HAT Forum - Climate Change and Human Responsibility

The Humanist Association of Toronto
http://www.humanisttoronto.ca/

Every Saturday we meet on Zoom to discuss a topic decided upon the previous week. These are topics of humanist interest, from a humanist perspective.

The topic of the discussion will be decided in a prior meeting, usually two weeks in advance. This week’s topic is: Climate Change and Human Responsibility, Introduced by Ambrese Montagu

Environmental justice sits at the intersection of ecology, public health, and human rights. Since the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, evidence has accumulated that exposure to pollution and climate risk is systematically higher in low‑income, racialized, and Indigenous communities—patterns that echo in Canada, from Aamjiwnaang First Nation near “Chemical Valley” in Sarnia to heat‑vulnerable neighbourhoods in Toronto’s inner suburbs. Environmental injustice is not an accident of geography; it is the predictable outcome of policy choices that treat some lives as more disposable than others.
In the last decade, these inequities have been sharpened by a renewed assault on environmental regulation, particularly in the United States, where the EPA has been aggressively “gutted” through mass staff terminations, program cancellations, and deep budget cuts. Recent directives under the Trump administration have targeted more than 30 existing safeguards, slashing science offices and dismantling environmental justice and public health programs in the name of deregulation and “revitalizing” polluting industries. These moves are not merely bureaucratic reshuffles; they translate directly into higher particulate levels, contaminated water, and increased cardiopulmonary disease, especially for communities already burdened by poverty and racism.
Right‑wing economic projects—rooted in deregulation, privatization, and the protection of fossil‑fuel capital—frame environmental protections as “red tape” and climate policy as an attack on growth. This ideology externalizes environmental and health costs onto the public while privatizing profits, effectively socializing risk and privatizing reward. The same logic appears globally: from resistance to phasing out coal in major emitting countries, to investor‑state dispute settlement mechanisms that allow corporations to sue governments for climate regulation, to austerity programs that hollow out public health and environmental agencies in the Global South.
From a global perspective, climate change is a threat multiplier that amplifies existing injustices. The countries and communities that contributed least to historical greenhouse gas emissions—small island states, low‑income nations, and marginalized urban populations—face the most severe impacts: lethal heat waves, food and water insecurity, vector‑borne disease, and displacement. At the same time, transnational fossil‑fuel and agribusiness interests continue to expand extraction and deforestation, often backed by authoritarian or right‑populist governments that criminalize environmental defenders and weaken environmental law.
For humanists in Toronto, environmental justice is therefore not a niche concern but a core ethical commitment. It demands that we connect local struggles—air quality along Highway 401, housing and heat vulnerability, Indigenous land rights—to global patterns of exploitation and resistance. It calls us to defend robust, science‑based public institutions like the EPA and Environment and Climate Change Canada; to challenge economic narratives that sacrifice health and climate stability for short‑term profit; and to stand in solidarity with those on the front lines of climate and pollution, from fenceline communities in Louisiana and Detroit to land defenders in the Amazon and the Arctic. Environmental justice is, ultimately, about whose lives we are willing to protect—and whether we are prepared to build political and economic systems that make that protection real.

# Discussion Questions

### 1. How should humanists understand environmental justice as a moral obligation rather than a purely environmental issue?

### 2. What responsibilities do wealthy cities like Toronto have toward communities—local and global—who bear the greatest climate and pollution burdens?

### 3. How do political and economic ideologies (e.g., deregulation, privatization) shape environmental outcomes, and what alternatives align with humanist values?

### 4. What role should public institutions (EPA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, public health agencies) play in protecting vulnerable communities?

### 5. How can individuals and community groups effectively support environmental justice movements without falling into performative activism?

### Suggested articles and reports

#### 1. New EPA Chief Launches 31‑Point Attack on Our Health and Environment

· Author: Earthjustice staff
· Outlet/website: Earthjustice — https://earthjustice.org
This article details a 31‑point order issued by the new EPA administrator under President Trump, outlining a sweeping rollback of environmental and public health protections. It explains how rules governing air quality, water safety, and climate pollution are being targeted, and situates these actions within a broader deregulatory agenda aligned with fossil‑fuel and industrial interests.
The piece also highlights the legal and political strategies being used to resist this rollback, including litigation aimed at defending “settled law” and science‑based standards. It underscores the disproportionate impact of weakened protections on low‑income and marginalized communities, framing the attack on the EPA as an attack on environmental justice itself.

#### 2. What Gutting Environmental Justice Means for the Future of the EPA

· Author: Jenni Doering (interview with David Cash)
· Outlet/website: Inside Climate News / Living on Earth — https://insideclimatenews.org
This interview explores the consequences of dismantling the EPA’s environmental justice infrastructure, including halting funding for EJ programs and shuttering the Office of Environmental Justice. Former regional administrator David Cash explains how these changes will likely worsen air and water quality, erode public trust, and reduce transparency in decision‑making.
The discussion connects institutional changes to concrete health outcomes, emphasizing that environmental justice is not an abstract ideal but a framework for protecting communities historically overburdened by pollution. It also contrasts the Biden administration’s efforts to center EJ with the Trump administration’s reversal, illustrating how quickly institutional commitments can be undone.

