Ceremonial Equity: Low-Income Energy Assistance and the Failure of Socio-Environmental Policy

Abstract

In an era of declining natural resources and rising consumption, environmental equity is emerging as an increasingly important social problem. This paper considers the limitations of contemporary policymaking designed to mitigate environmental inequalities. We critically examine the history of low-income energy assistance (the federal Low Income Weatherization and Low Income Home Energy Assistance Programs) — the largest such effort in the United States to date — and explore the sources of decline and eventual transformation of these initiatives into largely symbolic adjuncts to state social welfare systems. Persistent inequalities in the distribution of energy assistance benefits are explored, and we use a series of CHAID models to analyze access routes to residual program benefits. Implications of the energy assistance case for other large-scale environmental equity efforts are considered. Suggestions are also offered for a more ecologically oriented and community-based approach to energy equity — one grounded in the realities of stratified environmental relations, better integrated with other social and environmental policies, and more clearly oriented toward the sustainability of natural and social systems.