knew that you can’t place all of your community sustainability on the whims and good graces of one person. And so we sued the city. We sued our wonderful mayor to ensure that we had a mandate for what should happen at that sewage treatment plant.

And so once he got into office, we found out that the previous mayor had not been telling the truth. There was no odor control equipment in the sewage plant, which was the closest to people’s homes of all of the 14 sewage plants in New York City.

This is literally in the Hudson River, literally across the street from people’s homes.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh my gosh. And so after you sued, what happened?

Peggy Shepard:

After we sued, on the last day of the Dinkins administration, we got a settlement of our lawsuit for $1.1 million environmental benefits fund for West Harlem. He committed $55 million to fix what was a brand new plant.

This was so significant that this was a five column headline above the fold on the New York Times.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh my goodness, and what year was this?

Peggy Shepard:

This was 1993.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow, so you guys started off with a bang.

Peggy Shepard:

We started off with a bang. Once you get acclimated to understanding environmental justice, you start looking around the community very differently.

And so then we realized, my God, we are housing over one third of the largest diesel bus fleet in the country in our neighborhoods. Out of all of the six bus depots in Manhattan at the time, all five were uptown. And so you’ve got diesel buses, and we know that diesel is a carcinogen. It’s classified by the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and we know that it fuels the asthma epidemic.

And so you’ve got these buses idling outside of schools, parks, people’s homes. And so we filed a Title VI civil rights complaint against the Metropolitan Transit Authority. This was during the Reagan administration, so it didn’t go anywhere. But it meant that the Metropolitan Transit Authority because of that began meeting with us monthly.

This is an authority. Authorities are above the usual city agency, and they don’t usually deal with community. And so this was very unusual and we began meeting with them on a monthly basis.

And then what happened is that the transit workers began to come to our office to give us the backstory on what was actually going on.

Lauren Lavin:

There was more to the story?

Peggy Shepard:

There was more to the story because if you could imagine that sitting on a bus, being outside the tailpipe, you’re breathing in all of this particulate matter, what we found was that the people, workers in the depots fixing the buses are exposed inside a closed building to all of this diesel. They were concerned.

We also found out in a daily news article that many of the bus drivers die within five years of retiring. We, again, believe that the contribution of fine particulate matter, to whatever else they might be exposed to, might be a huge contributor to that premature death.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, absolutely. I think we can all conjure up the smell of a diesel bus going by. Knowing that, how many depots did you say were in just that neighborhood area? Five? Yeah, I can’t imagine if that was constantly running through your neighborhood what that would do breathing that in constantly.

Peggy Shepard:

Exactly. That’s another reason why you see so much money going out for school buses. The EPA has been asking for proposals for probably 10 to 15 years now, but now there’s a really big push on converting school buses to electric.

Lauren Lavin:

Really?

Peggy Shepard:

Because school buses are some of the dirtiest vehicles on the road. School buses are generally older. They’re generally operated by mom and pop companies, and buses have a 10 to 20 year life. And so you’ve got a dirty bus and it’s on its last legs. It’s still operating.

And so what we found is that it is more dangerous for a child sitting in the bus than standing outside the bus at the tailpipe because of the way the engines on these buses are made. You find that the diesel fumes are coming into the cabin of the bus.

Again, school buses are big, big priority to switch to electric right now.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, now that you say that, I’m just thinking about even the smell of a school bus, inside it. That makes a lot of sense with just even my own personal experience. I didn’t even have to ride on a school bus all that often, so I can’t imagine having to do that for maybe hours a day as a child.

Peggy Shepard:

And then you’re thinking about the youngest kids, kindergartners, elementary school, as they’re still growing. They’re still developing their neurological capabilities. Their whole biology is still developing. And at that time, they’re being exposed to potential carcinogens.

Lauren Lavin:

At such a foundational time in their life.

Peggy Shepard:

Exactly.

Lauren Lavin:

What did you guys do to address the bus situation that was happening within those neighborhoods?