#### 3. EPA Under Trump Besieged by Mass Terminations, Axed Programs, Funding Cuts

· Author: Dana Drugmand
· Outlet/website: Sierra Club — https://sierraclub.org
This article documents the “unprecedented” attack on the EPA through mass staff terminations, program eliminations, and funding cuts. It shows how the agency’s capacity to enforce clean air and water laws, monitor pollution, and advance clean energy is being systematically undermined, with particular concern for communities already facing high exposure to environmental hazards.
By interviewing experts and former staff, the piece situates these cuts within a broader project to “dismantle the administrative state.” It argues that weakening the EPA is not ideologically neutral: it shifts power toward polluting industries and away from the public, especially those with the least political and economic clout.

#### 4. EPA Guts Science, Staff, and Environmental Justice in Sweeping Shakeup

· Author: Akela Lacy (reported in The Intercept; summarized by EHN Curators)
· Outlet/website: The Daily Climate — https://dailyclimate.org
This piece summarizes investigative reporting on how the Trump administration is transforming the EPA from a public health watchdog into an “industry‑first” agency. It describes the loss of more than 1,500 staff—disproportionately from environmental justice and public health research units—and plans to slash the agency’s budget by 65% while eliminating key science offices.
The article underscores how these structural changes weaken the EPA’s ability to assess and regulate environmental risks, particularly for vulnerable communities. It also notes the shift in priorities toward technologies and sectors (like auto industry revival) that have little to do with pollution prevention, illustrating how institutional missions can be repurposed to serve narrow economic interests.

#### 5. “Intense Culture of Fear”: Behind the Scenes as Trump Destroys the EPA From Within

· Author: Akela Lacy
· Outlet/website: The Intercept — https://theintercept.com
This investigative article offers an inside look at how the EPA is being “lobotomized” through forced buyouts, politicization of environmental justice, and the sidelining of career scientists. Staff describe a culture of fear in which raising concerns about public health or environmental protection can be professionally risky.
The piece connects internal repression to external policy outcomes: as expertise is driven out and EJ is framed as ideological rather than evidence‑based, regulatory decisions increasingly favor industry. It provides a vivid case study of how right‑wing economic and political projects operate within institutions to erode environmental and health protections.

#### 6. Environmental Justice in the 21st Century

· Author: Robert D. Bullard
· Outlet/website: Environmental Justice Resource Center (archived) / often reprinted online
Bullard, often called the “father of environmental justice,” synthesizes decades of research on how race and class shape exposure to environmental hazards in the United States. The article traces the history of EJ struggles from the 1980s to the present, documenting patterns of toxic siting, unequal enforcement, and community resistance.
It also situates environmental justice within a global context, noting parallels in the Global South where communities of color and Indigenous peoples face disproportionate burdens from mining, waste dumping, and climate impacts. Bullard argues that environmental justice must be central to climate policy, or else decarbonization risks reproducing existing inequalities.

#### 7. The 2023 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change

· Author: Lancet Countdown Collaboration
· Outlet/website: The Lancet — https://www.thelancet.com
This annual report synthesizes global data on how climate change is already affecting human health—through heat stress, changing disease vectors, food insecurity, and extreme weather—and how these impacts are distributed unequally. It highlights that children, older adults, low‑income populations, and those in the Global South bear the greatest health burdens.
The report also examines the political economy of climate and health, including continued fossil‑fuel subsidies and the influence of industry on policy. It argues that aligning climate action with health co‑benefits—clean air, active transport, resilient health systems—offers a powerful justice‑oriented framework for policy, directly challenging narratives that pit economic growth against environmental protection.

#### 8. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (IPCC Working Group II)

· Author: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
· Outlet/website: IPCC — https://www.ipcc.ch
This major assessment report synthesizes thousands of studies on how climate change is affecting ecosystems and societies, with a strong focus on vulnerability, adaptation, and equity. It documents how risks are unevenly distributed, with “highly vulnerable” people—often in low‑income countries and marginalized communities—already experiencing irreversible losses and damages.
The report explicitly frames climate change as a justice issue, noting that those least responsible for emissions face the greatest harms and have the least resources to adapt. It also critiques maladaptation and warns that development pathways centered on fossil‑fuel–driven growth deepen vulnerability, implicitly challenging dominant right‑wing economic models.

#### 9. Capitalism vs. the Climate

· Author: Naomi Klein
· Outlet/website: The Nation — https://www.thenation.com
In this long‑form essay, Klein argues that the climate crisis is fundamentally incompatible with neoliberal capitalism’s imperatives of endless growth, deregulation, and privatization. She traces how right‑wing think tanks and fossil‑fuel interests have invested heavily in climate denial and delay, precisely because meaningful climate policy would require constraints on corporate power and new forms of democratic planning.
Klein also connects climate justice to broader struggles against austerity, colonialism, and racial capitalism, emphasizing that frontline communities—Indigenous nations, fenceline communities, and workers in extractive sectors—must be central to any just transition. The essay offers a powerful narrative linking environmental justice, economic democracy, and human rights.

#### 10. Climate Change and Poverty: Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

· Author: Philip Alston (UN Special Rapporteur)
· Outlet/website: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) — https://www.ohchr.org
This UN report argues that climate change threatens to undo decades of progress on poverty reduction and may push hundreds of millions of people back into extreme poverty. It emphasizes that climate impacts intersect with existing inequalities in income, race, gender, and geography, creating a “climate apartheid” in which the wealthy can pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the poor are left to suffer.

Alston criticizes the inadequacy of current national and international responses, including overreliance on market mechanisms and technofixes that leave underlying power structures intact. He calls for transformative policies—robust social protection, public investment, and rights‑based climate action—that place justice, not profit, at the center of the global response
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