{"id":43011,"date":"2025-08-03T20:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T20:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/43011\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T20:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T20:52:09","slug":"as-trump-guts-climate-justice-work-coastal-cities-push-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/43011\/","title":{"rendered":"As Trump Guts Climate Justice Work, Coastal Cities Push Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThis spring, as the federal government was busy canceling $1.7 billion<\/a> in environmental justice<\/a> grants, Seattle<\/a> did the opposite. The city awarded $1.2 million<\/a> through its Environmental Justice Fund<\/a> to grassroots organizations confronting climate<\/a> change on the frontlines \u2014 communities facing sea level rise, storm surge, and intensifying heat. The money, raised through a payroll tax<\/a> on high-income employers, is flowing directly to communities of color, immigrants, the elderly, and low-income residents \u2014 people hit first and worst by climate impacts.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not just Seattle. Across the country, cities are stepping up, even as federal support for climate resilience and environmental justice collapses.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince returning to office, President Donald Trump<\/a> has wasted no time dismantling climate justice programs. His \u201cDay One\u201d executive orders<\/a> terminated all federal environmental justice offices and staff, <\/a>scrapped the Justice40 initiative, and reopened<\/a> large swaths of the U.S. coast to offshore drilling. His administration has revok<\/a>ed a decades-old executive order<\/a> requiring agencies to prioritize environmental justice in their missions, taken key tools \u2014 like the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s EJScreen<\/a> \u2014 offline, and cut core funding programs, including disaster preparedness grants<\/a>. And through the \u201cBig Beautiful Bill,\u201d Trump has gutted<\/a> the Inflation Reduction Act\u2019s environmental and climate justice program<\/a> <\/a>\u2014 slashing billions once earmarked for clean air, clean water, and green jobs in overburdened communities.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese rollbacks are not just performative political retribution. They are already threatening lives and livelihoods in communities across the country.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is especially true in coastal cities, home to more than 47 million people<\/a>, where rising seas<\/a> and stronger storms<\/a> are colliding with long-standing patterns of inequality, nearly 60 percent<\/a> of coastal city residents are people of color \u2014 compared to 37 percent nationally. These cities also have higher rates<\/a> of poverty, unemployment, rent burden, and non-citizenship. That means when disaster strikes \u2014 whether from hurricanes in the Gulf or nor\u2019easters in New York \u2014 the communities with the fewest resources to recover are often the ones hardest hit.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tIn these cities, climate justice is more than a policy priority \u2013 it\u2019s a survival strategy.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt Urban Ocean Lab<\/a>, a think tank for the future of coastal cities, we spoke with local officials nationwide about how they\u2019re navigating this new reality. Our new report<\/a> shares what we learned \u2014 and what\u2019s still possible.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite a hostile federal landscape, cities are forging ahead. They\u2019re creating local funding streams, investing in community-led planning, and embedding justice into their governments and operational DNA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Oakland, every strategy in the Equitable Climate Action Plan<\/a> is evaluated for its racial equity impact. In Seattle, the Race and Social Justice Initiative<\/a> \u2014 now law \u2014 requires all city departments to review budgets and programs through an equity lens. This is real institutional change.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the federal government wipes crucial data resources, cities recognize information is integral. In San Diego, the Climate Equity Index<\/a> maps where environmental risks overlap with socioeconomic vulnerability, guiding city investments in stormwater upgrades, green space, and climate infrastructure. In New York City, the EJNYC Mapping Tool<\/a> brings together over 100 datasets to highlight environmental burdens in places like the Rockaways and South Bronx \u2014 both low-lying areas with aging infrastructure and long histories of disinvestment. These tools help cities steer investments to the neighborhoods that need them most.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tAs federal funding evaporates, many cities are strengthening ties with frontline organizations \u2014 the local experts who\u2019ve been leading the fight for decades. In New Orleans<\/a>, the Climate Action Equity Project<\/a> brings community leaders from every city district to co-design resilience strategies, from flood protection to coastal restoration. In Providence, Rhode Island, the Green Justice Zones<\/a> initiative puts neighborhood groups in charge of planning for flooding and extreme heat in the city\u2019s most vulnerable areas.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd where national workforce programs are shrinking<\/a>, cities are building their own pipelines of green jobs. Cleveland is equipping youth from frontline communities with skills to restore urban forests<\/a> and protect neighborhoods<\/a> from flooding and water pollution. In New Orleans, programs like Ground CREW<\/a> and Thrive<\/a> prepare BIPOC and low-income residents to lead neighborhood-scale stormwater and flood resilience projects.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is what climate justice looks like: tactical, community-rooted, and relentless. It\u2019s also what real leadership looks like \u2014 in sharp contrast to the political theater playing out in Washington.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Trump stages press conferences and bill signings to celebrate the dismantling of hard-won protections, local governments are doing the real work of protecting lives, preparing for future storms, and closing the equity gap. The stakes aren\u2019t theoretical. They\u2019re physical \u2014 crashing into coastal communities and people\u2019s lives. And they\u2019re growing more urgent every year.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe don\u2019t need to wait for the Trump administration to get its act together. But we also can\u2019t let cities do this work alone.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tPhilanthropy, state governments, and the private sector all have a role to play in sustaining and scaling the solutions already working at the local level. From backing climate justice funds to supporting green workforce programs, the time to invest is now. Because the fight for a just, climate-resilient future won\u2019t wait \u2014 and neither will the next disaster.<\/p>\n

\n\tCalla Rosenfeld is a climate policy analyst and research fellow at the nonprofit think tank Urban Ocean Lab<\/a>. Her work focuses on coastal climate resilience.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This spring, as the federal government was busy canceling $1.7 billion in environmental justice grants, Seattle did the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,2848,1376,295,23507,2694,66,7675],"class_list":{"0":"post-43011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-climate","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-environmental-justice","14":"tag-new-orleans","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-seattle"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}