LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight", I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us. It's been another busy week.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine entered its third month,
Elon Musk continued to Musk everything up,
and Madison Cawthorn, Congress's freshest-faced idiot,
brought a loaded handgun to an airport. Again.
But instead of that, we're going to focus on this year's elections.
A lot of governors and local officials are on the ballot this year,
and some have been trying to make a splash with big stunts,
like Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida
and a man who has what I can only describe as "Green Book" vibes.
Now, we've talked before about his Don't Say Gay bill,
and Disney's belated condemnation of it.
Last week, DeSantis took a bold step to retaliate.
As promised, Florida Republican governor Ron DeSantis
signing a law ending Disney's self-government and tax breaks.
The self-government at Disney is called the Reedy Creek Improvement District.
It provides fire, EMS, electricity, and other functions,
like any other government would.
It's true. In the part of central Florida where Disney World is,
the company technically functions as a self-contained government,
providing essential services, except, crucially, a morgue.
Why? Because no one, look at me, no one has ever died at Disney.
And no one will ever die at Disney. Do you hear me?
There is no fucking morgue at Disney. Nod if you understand me.
Very good.
There are plenty of signs that DeSantis didn't really think this through,
with experts pointing out that the law may actually
"violate the contract clause of the Florida Constitution",
and also that Florida state law requires the county
assumes the district's debt when it's dissolved.
Which could mean that Orange and Osceola counties,
where the district is, inherit upward of a billion dollars in bond debt.
It is no wonder that there are concerns about all the potential disruption here.
Thankfully, DeSantis had some reassuring words.
We're gonna take care of all that. Don't worry.
This is all, we have everything all thought out.
Don't let anyone tell you
that somehow Disney is gonna get a tax cut out of this.
They're going to pay more taxes as a result of this.
Okay, there is just nothing more immediately off-putting
than someone starting a sentence with "don't worry".
He sounds like a frat boy
trying to reason with the cops after a noise complaint.
"Don't worry, man, we're gonna take care of all of that.
We've got everything thought out. You guys want a beer or something?
You want to hang out?"
And follow-up statements from DeSantis's office
continued to be vague on details,
with one spokeswoman admitting "the governor's office
does not have a written plan on how the dissolution will proceed."
Which, of course it doesn't.
And look, do I think it's bad if Disney pays more taxes?
No, I don't! That would be a good thing.
I don't love that it might happen not through meaningful tax reform,
but on the whim of one right-wing dipshit
who's scared of gay people and doesn't understand the First Amendment,
but hey, ends, means, what are you gonna do?
The thing is, it's not just DeSantis engaging in harmful stunts.
In Texas, Greg Abbott has been doing exactly the same.
You may remember a few weeks ago, he announced
that he'd be sending charter buses of migrants to Washington, D.C.
But he also recently decided to subject
every commercial truck crossing the border to strict inspections,
causing absolute chaos.
These trucks are already
inspected by U.S. Customs and the U.S. Department of Transportation,
but now, per Governor Abbott, DPS is also conducting safety inspections
with the stated goal of stopping cases of human smuggling.
Normally, it takes these trucks that you see behind me
about 30, 40 minutes to cross,
but earlier today we heard of one truck driver
that sat in line for 12 hours trying to bring product into the US.
There is no greater hell
than being pointlessly stuck in traffic for 12 hours because of Greg Abbott,
except that there is, being stuck in traffic for 12 hours with Greg Abbott.
That is a road trip movie that no one wants to see.
Abbott called the scheme off after just eight days,
which is a good thing, especially given that, by some estimates,
Texas lost $4 billion from the disruptions,
while finding no migrants, and "zero drugs,
weapons, or any other type of contraband".
Apparently, all Abbott's inspections did manage to find
were things like oil leaks and flat tires.
Meaning that he caused a hellish traffic jam
only to do the work of the world's most expensive Jiffy Lube.
And then there was L.A. County sheriff Alex Villanueva,
seen here looking like a potato cowboy.
His re-election bid this year has been overshadowed by claims in L.A. Times
that he directed a cover up of an incident
where one of his deputies knelt on a detainee's head for three minutes.