Peggy Shepard:

So again, by filing the civil rights suit, which was not upheld, it, again, gave us an opportunity to develop a relationship with the Metropolitan Transit Authority. I think the MTA then began to realize that they were in more…

They used to say, “We’re in the business of moving people,” but no. Transportation-related air pollution is quite significant. And so I think they began to understand that because we worked with the Columbia School of Public Health. They had a study that we were part of. They had a Columbia Children’s Environmental Health Center, and that center was focused on a cohort of 720 pregnant women from Harlem in the South Bronx who wore backpack air monitors during their pregnancy so that we could understand the impact of diesel emissions on them and the developing fetus.

And then on the children, once they have been born, we have followed the children of this cohort of 720 women for now 22 years.

Lauren Lavin:

That is a massive undertaking.

Peggy Shepard:

A massive undertaking. Not my organization, but the Columbia School. But we were the community partner for that study.

That study gave us the data to hit the MTA day after day. It took us 18 years of having the data, organizing, advocating to finally get the MTA to invest in hybrids, now electric buses, and to really begin to redevelop the bus depots so that every bus is now inside the depot instead of idling outside on the streets. Actually, a couple of the depots have been closed.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow. What a story of resilience and determination. 18 years, and you kept at it?

Peggy Shepard:

And we had the data from a well-established university with world-renowned researchers.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, I think that shows how resistant, I don’t know if it’s government agencies or just even private organizations, are to change even when the data’s in your hand. You need advocacy and lots of it in order to promote some of that change that needs to happen.

Peggy Shepard:

Well, also you really have to understand the business to a certain degree as well.

For instance, a bus is on the road for up to 16, 20 years. When you suddenly say, “You’ve got to convert every bus,” they can’t really go out and throw out all those buses and buy all new ones. These buses are hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So I do have an understanding of that. But you’ve got to push that trend along because it can take many, many years for a whole fleet to transform.

Lauren Lavin:

I’m going to have you back up just a little bit and explain the concept of environmental justice. Because you’ve used that word, and I don’t know if all of our listeners are familiar with that.

Peggy Shepard:

So hundreds of grassroots groups that came together in 1991 at a summit in Washington, D.C., these were grassroots groups around the country all working on issues of environmental degradation and thinking they were all alone. I had already been working on this issue, as I’ve explained, in New York. I get to this meeting in Washington DC, and there’s 300 other people who are doing the same work. I thought we were the only one. And then we came together, we developed principles of environmental justice. I would urge everyone to Google 17 principles of environmental justice and breathe them because they’re very salient today.

And so the movement came together to address the disproportionate amount of pollution going into communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous communities. Because we understood that that was the common thread that brought us all together, that all of our communities were dumping grounds for pollution.

And that in many cases, industry were intentionally citing facilities in those communities because we were less informed. We were less powerful in terms of voting. Often, land is cheaper in some of our communities. And so we really came together in a national environmental justice movement to address this disproportionate impact of pollution that was really scarring the health and the landscapes of our communities.

Lauren Lavin:

Do you have any other examples of where this has happened in the US besides in New York City?

Peggy Shepard:

All over the country, so New Jersey has the most Superfund sites in the country. The Gulf Coast is overrun with petrochemical oil companies, plastics manufacturers. All of these companies have situated themselves in the Gulf Coast.

In Texas, you’ve got Texas, San Diego, New Jersey, you have ports where ships are using diesel fuel and have trucks coming in and out to haul away cargo. People are living literally next door to those kinds of facilities.

In California and in Texas, there are no zoning. A industrial facility can be next door to your backyard where your kid is playing.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, that’s scary.

Peggy Shepard:

That’s scary. California cement factory grinding out cement dust can be right next door to your home because there’s no zoning.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow. And that’s physical particulate matter that they can probably even see and there’s still no law against it.

Peggy Shepard:

Yes.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow.

I also I think I’ve heard, and this is maybe particularly relevant to the Midwest farming area, that commercial agricultural farming operations are really big. And so they have massive amounts of animals, and they pump the sewage into large slews. That can be really dangerous.

Like you said, they’re concentrated in areas where minority populations live because the land is cheaper.

Peggy Shepard:

It’s cheaper, but they also feel that they will get less pushback because people aren’t as informed. A more affluent community has lawyers and doctors and all kinds of professional people who are like, “Oh, no, no, no, not here,” because they know what it means. In a lot of our lower-income communities, people aren’t as informed. They don’t know what a sewage treatment plant or industrial facility may mean to their health.

