Joe Biden will grade the U.S. military and all other government agencies on their “efforts to advance environmental justice” through a new scorecard that tracks their work to fight climate change and deliver “environmental and health benefits to disadvantaged communities.”
Biden on Friday morning announced the U.S. government’s “first-ever Environmental Justice Scorecard,” a “new government-wide assessment of federal agencies’ efforts to advance environmental justice.”
Included in the project is the Department of Defense, which Biden will grade on its work to address “environmental, climate-related, and cumulative impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns.”
The department’s first scorecard highlights some of that work.
The Navy, for example, organized the traffic flow at one of its docks at Pearl Harbor in a way that “minimizes impacts on historically overburdened communities,” according to the scorecard.
The Navy also adjusted a “modernization project” at its Fallon Range Training Complex, which hosts pre-deployment combat training for both air and ground forces, to “respond to several Tribal concerns,” the card says.
The scorecard goes on to commend the Department of Defense for hosting “40 internal training(s) for staff on environmental justice” and hiring “at least 640 staff that work on environmental justice,” though it does ding the department for not updating its “environmental justice strategic plan” in the last five years. . . .
“Our country faces more threats than ever before and now our military will be forced to take their focus off lethality to ensure they make some sort of environmental justice scorecard? It’s absurd,” said Congressman Mike Waltz.
The White House, which did not return a request for comment, announced the scorecard as part of an executive order aimed at “further embedding environmental justice into the work of federal agencies.” . . . (read more on Washington Free Beacon)
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