It is a damning story about abuse of power and lack of transparency,
and Villaneuva took swift action against those responsible
for everyone finding out about it.
The sheriff says there's now a criminal investigation
into who released the video to the L.A. Times.
So here are the three individuals that we want to know a lot about.
He pointed out his political opponent in the race for sheriff,
the inspector general, and an L.A. Times reporter.
The matter is under investigation. This is stolen property
that was removed illegally from people who had some intent,
criminal intent, and it'll be subject to investigation.
When you're accused of being complicit in a terrible act,
being more concerned about who said it than the accusation
doesn't exactly convey innocence.
If someone said, "John Oliver likes to be called 'Big Daddy Zazu
with the Long, Long Beak' around the office",
and my response was, "Who said that? Was it Joseph?
I'm going to investigate Joseph".
That would be more than a little suspicious, wouldn't it?
Besides, that would never happen, because, of course,
Big Daddy Zazu runs a tight ship.
Now, legally, I have to tell you, Villanueva denies any wrongdoing
and says that he only learned of the kneeling incident
"eight months after it occurred and immediately launched an investigation,"
although a former top official in his department has now filed a claim,
saying that she watched the video with him and two others
just five days after the incident happened.
And sweeping things under the carpet seems to be Villanueva's style.
Because despite campaigning four years ago
as a reformer in an infamously corrupt department,
his record since then has not been great.
A 2019 IG report found that, over just a two-month period,
officials working under him canceled "45 administrative investigations"
into his employees,
some of which involved domestic violence, child abuse,
and sexual misconduct with an inmate.
And he's not just breaking promises to reform,
it seems his re-election bid is going to involve going full culture-war.
I think 2022 is going to be a special year.
I think it's going to be a referendum on a national disease,
is going to finally see a cure coming along.
Wokeism is on the ropes. Let's put it out of its misery.
That's fun, isn't it?
You probably thought that the national disease he was referring to there
was the literal one that's killed almost a million Americans in two years.
Or the figurative one that is BTS fever.
And by the way, Yoongi, marry me. I have the documents.
But instead, he meant the bullshit disease that means you're not allowed
to make fun of your nephew for being a sociology major.
You know, the real tragedy.
But perhaps Villanueva's piece de résistance is a new campaign ad
which honestly may be one of the dumbest things that I've ever seen.
I'm going to show you all 30 seconds of it, mainly because
I cannot think of a single part of it that you don't need to see.
I fear for my home's future.
The California dream has turned to a nightmare.
The politicians have let us down.
Let's stand up to the corruption. Let's fight for ourselves.
Let's bring the dream back.
I'm Alex Villanueva, and I approve this message.
Now, obviously, that is all idiotic,
from the 1990s rollerblader,
to the song choice for your "California dream" ad being "Ave Maria"
and not, I dunno, "California Dreamin'"
to the fact that everyone there is having an absolute ball,
including the people experiencing a break-in.
I've honestly never seen anyone this happy while getting robbed,
and I saw Glenn Close at the Oscars eight times.
But perhaps the weirdest decision comes at the end,
when an inexplicably wet Villanueva works a look that can best be described
as "high school coach minutes before being busted
for spying on the girls' locker room",
and announces,
"Let's stand up to the corruption, let's fight for ourselves,"
which, given that he's the one who's been in charge the last four years,
seems like a pretty good slogan for anyone running against him.
But the thing is it seems that he's going to get re-elected this year.
Bullying a reporter might actually help him,
just like DeSantis and Abbott's harmful stunts are likely to help them.
Because the name of the game in politics these days
seems to be less "can you help the most people?" and more,
"how much can you hurt the people your supporters hate the most?"
Even if all voters get in return is a massive logistical headache,
a 12-hour traffic jam,
and the most unwatchable depiction of Southern California since "La La Land".
It's just not great.
And now, this!
And now...
Shaquille O'Neal Can't Stop Explaining How to Save Money on Gas.
I didn't want to get a certain vehicle
because of the amount of gas I would have to spend.
