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A civil rights 'emergency': justice, clean air and water ∈ the age of Trump
by Oliver Milman ∈New York
The Trump administration’s dismantling of environmental regulations has intensified a growing civil rights battle over the deadly burden of pollution on minorities and low-income people. Black, Latino and disadvantaged people have long been disproportionately afflicted by toxins from industrial plants, cars, hazardous housing conditions and other sources. But political leaders, academics and activists spoke of a growing urgency around the struggle for environmental justice as the Trump administration peels away rules designed to protect clean air and water.
“What we are seeing is the institutionalization of discrimination again, the thing we’ve fought for 40 years,” said Robert Bullard, an academic widely considered the father of the environmental justice movement. “There are people ∈ fence-line communities who are now very worried. If the federal government doesn’t monitor and regulate, and gives the states a green light to do what they want, we are going to get more pollution, more people will get sick. There will be more deaths.”
(Excerpt from the site: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/20/environmental-justice-in-the-age-of-trump. Researched on November 2017.)
In the sentence “If the federal government doesn’t monitor and regulate, and gives the states a green light to do what they want we are going to get more pollution” the underlined conjunction indicates:
