The Environmental Justice Lab
Since the dawn of human history, the fight for environmental justice has always been a fight. Water wars between the people of Israel and herdsmen of Gerar in the book of Genesis, Chapter 26. The resistance of Native Americans to the pillaging of their land and resources at the founding of the United States of America. The refusal to allow a hazardous landfill to be built in the Warren County, a predominantly Black community in North Carolina, giving birth to the modern-day environmental justice movement. The struggle for clean water in places like Flint, MI and Newark, NJ and Jackson, MS. The struggle is real and the fight is on-going. And I'm here for it. My name is Dr. Lesley Joseph, a professor, an environmental engineer, and a fighter for environmental justice in our present day. Every other Tuesday, on this podcast, I explore issues related to environmental justice and the ways in which communities of color are impacted. Each episode will discuss a important environmental justice issue or situation and what we can do to fight for change. Let's learn, grow, and fight for a better world together! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support.
Episodes
In this episode, I get to talk with Kibri Everett - environmental scientist, GIS specialist, PhD candidate at UNC-Charlotte, and founder of Key Environmental Consulting - to pull back the curtain on the data center boom sweeping the nation.
Kibri has been on the front lines of this issue long before it hit the headlines. She recently testified before the Charlotte City Council, helping to secure a unanimous vote for ...
On this episode, Dr. Lesley Joseph sits down with two frontline fighters in the battle to close Rikers Island and transform it into something radically different: a hub of renewable energy and community sustainability.
Manuel Figueroa — Member of Freedom Agenda, and a justice-impacted individual who lived through ...
In this episode of the Environmental Justice Lab, I break down the 6th principle of Environmental Justice. The principle demands the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous waste, and radioactive materials, and holds producers strictly accountable to the peopl...
On this episode of the Environmental Justice Lab, I sit down with Sadie Holzmeyer, National Organizing Director of the Digital Democracy Project — a nonpartisan nonprofit building a voter-driven syst...
A Rude Awakening is an award-winning climate crisis and environmental justice radio show based in Berkeley, CA, and on this ep...
In this episode, Dr. Joseph sits down with Abhi Tenneti and Ayush Garg — the high school founders of Green Silicon Valley — an organization run entirely by students, for students, bringing free STEM and environmental education to elementary and middle school classrooms around the world.
We talk about how thes...
But this story is about more than pollution. It’s about ...
In this episode, Dr. Lesley Joseph unpacks the fifth principle of environmental justice: a bold and uncompromising declaration that all people have the fundamental right to self-determination.
This isn’t just about the environment. This is about power. From who controls political systems to who decides what industries enter a community, this episode...
From the radioactive legacy of U.S. nuclear testing in Indigenous communities to today’s extr...
Too often, powerful corporations and political leaders treat land, water, and air as commodities to be exploited. Communities are left out of decisions while industries ext...
In this episode, Dr. Lesley Joseph discusses the 2nd principle of environmental justice, which demands that public policy be built on mutual respect and justice for all people, free from discrimination or bias. That sounds simple, but the reality is far more complicated. Too often, environmental ...
In this episode, Dr. Joseph takes listeners deep into the Preamble to the Principles of Environmental Justice, first articulated at the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. But this is not just a technical introduction. Dr. Joseph describes how the preamble is a bold declaration of resistance, connection, and liberation. Th...
In this episode of The Environmental Justice Lab, Dr. Lesley Joseph traces the roots of environmental justice, unpacking how race, class, power, and policy collide to determine who gets clean air, safe water, and healthy communities - and who is forced to bear the burden of pollution and neglect.
From the lived experiences of frontline comm...
In this episode, Senior Attorney Chandra Taylor-Sawyer of the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) pulls back the curtain on what it really means to fight for environmental justice in the U.S. South. From zoning decisions that quietly turn Black neighborhoods into dumping grounds, to federal rollbacks that threaten the very civil rights tools that...
This week, Etelle Higonnet, founder of Coffee Watch, joins the Environmental Justice Lab to expose how the global coffee industry profits from environmental destruction and human suffering, and what must change. Etelle pulls bac...
In part 2 of our conversation, environmental scientist and advocate Kibri Hutchison Everett takes us back to my hometown of Rock Hill, South Carolina, to confront the legacy of the so-called “Trash Pile.” What began with the placement of unlined landfill in the heart of a Black neighborhood, the Trash Pile stands as a ...
In this first episode (of a 2-part series), I talk with environmental scientist, small business owner, and consultant Kibri Hutchison Everett about the fight for environmental justice. We trace her journey from growing up in Rock Hill, South Carolina (my hometown), to working in federal environmental data analysis, and ult...
Dr. Strouble's expertise made for a dynamic conversation about what it really takes to build gras...
More than 1 in 4 U.S. households struggle to afford their utility bills, with many facing shutoffs, debt, and the constant stress of choosing betwee...
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