It costs like $80 to fill it up. And he said, then you said...
When it gets to half, then you put $20, you bring it back to full.
You're complaining about when it gets to zero, you spend it 80, right?
When it gets to half, you put 20. Then when it gets back to half, you put 20.
I'll keep stopping, putting 20 in, and it'll be, 80, the same amount of gas!
- I already paid the 80, right? - Yep.
- And when I get to half... - Now you're out of gas.
No. When I get to half, that's Valdosta, right?
Now I'm gonna have 20.
But if you let it get to half by Wednesday,
then you pay 20, that gets it back up to full.
No! It won't get to half by, but if Wednesday it's going to be 40.
- Then on Friday it'll be 40 again. - Not 40, 20.
If I'm at half, I don't want to keep driving.
- But where are you driving to? - Shut it up!
Half of 80 is 40.
- But no, listen to what I'm saying. - I did.
When we get to half, spend 20 and fill it back up, booboo. That's my point.
When I get to half, I'm gonna put 20, that's going to bring a little full,
if I'm at half and I keep driving, I'm going to go down.
- But if I'm at half and I get 20... - Where you're driving matters!
- I never drive my car again ever? - You're complaining about the $80.
- Yes. I'm complaining. - Right, so, at zero is 80.
We've heard it so many times.
Shaq, how much gas do you think you can get for $20 right now?
Don't start about half full and filling!
If I add 20,
it's going to give me some cushion so I can go home and come back.
And you'll be back here tomorrow. Case closed. Shut the hell up!
- Case closed indeed. - Yes.
- Yeah, please. - Trust me. My gas method works.
Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns pollution.
It's the thing that PSAs have been warning us about
for more than half a century.
Before you take another breath,
think what air pollution may be doing to your lungs.
Hold it now! Think, what are you going to do about it?
If there are groups in your town fighting to make the air clean,
join them or write to Clean Air Washington, D.C.
By the way, holding your breath is not the answer.
CLEAN AIR
Flawless. Not a single flaw. The only thing I'd say there is,
you could have had a little more fun with what's written on the balls.
You're already the flirtiest weirdo 1960s PSAs had to offer. Swing big!
You could have gone with, "Bet you didn't know these were in my mouth",
or, "These are Kermit's eyes",
or, "Robert Kennedy will be shot on June 5th, 1968!"
The world was your oyster there!
We all suffer from exposure to pollution in this country,
but some significantly more than others,
thanks to what's called environmental racism.
Black Americans are exposed to 38 percent more polluted air
and are "75 percent more likely
to live in communities that border a plant or a factory".
And crucially,
the disparity in exposure persists even when controlling for income.
One study found that on average, Black Americans making $200,000
were exposed to more air pollution than white Americans making 25,000.
Proving that yet again,
racism is one of the few things in this country more powerful than money.
In fact, I believe America's current top five power rankings go:
racism, beef, viral videos of soldiers reuniting with their dogs,
DJ Khaled's PR team, and then money.
And while the decisions that lead to disparate outcomes can be subtle,
they can also be incredibly flagrant.
In 2008, there was a massive spill of coal ash here, in Tennessee,
with tons of toxic waste dumped into a largely white community.
Now, the good news is, they removed four million tons of it.
The bad news is, it was then dumped 300 miles away,
in this largely Black community called Uniontown,
where residents were pretty clear about what had just happened.
Taking that from a white area, the white people didn't want it,
let's just keep it 100.
Why do you think it's good enough for the Blacks?
Yeah, she's absolutely right.
It seems when white people don't want something anymore,
they either dump it on minority communities,
or sew a hummingbird on it, and list it on Etsy as handmade vintage.
Let's keep it 100 for a second, that is garbage.
The fact is, though, Black neighborhoods in particular
can get targeted with incredible precision,
and the stakes could not be higher here.
Pollution is one of the driving factors behind conditions like heart disease,
asthma, and even death, with Black Americans
nearly three times as likely to die from exposure to pollution.
And vast disparities can even exist even within the same city,
as this environmental expert breaks down.
The ZIP Code is the most important predictor of health and well-being.
