The talk will suggest a policy mechanism to ensure that climate change mitigation policy improves the health of environmental justice communities by reducing emissions of locally harmful GHG co-pollutants from power plants that impact these areas. Environmental justice communities are defined in this presentation as Indigenous communities, Of Color communities and low-income communities.

Dr. Nicky Sheats, Esq., is the director of the Center for the Urban Environment of the John S. Watson Institute for Public Policy at Thomas Edison State University. The primary mission of the Center is providing support for the environmental justice (EJ) community. He works on issues that include air pollution, climate change, cumulative impacts, developing EJ legal strategies and increasing the working capacity of the EJ community.

Sheats was a founding member of the NJ EJ Alliance and the EJ Leadership Forum. He served on the NJ Clean Air Council, and EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and National EJ Advisory Council. Sheats was also a co-author of the human health chapter of the 2014 National Climate Assessment.

In addition, he was a public interest attorney, serving as a law clerk for the Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (the local Court); a landlord-tenant and housing attorney at Camden Regional Legal Services; a public defender in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and a legal instructor at a law oriented college preparatory program in Harlem. He holds a B.A. from Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences, J.D. and M.P.P. from Harvard University.