PULLMAN, Wash — Washington State University just released a study that examined how actual action against polluters is often determined by certain factors.
It specifically looked at the wealth in communities affected by climate crimes.
The paper was published in Nature Sustainability, a journal that publishes studies from research in sustainability in fields of natural, social and engineering.
It was co-authored by Erik Johnson, a professor in WSU’s Department of Sociology.
The study examined criminal charges and court cases brought by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The study went over violation from 2011 to 2020.
In the study, they found that, in state counties with high-income earners, enforcement actions were 24% higher.
This was high on average in middle-class communities.
The research also found that counties with better land quality had an increase in enforcement actions.
They also found that people of color and low-income people were more often harmed by these violations
“You might reasonably expect the government to use its most consequential enforcement mechanism in the counties that are the most polluted,” Johnson said. “But it turns out they use it in the wealthier counties more. The more educated and wealthy the county is, the more likely the government is to enforce environmental regulations.”
The researchers wanted to make clear that the study doesn’t make claims about the overall number of environmental crimes.
This is because environmental crimes go underreported, and the biggest polluters, industrial companies, have the resources to avoid prosecution through legal means.
“We’re trying to identify the geographic patterning, and offer some explanations for why that might be. For example, counties that are farther away from a criminal enforcement office have fewer criminal prosecutions. So these organizational and institutional factors may be driving some of these trends,” said lead author of the paper, Pierce Greenberg, assistant professor of sociology at Clemson University.
Johnson hopes that the disparity in environmental enforcement will help examine how enforcement actions align with the purposes of environmental laws.