You tell me your ZIP Code, I can tell you how healthy you are.
All ZIP Codes are not created equal.
- Really? - Yes.
You can find ZIP Codes that are adjacent to each other
and have a life expectancy disparity of 10, 15 years
depending on what's in the neighborhood and what's not in the neighborhood.
That is grim.
"You can live 15 fewer years depending on your ZIP Code"
is the worst ZIP Code news
since the time that they added those four bullshit digits at the end.
I don't know what those are, and I am never gonna learn them.
I know my five-digit ZIP Code, my Social Security number,
my birthday, one of my children's birthdays,
and that is the end of my numbers. I'm not learning any more.
Given just how awful its effects are, let's look at environmental racism.
How it got this bad,
how government and industry continue to fail people of color,
and what we can do about it.
And the first major factor to consider here is history.
As we've discussed before on this comedy show,
it was explicit federal policy for decades to segregate housing
based on race through a process known as redlining.
Basically, Black people could not get government-backed home loans
where white people lived.
The areas where they could live were often also zoned for industrial uses.
Here's how it worked in Dallas.
So, you can take a redlining map from the '30s and the maps from '40s
and overlay that on a current industrial map of Dallas.
And they'll show you Black and Brown folks are forced to live
side by side by heavy industry
in a way that nobody else in Dallas is forced to live.
That's basically the same parts of town!
Which does seem pretty intentional!
I know some things are just weird coincidences,
like how John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day,
or how George Washington had wooden teeth
and Patrick Henry died of anal splinters.
Just a random, true fact that they don't teach you about in history class.
But this, this is no coincidence!
And that might at least partly explain why the life expectancy here, in Joppa,
a predominantly Black area with a lot of industrial zoning,
is just 71, while in the predominantly white Highland Park, it is 84.
And it definitely helps explain
why certain neighborhoods have to put up with shit like shingle mountain.
That is the work of a company named Blue Star Recycling,
which claimed that it had a plan to recycle roofing shingles into asphalt.
So, it started dumping a literal mountain of them into a lot,
right next to homes in a largely Black and Latino neighborhood.
Look at it, shingle mountain.
That's 100,000 tons of shingles.
- 100,000 tons of shingles? - Yes. Exactly.
It kind of smells like...
just rubber, like raw rubber.
It does, it smells like burnt pavement.
- Excuse me. - Bless you.
Bless you.
- I think I'm feeling all this dust. - I better get you out and back here.
- This is what we're going through. - You can feel it going up your nose.
Yeah. You can actually feel it on the mouth.
- Excuse me. - Bless you.
Sneezing in response to 100,000 tons of fiberglass waste
is fine a couple of times, but there is a point
when you're just interrupting people, and it is rude.
You cannot deny, it is impressive that it took all of five seconds
for that mountain to turn Soledad O'Brien
into a woman at the beginning of an allergy commercial,
when she's still in black and white.
And Blue Star's owner, Chris Ganter,
did not seem that concerned about the mess that he made.
Watch what happened
when O'Brien managed to stop sneezing for long enough to call him.
Let me ask you a question.
When you think of the people who live there on shingle mountain.
What would you say to them? It's pretty gross. It smells...
The whole neighborhood around there's gross.
Everything around there is an industrial area.
I didn't really go down there very often
'cause I didn't like being down in that part of town.
But do you think the people there, do you feel sorry for them?
Do you feel like, listen, that's where they live, they get what they get?
Everybody knew what the zoning of the area was when they, when they bought.
It's kind of like, I don't know, buying right next to the nuclear place
and then complaining later about it. It's an industrial area.
And every city has to have an industrial area. Just the way it is.
Part of me almost appreciates that level of unapologetic shittiness.
No efforts to spin or dodge it, just flat-out saying,
"It's an icky part of town full of gross poors who deserve to live in filth.
Did you get all of that for your news report?
I can say it again slower if it helps."
But what Ganter clearly does not understand there
is that a lot of people didn't choose to live in an industrial area.
Racist zoning policies chose for them.
