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Global warming continues to accelerate, just as climate scientists predicted it would. During the two weeks following July 4th, the entire planet was hotter than it’s been in about 125,000 years. As I write, Phoenix is suffering its worst heat wave ever, with 23 days in a row of temperatures at or above 110 degrees F.

We caught up with Justin on May 24 to talk about his work in Tennessee and the struggle for environmental justice across the country and the world. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.

The New York Times recently published a major story titled: “Living and Breathing on the Front Line of a Toxic Chemical Zone”. It addressed corporate profiteering by the petrochemical industry while communities near their plants suffered diminished health, including cancer and premature death. The Biden EPA is proposing stronger protections in such border areas, which many have called “sacrifice zones.”

A national campaign to ban what’s known as “fill and build” is picking up steam, with Anthropocene Alliance partnering with a coalition of allies to raise awareness about the dangers of this controversial practice.

Opposing forces are prepared for battle in South Tacoma. In one corner are environmentalists with a proposal for an economic green zone to generate a more sustainable future. In the other corner are industrialists looking to build one of the largest warehouses in the world that would endanger the South Tacoma aquifer.

Oil and gas pipelines continue to leak toxic contamination that threatens communities across the country. The leak of nearly 600,000 gallons of oil from TC Energy’s Keystone pipeline into a creek in Kansas on December 8, 2022 is just the latest example of a long string of such environmental disasters. Roughly 3 million gallons of oil from pipeline accidents are spilled in the U.S. each year. 

Gulfport activists have taken their struggle for environmental justice to the national level, naming the U.S. Department of Transportation and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as defendants in a landmark lawsuit intended to halt a potentially disastrous road expansion project

It wasn’t just because of the big increase in federal funding, but because so many people in the government and nonprofit sectors worked hard to direct the new money to frontline communities who needed it most. Anthropocene Alliance and its partners were among them.

Environmental groups concerned about cost and safety issues at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in San Luis Obispo County on California’s central coast thought they’d scored a big win in 2018 when a Joint Proposal was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)  to retire the aging plant by 2025.

More than a week after a hurricane hit the American territory of Puerto Rico, 750,000 customers are still lacking service. The reason is not only the hurricane’s wind and rain: though it packed a lot of precipitation, Fiona was a relatively weak, Category One storm. The primary culprit is the island’s system of privatized electricity, which values profits over service.