As the administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson is directly involved in regulating and advising eco-friendly initiatives in President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
In addition to safeguarding air, water, and land, Jackson is responsible for more than $7 billion in funding from the Recovery Act to invest in environmental protection and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits.
In honor of Earth Day, Jackson, the first African American administrator for the EPA, discusses how blacks and minority businesses can ride the green wave.
BlackEnterprise.com: As the EPA’s first African-American administrator do you feel it’s important for more African-Americans to get involved with the environment and embrace the clean energy future? Do you think it’s a bit of a struggle with African-Americans to get on board with that?
Lisa Jackson: I think energy is easier for people to embrace, for African-Americans to embrace, than the environment. We falsely kind of believe that the environment is something out there that we didn’t worry about too much and I think that the environmental justice movement should be credited for making it clear that anything that impacts the environment tends to impact people of color potentially more and certainly low income people.
The president is meeting a great need. We have to follow him and realize that he is calling on Americans to embrace a completely different future. It will be a new economy and the best thing about a new economy is that it wipes the board clean and away and allows us an opportunity to get in at the ground floor and we should not miss that opportunity.
Air quality and protecting America’s water are some of your top priorities. Why?
Literally we need clean air to live, to be healthy, and we’ve had a series of setbacks in court decisions what I think are regulations that were either on the wrong track with respect to air. Although it has gotten cleaner, we’ve sort of stalled in our efforts to fight pollution as we move forward.
On water quality — we take water for granted. So we at the EPA, we really have only one mission, and that is to protect the environment. And there are only three big parts of the environment: air, water and the land. If the EPA is not out there doing its job for the American people, then they would have the right to question why we are here at all. We have to get to work.
How do you plan to attract and encourage small business owners and corporations to get on board with the green economy? What type of incentives will there be?
The Recovery Act will include both outright grants, and it will include loans and loan guarantees, and tax credits all in those clean energy and renewable energy fields.
We’re already seeing political and local leaders be very thoughtful about ways to really be transformative. Obviously the job part of it we touch, but we’re not leading. The White House has hired Van Jones from Green for All [to be the special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the Council on Environmental Quality].
EPA Programs Receiving Funding Under the Recovery Act
Please give us some examples of the types of shovel ready jobs that are available to help reduce the unemployment rate?
The shovel-ready jobs under the Recovery Act are mainly bread-and-butter, wastewater, and gentle-water operations. You can think about new pipes in the ground; you can think about the 20-year local wastewater treatment plant.
You’ll see renewable energy, solar, and wind projects starting to come to life with the recovery logo and you’ll see lots and lots of opportunities for energy efficiency, retrofitting schools, retrofitting churches, retrofitting homes in our communities. All of those are opportunities for new jobs. They might not need shovels, but [they’re] hammer and nail ready.
President Obama’s Green Job Act aims to create three million new jobs. In the green collar job market, what will employers want to see in terms of experience?
In certain jobs people will need a high level of skill, so obviously technical training. There is a need for engineers of many different kinds. I read an article the other day that mechanical and civil engineers, a lot of disciplines like that are seeing upticks. Nuclear engineers. There’s lots of talk about how we don’t actually have nuclear engineers being trained in this country right now.
When you’re getting that training and somebody is paying money and getting training, you should be asking how does this relate to the green economy?
Will the EPA support minority involvement in trends in green practices? Will there be a push to encourage minorities to study environmentalism?
Absolutely. I certainly hope that if nothing else my being here shows minority students that there is an unlimited future for them in the environmental movement. It is an incredible opportunity in terms of building a career and one that makes you feel good every day about the work you are doing.
I would certainly hope that one of the legacies in my time here at EPA is that we literally changed the face of the environmental movement as people see it in this country. Environmentalism is not something that [is just for] the people with money, although we certainly appreciate the leadership of folks who support environmental causes. But for anyone who cares about the air that their children breathe and anybody who cares about pollution in their community, the right to a clean environment is almost as basic a right as any other that we have.
How will the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor be held accountable for making certain that small, disadvantaged, or minority owned businesses or low income residents will get a fair share of green contracts?
The president has made it clear that he intends to hold each agency accountable for opening up these historic opportunities to people of color and small businesses. The challenge here is that people are losing jobs as we speak, so people keep talking about new jobs. I think the president has said we also have to count all the jobs that will have been lost and that is a hard number to measure.
I think that means there will be changes across every single sector. Not in one sector. We will know we [have achieved that goal when we see] real integration of black owned businesses and women owned businesses.
More on Earth Day
On April 22, 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans gathered together to participate the environmental demonstration known as “Earth Day.” There were rallies, teach-ins, speeches, and publicity ploys all designed to raise awareness of the environmental problems facing the U.S. In the more than 30 years since that first celebration, times have certainly changed. Earth Day is now celebrated by more than 500 million people and in 175 countries.
The government and the EPA are still touting recycling and energy efficiency, and targeting pollution, but there is also a strong push for green jobs, retrofitting outdated fixtures and upgrading infrastructure under Obama’s ambition to create a clean energy economy that can serve as a pillar of our recovery.
Further Reading:
Obama’s Plan for a Green Economy
How You Can Help:
Pick 5 for the Environment