‘One person can make a difference’

Dr. Robert D. Bullard calls himself “an accidental environmentalist.” He didn’t start his career planning to fight for vulnerable communities, but he’s spent the last 45 years doing just that.

“I always wanted to be a college professor,” Bullard said in a recent Zoom interview. “But I came of age when everything was pretty much segregated in the South. We couldn’t go to the swimming pool, couldn’t go to the library. But my parents bought books, encyclopedias, and magazines to supplement what we were denied, and it was drilled into me: You can achieve anything.”

Bullard, whose work has earned him the title of “Father of Environmental Justice,” will deliver remarks to the Class of 2024 at Clark University’s 120th Commencement on May 20.

Bullard, the Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and the founder and director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, says he has modeled his career after writer, scholar, sociologist, and activist W.E.B. DuBois.

In 1979, Bullard’s then-wife, attorney Linda McKeever Bullard, asked for his help with a lawsuit she had just filed, Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corporation. The suit argued that locating a solid waste landfill in a predominantly Black middle-class suburb of Houston was a form of discrimination. She needed someone to collect datrobert a and create a map of the city’s landfills, incinerators, and garbage dumps — and who lives around them.

Bullard discovered that all of the city’s landfills and incinerators were located in predominantly Black communities — and that since the 1930s, 82% of all of the garbage dumped in Houston was dumped in Black neighborhoods, even though only 25% of the city’s population was Black.

“As a sociologist, you hardly ever get data that is so clear. I had the data and was able to publish articles, but we lost in court because we couldn’t prove intent. That taught me that having the data and facts is not enough.”

Dr. Bullard spoke with ClarkNow about his efforts to achieve environmental justice, his message to Clark’s graduating students, and his hope for the future.

What is your message to the Class of 2024?

One person can make a difference, and I’m a living example. I started my career as a demographer — a traditional sociologist who works with census data maps and charts. And I never, ever dreamed, when I mapped the locations of landfills — and who lived next door — 45 years ago in support of a lawsuit, that I’d still be doing this work today.

In sociology, there’s a concept called serendipity, when you discover something amazing while you’re working on something else. You didn’t set out to find it; but it just happened. That’s how I ended up in this movement.

We lost the lawsuit, but I learned that we had to marry the facts and data with action if we wanted to challenge powerful institutions like systemic and structural racism in the South. It became about mobilizing communities and organizations to take the data to another level — not just in the legal sphere, but policy.

So that’s what I have been doing for the last 45 years. I’ve written 18 books, I’ve done policy work, and I’ve worked on the ground to develop and support the building of this movement. There was no environmental justice movement in 1979 — so one person can make a difference. And if you have a collective of individuals, you can make a bigger impact.

How far have we come with environmental justice — or rather, have we come far enough?

In 1979, there was not one dollar devoted to environmental justice. Not one penny.

In 1994, I was invited to the White House, and witnessed Bill Clinton signing the executive order to address environmental justice. It was a great ceremony, but there was not one dime for environmental justice.

Fast forward to 29 years later, when President Biden signed his executive order on environmental justice. And the Inflation Reduction Act included $60 billion for environmental justice and another $60 billion for clean energy transition. The largest climate funding in the history of the world.

No, it’s not enough. But it’s historic and has the potential to be transformative.

We have to make sure that those billions are tracked toward those communities that have historically been left out and left behind but who are on the front line of climate change and pollution. These communities have not had the basic infrastructure to protect them against pollution or protect them from the cascading impacts of climate change. President Biden’s Justice40 initiative is aimed at correcting many of the inequities, vulnerabilities, and disparities.

Even with the progress of nearly a half century, do these vulnerable communities still have to fight just as hard to keep landfills, plants, and other harmful facilities out of their neighborhoods?

Last week, the Bullard Center for Environmental Climate Justice at Texas Southern University and the University of Montana Environmental Studies Program released a report on the impact of liquified natural gas terminals on the Gulf Coast.

We found the same pattern that I documented in my book “Dumping in Dixie” 34 years ago. That’s disappointing, but the fact is, communities now have more resources, more allies, and more partnerships to push back and impact policy.

It’s not just Black communities — it’s communities of color, poor people, and marginalized populations. Children are the most vulnerable to the impacts of these facilities — in many cases, low-income children of color, which we know by looking at asthma rates and other statistics.

Those of us who are fighting for justice must fight for the most vulnerable. Children can’t vote; they can’t demonstrate or protest. We have to fight for them. That’s the movement today.

How concerning is the current political climate in the U.S., where combatting the climate crisis has become a divisive issue? Do you worry that some of your hard-fought gains will be lost?

It’s about that trajectory — the arc of the moral universe. When community organizations, academics, and grassroots groups began interacting with the federal government and the Environmental Protection Agency, it was under the George. H.W. Bush administration. We’ve had many different administrations. Sometimes we’ve had progress, and sometimes it was flat.

We’ve seen these ups and downs, but we have maintained a steady course. Our goal is environmental justice for all, regardless of administration. Not one administration has rescinded an executive order — that doesn’t mean the orders have been enforced to the letter, but they were not rescinded.

Our movement is tied to the quest for justice no matter who sits in the Oval Office. We stay the course because communities are depending on us to do it. We see spikes in health issues, environmental decline, and we say, ‘If we see it, why can’t others?’ For some people, facts are not enough.

What advice do you have for anyone who wants to make a difference?

It’s a new day.  It’s exciting. There are many challenges and opportunities. I’m a Baby Boomer, proud of it and still fighting, but generations X and Z, and millennials combined outnumber my generation. They’re the ones I have faith will take us across the finish line. But as my grandmother told me, “Faith without work is what? Dead.”

We need intergenerational participation. When dealing with climate, it’s not a sprint — it’s a marathon relay. You run those 26.2 miles then pass the baton. I think we can make a heck of a difference, and that’s what gives me hope.

My grandmother also said, “Where there’s no vision, the people will perish.” We need leaders with a vision, who will step out and step up, even when it’s lonely out there. We should all care about the climate and how it impacts not only the planet but also our communities, neighborhoods, homes, and families. That gets to the very essence and strips away the things that divide people.

As a boomer, I feel responsible for a lot of the problems that we were not able to solve because, in some cases, we were so stuck in our consumption — we wanted certain lifestyles, but now young people are constrained in their future.

This is urgent. Young people see that urgency. We all need to see it, and we need to act as if our lives depend on it. Because they do.