We’ve worked with some local high schools. I remember getting some letters from some of the students where we had run programs. One young woman said, “I thought that I had to live with mold and water intrusion in my apartment. I just thought that was the way it was, that that’s all I could expect. And now I realize that I can advocate against that and that this isn’t the normal. I don’t have to live with that.”

That was so powerful to me that she actually thought this was just life. This is what I can expect. And what a thought. How depressing that those kinds of conditions that you think, that’s just the way it is.

That is not the way it is. It’s not the way it’s supposed to bel, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, everyone deserves to have a clean…

Peggy Shepard:

Clean, healthy environment. To breathe clean air, drink clean water.

We can see around the country. Flint has been the poster child for contaminated water, but we saw what happened in Jackson, Mississippi, just a few months ago. I think they’re still drinking bottled water. There are at least 10 other cities that the media has identified that have water impacts as bad, if not worse, than Flint. They just haven’t come into media attention.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow. There’s a lot that’s happening maybe underneath the radar that we don’t even know.

Peggy Shepard:

Absolutely.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Is a lot of your organization’s focused on education and advocacy so that people can advocate for themselves? And what does that look like then?

Peggy Shepard:

So we are community-based, and we are membership-based, so we have 1,000 members in our community. And of course, Harlem is a very diverse community in terms of income and ethnicity. And so some people would say, “Oh, so that means you’ve got all the brown stoners and all of the more affluent people are coming to your meetings.” None of them come. None of them. Over 20% of our members live in public housing.

Most of the people who are members are regular lower middle income folks who understand the impacts that they’re receiving and don’t want to have to put up with it. When they find that there’s an organization that can help them and support them and educate them around these issues, they are more than happy to come out. We get monthly meetings of about 100, 160 people.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s a sizable crowd.

Peggy Shepard:

That is a sizable crowd. These are folks that we educate them and we have a environmental health leadership training program. And so we educate folks on key environmental and climate topics so that they can go talk to their elected official. Not only talk, educate their elected official because…

Lauren Lavin:

They don’t know everything.

Peggy Shepard:

They don’t know everything. There are a lot of issues. They don’t know everything, and they want to hear from people who are voters.

Lauren Lavin:

Right, in their area.

Peggy Shepard:

In their area. So that’s very powerful to really educate and organize the people most affected to talk to electeds and policy makers.

We help them develop testimony for the city council and the state legislature. We take them on buses to Albany or to Washington DC to advocate with their elected officials. And so yeah, we are very supportive of the people who are most affected by environmental quality issues.

Lauren Lavin:

Well, that’s good to hear that the people affected by it are moving.

Peggy Shepard:

Sometimes those people don’t have a name for what they’re experiencing, but they know they are experiencing something negative. When you name it for them and give them all of the background on why this is still happening and that it doesn’t have to happen, it really creates a lot of value and a lot of motivation for those folks to engage.

Lauren Lavin:

Right, and this can happen on a small scale, too. Well, you just gave a presentation here at the College of Public Health and you talked about gas stoves. Could you describe that situation because I had never heard about the gas stove problem until you brought it up an hour ago?

Peggy Shepard:

Oh my goodness.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Peggy Shepard:

I’m glad I wasn’t boring everybody.

Lauren Lavin:

No, definitely not. We were all learning something new, I think.

Peggy Shepard:

Gas stoves emit fine particles and nitrogen dioxides. They create a lot of indoor air pollution that impacts people with respiratory disease and impacts all of us.

And so what we are suggesting is to transition those gas stoves from gas to electric induction stoves that do not emit pollutants. We’ve done this in 20 homes in public housing in the South Bronx with Latinos and Black residents, many of whom thought that cooking with gas meant that food tasted better. They found out that that was not the case. That food tasted just as good with an electric stove, that in fact food cooked faster with an electric stove. They were very happy.

One of the tenant leaders said that every time with her gas stove when she walked into the kitchen, she was coughing, and she has asthma, and didn’t really understand why. And so we found, and there are numerous studies everyone can look up. The Rocky Mountain Institute and others, Stanford University have done studies, and they are absolutely frightening the amount of air pollution coming into your home and then finding its way throughout your house or your apartment.

