Cooper Next DEQ PICK Defends ‘Considering Environmental Justice’ in Everything They Do at Senate Committee Confirmation Hearing, “

RALEIGH – Governor Roy Cooper’s original pick for Secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality was pilfered by the Biden administration, where he is continuing his thrust for racial equity in pursuing environmental justice; but Cooper’s pick to replace the outgoing secretary is just as woke, even if she’s exceedingly smooth at couching the extremism of environmental justice in artful platitudes.

One gauge of how much of Woke team player Dionne Delli-Gatti is, is the energy with which documented Environmentalist Wackos come to her defense and praise on the Woke points in question.

NC Policy Watch, with a long track record of predictably ‘Green’ environmental advocacy, provides this insight in framing Delli-Gatti’s confirmation hearing as ‘hostile’ while openly doting on her ability to manipulate language in addressing relevant questions such that the rotten truth of her answer is covered up with sweet woke pleasantries.

From NCPW:

Not until Minute 100 of a 120-minute confirmation hearing for Secretary of the Environment nominee Dionne Delli-Gatti did any lawmaker speak the words “environmental justice.”

Even then, the context for the comment was not one of concern for communities of color and low-income neighborhoods who are disproportionately burdened by polluting industries. Instead, Sen. Norm Sanderson (R-Carteret, Craven and Pamlico), asked Delli-Gatti how she defined the term. “It’s so broad, it can touch about every [environmental] permit,” Sanderson said.

That indeed, is the point of environmental justice. 

Delli-Gatti apparently learned the art of diplomacy from her time as a congressional liaison for the EPA Region 4 office and as director of Southeast Climate and Energy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s the consideration that no specific group, based on race or economics or other distinguishing characteristics can be disproportionately impacted,” she said. “We can’t intentionally or unintentionally burden a specific sector of the population. It can be challenging because there aren’t clear pathways in our laws about how we consider environmental justice. But under Title VI we have to consider it.”

In other words, Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is not just a good idea. It’s the law. […]”

‘Yeah, you get’em! It’s the law dummy!’ you can almost hear the Lefty cheerleaders thinking.

Of course, that reaction is only enabled by the presupposition that absolutely everything is filtered through the lens of race (and/or class); that any and every disparate outcome is a result of racism/classism; and, that the only solution is to knock down the oppressors.

It’s Woke, and clearly this is the what the Lefties find so attractive, and the Republican lawmakers and business owners find so worrisome, about Delli-Gatti.

Consider her, and the Radical Left’s, line of thinking here: Part of her role as the head of the State of North Carolina’s environmental agency, is to leverage policy to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It adds racial justice to the charge of environmental justice, combining two agendas with identical goals.

You’ll notice, the nominee and environmental justice warriors won’t ever care to mention the disparate impact the Left’s Woke Green policies have on minority and low-income populations from higher home heating and cooling bills, to higher transportation costs, and, importantly, higher housing costs.

(Wherever the Left rants about affordable housing and rabble-rouses against ‘gentrification,’ you can be sure to find a massive chunk of affordable real estate solutions rendered completely and arbitrarily inert specifically due to a ‘Green’ campaign that takes huge capacity out of the inventory, thus creating artificial scarcity that jacks up prices. It is then blamed on racism.)

This is to say nothing of the societal costs, necessarily dragging on the bottom rungs of society the most, of prioritizing an energy infrastructure and management approach built almost literally on a sunshine and rainbows delusion, but also fueled by resentment of producers and production in general. See Texas, February 2021, for an example of the kind of unintended, but foreseeable consequences of favoring ‘Green’ energy and environmental justice and actively disfavoring reliable energy sources.

These are the worries that likely motivated lawmakers like Sens. Sanderson, Jackson, and Nelson to ask their ‘hostile’ questions of a cabinet appointee who seems to embrace the ‘justice’ philosophy that has become so pervasive on the Left. If she has already revealed that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and current Woke Dogma, are at the top of her mind regarding this post, we think lawmakers should let her explain this philosophy a bit more during day two of the hearing.

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