And while his company eventually went belly-up,
and local activists got the city to move the shingles,
it only moved them just across the highway
to a massive landfill allowed by the neighborhood's zoning.
But history and zoning are only part of the story here.
'Cause it also is about who has the power to push back.
And polluters often assume that Black communities, in particular,
won't be able to stop them.
Take the Byhalia Pipeline.
It was a joint venture between these two companies,
who planned for their oil pipeline
to take a very deliberate path through Memphis.
The path Byhalia proposed winds down through south Memphis,
cutting through several historically Black communities.
There is a more direct option,
but that would cut through predominantly white,
wealthier neighborhoods in the north.
Yeah, that does seem a little odd, doesn't it?
Normally, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line,
not through any Black people who happen to be living nearby.
Although I will say, the least surprising thing there
is that the white wealthy suburb is called Germantown.
That is the name you give your community
when Aryanville feels a little too obvious.
And while the companies behind the Byhalia Pipeline
insist that they had good reasons for choosing the path that they did,
according to a local activist,
a rep for them once accidentally said the quiet part out loud.
There was a community meeting that Byhalia Pipeline held,
and they were asked by one of the members of the community,
"Why did you all choose this route?"
And there's usually a PR answer, but instead,
the representative was pretty clear and plain.
"We basically chose a point of least resistance".
When people aren't scripted,
you can really learn what they believe and what they think.
You don't usually get a corporate PR line quite so honest.
There is a reason that Apple's slogan is "Think Different"
and not "We made all the ports different again.
What are you gonna do? Nothing. You'll do nothing.
You'll buy $100 of new cords that'll last you until next year
when we invent some shit called USB-Q or whatever.
It's not even about the money for us anymore,
it's about the erotic rush of power."
I have to tell you, the pipeline company
insists that that rep's answer did not reflect the company's views,
and that he should have said that they
"look for routes with the least collective impact to the community."
And that definitely does sound better than the actual truth,
which is that largely minority communities
often are seen as the path of least resistance.
And while local activists have tried to resist,
and for decades, they've often done it alone,
as big environmental groups haven't been the best allies.
As this climate justice activist points out,
the priorities of the environmental movement
have tended to leave certain communities out.
We need to redefine environmentalism
to think more inclusively than the traditional perception
of the environmental movement, which tends to be on,
you know, saving the whales, or flora and fauna.
I did a talk recently in a national park
and when it was being advertised,
there were people who were perplexed and people who were actually opposed
to having a conversation about environmental justice.
Environmentalism clearly shouldn't just be about protecting wild spaces.
Humans do need protection, too.
And I know it's not the most popular stance,
but maybe conservationists could redirect some of the resources
to environmental justice
that they've been completely wasting on pandas.
And I mean specifically pandas.
We spend so much time saving them, and why, exactly?
They don't want to be here. They don't fuck each other.
They spend most of their time falling off something.
Seriously, you watch videos of pandas, they're constantly falling down.
It's time to let them go
as fast as they let go to whatever they are holding.
And the thing is, at least with something like shingle mountain,
you can see it, so you know to fight it.
But sometimes, pollution can be invisible.
And those that you'd expect to warn you about that
can be incredibly slow to do so when it comes to communities of color.
You're probably already familiar to what happened
to the residents of Flint, Michigan, but that is the tip of the iceberg here.
Take the West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago, Indiana,
a federally assisted housing community built on top of a former lead smelter.
The lead levels there were dangerously off the charts.
How far off the charts? I'll let this reporter fill you in.
The safe level is supposed to be 400 parts per million.
They found levels of 1,200 parts per million
which is already an emergency level.
But in some areas in the soil underneath the ground,
they have found areas of 45,000 parts per million
and even 90,000 parts per million.
It's true.
They found lead more than 200 times higher than the level requiring cleanup.
Which just isn't great when the place that you found it is the ground,
a thing notoriously difficult to avoid, unless, that is,
you're willing to spend the rest of your life
playing a very high stakes version of the floor is lava.
What's even worse is the government knew the area was dangerously toxic
decades before they told anyone who lived there.
Time and again, regulators had the opportunity to tell residents,
and they just didn't.