Lauren Lavin:

Especially if you live in an apartment, that space is just smaller.

Peggy Shepard:

Yeah, or even a small house. You’re going to find these pollutants in your bedroom.

Lauren Lavin:

Where you sleep all night and breathe in that air.

Peggy Shepard:

Where you sleep all night breathing in that bad air.

Again, transitioning your stove, your boiler. These issues are really important as we begin to electrify and move away from fossil fuels to renewables.

Lauren Lavin:

Well, I think that’s even just something that people who are listening to this can think about as they have to change appliances or move to a different house, is looking at some of those-

Peggy Shepard:

It’s also a climate change issue because gas stoves are emitting methane and carbon. It’s also a fix for climate change. We’ve got to reduce those if we’re going to meet our goals by 2050 of reducing our carbon footprint.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, so since you brought up climate change, let’s talk a little bit about that. Can you just give us some background on climate change just so we’re all on the same page when we talk about it?

Peggy Shepard:

Climate change is caused by natural and manmade actions. Climate change is caused by carbon emissions from facilities, from stoves and boilers, from building, heating fuel, from numerous sources. Those carbon emissions are creating global warming. The oceans are warming, which means glaciers are melting, which means water bodies are rising, so there’s more flooding.

It’s also contributing to more extreme weather events. So we’re seeing hot days when it’s usually cold or cold days when it’s usually hot. We’re seeing more drought, which affects food production, which might mean that food costs are going to go up because there’s a scarcity because maybe it was too cold in California doing the grape or fruit season. So that means if you want to buy those fruits, they’re going to be more expensive and there’re going to be less of them.

Drought, excessive rain, all of these extreme weather events are making a huge impact on our cities, on our rural communities. I know here in Iowa there’ve been significant flooding. Even here on this campus, many of the buildings were flooded and ruined.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. I saw some pictures recently of that flood. Flooding is definitely something in the Great Plains area that we’re familiar with, and I think has probably become a more recent phenomena in the last…

Peggy Shepard:

And then with flooding, you get mold in people’s homes or inside buildings. Mold is very hard and expensive to remediate. But if it’s left there, it causes significant respiratory harm.

Again, we’re going to see more climate migration because of this. We’re going to see more people leaving rural areas because it’s harder to raise food and make a living doing that. We’re going to see people in island states around the world having to evacuate and move because of sea level rise.

We’re going to see drought creating famine in places like Africa and other countries. And so when we see this migration, which some people feel so threatened by, we’ve got to begin to develop policies. Because in the United States, it’s our consumption levels that are helping to create this problem in these underdeveloped countries. And now these people have to leave where they live, and we are all saying, “Well, why are they coming here? What is this about?”

Well, this is about the fact that they can no longer be sustained in the communities they were living in because of climate change and because of our consumption patterns.

Lauren Lavin:

Climate change can be a controversial issue. When you address these topics with people who maybe don’t believe that it’s happening or don’t agree with that, how do you address some of this or have a dialogue about it in a way that is convincing, positive?

Peggy Shepard:

I think it’s very hard to talk to climate deniers. They don’t really want to hear it, and it’s a better use of our time to educate regular people about these issues. Because they’re experiencing the impacts, and now they will know why. It’s better to talk to maybe moderate elected officials in Congress who may not know much about the issue but are getting educated about it to really make a difference.

If you’re really a climate denier, there’s not much I’m going to be able to say to change your mind. We’ve really got to deal with the people in the middle or the people who just don’t know about it at all because we can all see there’s a problem.

Lauren Lavin:

Right. I think that’s great tangible advice.

When you’re looking at climate change policy, what’s happening in the US right now? What would you like to see happen in the next couple of decades?

Peggy Shepard:

Well, we’ve certainly have to develop goals. Every city and state needs to develop goals and figure out how they’re going to meet them.

Some cities are doing more wind and solar in order to meet the goals. Some cities are moving further away from burning fossil fuels, which we all have to do if we’re going to meet the goals.

Every city is going to look at a different combination of recommendations and fixes. It all may be different, but we’ve got to reduce our commitment to fossil fuels and our reliance on fossil fuels if we’re going to make a difference.

