Dr. Nicky Sheats
Dr. Nicky Sheats is the current director of the Center for the Urban Environment at the John S. Watson Institute for public policy of Thomas Edison State College located in Trenton, New Jersey. Dr. Sheats defined the main mission of the Center for the Urban Environment as “providing support for New Jersey’s Environmental justice community”. Dr. Sheats graduated from Harvard Law School, and then decided to go back and work to receive his PhD in biogeochemistry. In addition, Dr. Sheats helped in the formation of the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance and has been an active board member since the year 2003. He is also on the EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, and was a member of the School Air Toxics Working Group of the National EJ Advisory Council. Throughout his career, Dr. Sheats has been very involved in the creation and writing of policy initiatives for safer and cleaner air in areas with a high population of people of color. Dr. Sheat’s primary belief is that “climate-change mitigation must not only reduce carbon dioxide emissions but also reduce the disproportionate amount of pollution in many environmental-justice communities”. Dr. Sheats argues that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has produced research which shows that there are race and income based inequalities in New Jersey that positively correlate with the amount of pollution in these New Jersey areas. Dr. Sheats’ work focuses on reducing the pollution in areas of low income by using climate-change mitigation policy, which will also help fight climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
- If you live in New Jersey, the amount of pollution in your neighborhood is connected to your ethnicity and the amount of money in your pocket.
- New Jersey should be using its climate-change mitigation policy to address the unfair amount of pollution in struggling communities.
- Suffering communities are fighting for clean water and healthy air.
Meet the Director. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2018, from
https://www.tesu.edu/watson/institute/meet-the-director
Urry, A. (2017, May 11). Nicky Sheats writes policy to help neighborhoods breathe easier. Retrieved
September 25, 2018, from
https://grist.org/grist-50/profile/nicky-sheats/
Op-Ed: Environmental Justice Is Key Aspect of Climate-Change Policy. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25,
2018, from