Like in 1985, when the EPA first found high levels of lead
in the soil near the housing complex.
They didn't notify residents.
Or later, in 1998, when the Department of Health and Human Services
and state health officials
found 30 percent of children under six in the housing complex
had elevated blood lead levels, they didn't notify residents.
Flash forward to 2009, the EPA declared the land West Calumet
was on a superfund site, marking it a priority for contamination cleanup,
and still didn't notify residents.
And quick side note here: they didn't have to do that,
because, fun fact, federal law doesn't require its agencies
to tell tenants that a unit is located on a superfund site.
Which I truly cannot wrap my head around.
The whole point of superfund is to officially classify something,
in the government record, as very dangerous.
So, it is not great to do that and then not tell the people actually at risk.
It's like putting a "Do Not Leave, Lean Over the Fence" sign
at a bear exhibit and having it face the bear side.
Sure, the information's technically out there,
but it's not really doing much to improve public safety.
Anyway, in 2014, the EPA, the DOJ, the state of Indiana,
and the corporations responsible for the contamination
agreed on a remediation plan, but still didn't tell residents about the danger.
In fact, it was only in 2016, when the EPA found those lead levels in the soil
hundreds of times their maximum permitted level,
that the city finally sent a letter to residents
telling them about the contamination.
That is 31 years and eight government agencies later.
Even then, the steps the government took were utterly pathetic.
On Monday, the EPA will be passing out flyers like these
which have lots of safety tips including reminding families
not to let their children play in the dirt, play in the grass,
and to remove their shoes before walking into their homes.
I've been told to just keep your children out of the grass
and out of the areas where the mulch is.
How do you do that when children play?
That's what they do.
She's right. Kids want to run around and play.
Although in the government's defense, they did put up that sign.
There is nothing children respect more than the authority of a flimsy sign.
"Sorry, friends, no frolicking, hijinks or tomfoolery for us today.
After all, the sign is watching us."
And while the details in this example may be extraordinary,
it is worth noting
that "70 percent of hazardous waste sites on the superfund list
are located within one mile of federally assisted housing."
But this isn't about cleaning pollution that already happened.
It's about deciding
where industries will be allowed to pollute going forward.
And without significant changes, our whole system is currently set up
so that places that have already been polluted get worse and worse.
There's even a term for this: "sacrifice zones",
areas of the country where it is both government policy and industry practice
to concentrate polluters.
Basically, the thinking is, if you are zoned for industry,
and a company's already there, what's one more?
But people live in those zones.
And one such area in Louisiana has even come to be known
by an incredibly bleak name.
More than 100 petrochemical plants and refineries
dot this corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge,
often referred to as Cancer Alley.
Reserve is right in the middle of it.
The EPA says the cancer risk here is almost 50 times the national average.
They built this monstrosity up on top of us.
Even the town's cemetery is surrounded by a refinery.
Putting an oil refinery around a cemetery is pretty on the nose.
But also, let's not gloss over the term "Cancer Alley".
It is pretty upsetting to learn that that's a name for an actual place
where people live and not what you'd assume:
a slang term for the Marlboro Man's ass crack.
It's no wonder, frankly, that residents of Cancer Alley
are so angry that industries have been allowed to move in right next to them.
And yet, infuriatingly,
some local government officials try to downplay the risks.
I think Cancer Alley, the term Cancer Alley is a myth, really,
that needs to be debunked.
Data that we received from the tumor registry
reports that this was not Cancer Alley.
Okay, then! But a few things on that.
First, a "tumor registry" may be one of the saddest things
that I've ever brought up on this show,
and we've talked about everything from baby crib grenades
to orthodontic bullying to the elderly being eaten by alligators.
One of those things is real, and you'll never guess which one.
Mainly because two of those are real.
But you should know that, since that clip, researchers have, in fact,
found that "toxic air pollution is linked to higher cancer rates
among impoverished communities in Louisiana,"
including this guy's fucking parish.
And while local politicians and industry will be quick to point out
the potential economic and employment benefits that come with industry,
as a local activist points out, that is something of a devil's bargain.