We also know that without some really important technologies, we may not be able to meet our goals. The problem is what are those technologies? And so we’ve got some issues around carbon capture and sequestration that’s very controversial. That requires more pipelines to transmit carbon to other locations in the country. Many communities are pushing back against these pipelines.

We’ve got at least 50 permits pending in the Gulf Coast, which is already… You’ve got Cancer Alley in the Gulf Coast. I mean, they’re already heavily impacted by fossil fuels.

And so these new, so-called technologies that are basically unproven because none of them have ever been demonstrated to work at scale. But now we have billions of dollars going to develop activities with industrial facilities who should be going out of business. But now they have a new revenue source called carbon capture, and they’ve never done it before, so now they’re going to get a whole lot of money to try it.

Lauren Lavin:

I know that the carbon pipeline is something that’s been featured in Iowa because I think it’s… One of them is slated to go through.

Can you explain what the carbon pipeline is and what the goal of it is?

Peggy Shepard:

The government, the legislature, has appropriated billions of dollars for these carbon technologies and for hydrogen hubs. But in order for these technologies to happen, there have to be pipelines that are either going to… Once you’ve sequestered carbon, how do you transfer it? It’s got to be transmitted through a pipeline to a place where it’s going to be sequestered.

We also have pipelines that are transmitting oil and gas throughout the country. Those are equally as controversial because we know they could leak. We know pipelines leak methane. We know that if they leak, they can contaminate groundwater. A lot of people are on well water, so that’s a problem.

Lauren Lavin:

Especially in rural areas where these pipelines are going through.

Peggy Shepard:

Especially in rural areas.

So you have a lot of farms and farm owners who are saying no to these pipelines going through their property. It is very controversial at a time when there are billions of dollars and companies are developing proposals to the government to explore these technologies.

Lauren Lavin:

I would guess that some of the issue is also that if it’s transporting a gas, it may be less likely to see if something was wrong on the pipeline. If it was leaking, you might not know. Versus oil, you maybe would, or at least sooner. But gas you might not.

Peggy Shepard:

Well, so we now know because there has been certainly an increase in methane detection looking at how the technology to detect methane leaks. Methane leaks are an important contributor to climate change, so there’s now more technology to detect those kinds of leaks.

But yeah, after you’ve spent billions on a pipeline and it’s leaking, and now it’s contaminating groundwater in a particular community, that’s a huge problem. How do you clean that up, and how do you make those people whole for having pristine water quality?

Lauren Lavin:

Right. Well, it’s good to know that they have technology for it.

Peggy Shepard:

And of course it’s newer. It’s just really coming on board that we can begin to really nationally look at where these methane leaks are.

The Environmental Defense Fund is putting up a methane satellite that they’ve been working on for the last few years that will be able to detect methane leaks around the country and the world.

Lauren Lavin:

Wow.

We’ve talked a lot about, well, a lot of variety of environmental topics. If one of these resonates with an individual, what advice would you give them if they’re looking to advocate? What are some practical steps that they could do in order to advocate at the local, state, federal level going forward?

Peggy Shepard:

If you’re living in an urban environment, buildings are a big, big issue, a contributor. Transportation, again, is a big contributor if the transit is using fossil fuels. Advocating that the buses in your neighborhood are clean buses. They’re hybrid, they’re electric, that the school buses are electric. Even though there’s money for that, a lot of these school buses are owned by small districts. They’re owned by mom and pop operators who may not have the capacities to submit a proposal to get this money.

Again, it’s really incumbent on us in our locality to understand where those pressure points are and what needs to be done if we’re going to have a just transition to renewables. Solar and wind, we can all advocate for that. Solar tax credits for homeowners, we can all advocate for that with our elected officials.

And of course, there are all things that we can do in our own homes that are good. But they’re small. They’re small fixes. We should all be doing them to play our part, but we’ve got to advocate for the greater good. We’ve got to do that with our elected officials who are developing policies to address these issues.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, we got to advocate for the people who maybe can’t.

Peggy Shepard:

And we all work in companies. You’re here at a college. College students can advocate for what happens at their college. They can advocate for what happens in their dormitory. A lot of colleges for the last 10 or 20 years have been working on food waste.

