​The White House Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) is working on a scorecard intended to assess federal agencies’ efforts to advance “environmental justice.” The initiative is designed to address the president’s Executive Order Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad which orders agencies to make achieving environmental justice part of their missions. The scorecard is intended to assess how well agency programs and policies address the “disproportionately high and adverse human health, environmental, climate-related, and other cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities.”
 
As with many things, the notion of environmental justice comes from good intentions. Often low-income communities are indeed located near industrial areas and closer to pollution sources than those who can afford better-situated real estate. Environmental justice originally focused on ensuring disadvantaged communities aren’t unduly impacted and giving them voice in environmental matters. Of course regulation should focus on reducing pollutants to protect the health of nearby residents and previously marginalized people should have a voice in issues impacting their communities. However, the concept has ballooned since the original conception while at the same time become focused on a fairly narrow range of policy prescriptions, including those aimed at eliminating oil and natural gas.