If ISIS showed up
and they say they will create jobs, would we let them in?
Exactly. And for the record, that man is a retired three-star general.
So, when he is comparing something to ISIS,
he's really comparing something to ISIS.
And as residents there will point out, they are in many ways trapped.
Why haven't you moved?
Why should I move? How can I move?
I struggled all my life to build this. Right now, in good conscience,
who would I actually sell this house to?
What poor, unsuspecting family
would I trick into moving into this death trap?
I know the reporter is just doing her job there.
But that is such a ridiculous question
that that man would have been fully within his right
to make the rest of that interview
the most passive aggressive interaction of all time.
"Why don't I move? Now you mention it,
I hadn't even considered moving away from Cancer Alley!
It just sounded so nice to me! What a great idea you just had!
Let me throw up a Zillow listing for 'death trap'
and I'll just sit back and wait for a bidding war to begin."
And when you put all of this together,
a history of racist zoning, ineffective regulation,
and a government that continues to prioritize the profits of industry
over the health of people, it is clear we have a massive problem.
And the good news is,
the current president actually seems to agree with that.
The unrelenting impact of climate change
affects every single, solitary one of us.
Too often the brunt
falls disproportionately on communities of color,
exacerbating the need for environmental justice,
sorry, there's a bug.
Speaking of the environment.
I don't love that a bug undermined the genuinely important point
that he was making there, but I will say this:
at least now Biden knows what it feels like
when someone creeps out on the back of his neck.
But the fact is, though, Biden did make environmental justice
a pillar of his campaign, and since taking office,
he's promised, among other things, to funnel 40 percent
of relevant climate investments to disadvantaged communities,
and to issue a yearly scorecard that measures progress.
Which sounds great.
Unfortunately, so far,
his administration still hasn't set clear goals to accomplish this.
And even worse, in February, it said
"race will not be a factor in deciding where to focus efforts,"
which is pretty fucking infuriating.
And the administration will point out that the Supreme Court,
in its current makeup,
is likely to strike down any explicitly race-based policy.
Which may well be true.
But we're in a pretty fucking backwards situation
when any solutions to this problem have to be race-blind,
despite the fact that the causes of it are so demonstrably not.
So, what can we do here?
As you've seen again and again in the stories tonight,
it is local activists on the ground who've been working tirelessly
to fight for their communities and to gain concessions.
And they deserve much more support from larger environmentalist groups,
even as they continue leading the way.
As for the government level, we need significant zoning reform
to keep polluters and residents safely apart.
Because the status quo is just not acceptable.
When this country
designates communities of color as "sacrifice zones",
the message there is that the people who live in them are expendable.
That it's okay for their kids to not be able to play outside
and for their life spans to be shorter.
And unless we make big steps to address environmental racism
and call it what it is,
a brutal divide is gonna stay in place in this country,
where some are treated like they're worth protecting,
and others like they can be sacrificed.
And now, this!
And now...
People on TV Read Rejected License Plates Out Loud.
The Texas DMV rejected thousands of personalized license plate requests,
saying "no way" to some strange asks from drivers.
Just know that someone already tried "fartacus" and was denied.
Requests like "fat ace",
Or how about this one, "F-A-C-K" and the word "ewe".
The driver said he's involved in breeding sheep.
"Rump," "hitman,"
"poop," and "byt3me."
"01d fart," using zero as the O.
"H00ker," using zeroes for the O's, and "XXX sexy."
I'm looking at one right here that's "boobaru."
One person requested a tag from the state that said "(...)"...
Pam," "(...) Ned," "(...) me."
"Imnaked," now that's fun.
"Ifarted," come on, that's hilarious.
Let's see what we've got here. "Smart (...),"
"naked1," "naked," "hooters," sexual.
"Drpoop," again, profanity or offensive.
"Eta (...)," I mean, that's a sexual suggestion
and I don't have to go any further than that, do I?
"Quikee," "shag," "porkin," "(...) off,"
"kismy (...)"...
I think we've covered them all pretty nicely here.
Thanks so much for watching, we'll see you next week. Good night!