In fact, some colleges have different houses where they compete at how much food waste they reduce. There are things we can do at every level, whether you’re a student. If you’re in an elementary school, you can advocate for cleaner water or water testing in your water fountain. Most of the school water fountains have lead, and that’s why a lot of them are closed up and kids can’t use them because they have lead. You can be advocating for that.

You can be advocating for how your built school is heated. Advocating for air conditioning because now we’re going to have more extreme heat days. We already know from studies that if kids are too hot or too cold, they cannot learn.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, I can’t learn if I’m too hot or too cold, and I can’t imagine a kindergartner.

Peggy Shepard:

Exactly.

For those of us who are working in business, you’re in a meeting talking about a new policy. Look around the room. Is that meeting diverse? Does it have perspectives of people who are going to be affected by this but who you’re not hearing from? You can speak up and say, “We don’t have the right people in this room to make this decision.”

Lauren Lavin:

What a great way to start a conversation and moving that forward.

Peggy Shepard:

Exactly. Who is in the room makes a really big difference of how those priorities are going to get set and what those actions will be.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, you can’t help people you can’t see.

How can individuals, regardless of their background, support the cause of environmental justice and contribute to preventing climate change in the future?

Peggy Shepard:

You’ve heard of the term NIMBY, not in my backyard, so a lot of communities will… Maybe there’s a waste transfer station or there’s a landfill. Nobody wants it in their backyard, but where it’s going to end up is in a community that is the least powerful.

And so we need to be advocating to take our fair share because we want all the benefits. We all want solar credits for homeowners. We all want green infrastructure. We all want solar. We want the benefits, but we don’t want the burdens. We want some other community to shoulder those burdens.

We need to get to a point where there aren’t burdens. When we get to that point, it’s because we have policies that are going to switch us to renewables so that we’re not using dirty energy. We need people who are saying, “This doesn’t need to go anywhere. We don’t need to have the same winners and losers. So what do we need to do? How do we need to develop a policy that will be equitable for everybody and take into account those who are the most vulnerable?”

Lauren Lavin:

That’s really impactful. Yeah, that there’s no burden on anybody.

Peggy Shepard:

That’s going to take a while to get there. I am not saying that’s easy, but we’ve got to start the conversation. We’ve got to push back on the more powerful interests that this is not okay.

Lauren Lavin:

Right. Well, and it’s like you said earlier. You have to have a goal in order to know where you’re going. If you don’t maybe state big goals, you’re never going to achieve them.

Peggy Shepard:

Exactly.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay, so this is the last question, and we ask this question to everyone that comes on the podcast. And that is, what was one thing that you thought you were right about but then later found out you were wrong about?

It can be anything in life. It can be small, big, but something that you found out you were later wrong about.

Peggy Shepard:

I think we often think that government is uncaring and not responsive. When you begin to work with government, you understand that the people there are passionate.

I mean, if you go to the EPA, oh my God, those people are passionate about having clean environments. I had never met so many people of color scientists. I mean, they’re all at EPA, and so many are in all of these government agencies. These are good people, and they just need directors and people at the top who really want progressive policy, who really want to be inclusive of perspectives that are needed to develop equitable policy.

Because we’ve got good people. I’m sure a lot of the students you go to school with here are going to be those new people in those agencies. Those students really care. They care about our folks, they care about our communities, and they want to do what’s right.

And so I think that’s one thing working with government I’ve found that many folks there want to be responsive. They’re totally committed, and they need our outside help to push and make that happen.

Lauren Lavin:

Well, that’s really promising. What a positive note to end this on, that we can all prompt some change up into the future.

I’d like to thank you, Peggy, so much for being on the podcast. We are so glad that you were a Hansen Award recipient here at the University of Iowa College of Public Health and that you joined us here today.

Peggy Shepard:

Well, thank you. I look forward to using what I’ve learned from talking to many of the students and faculty here to be a stronger advocate around rural issues as well.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s great. Thank you.

That’s it for our episode this week. We were honored to have Peggy Shepard from WE Act joining us on the podcast today. I hope that you learn something about environmental justice and what advocacy could look like in your own life.

This episode was hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like to help support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health. Have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at CPH-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health.

Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.