One problem we face with all our well-meaning legislative efforts is that not all laws get enforced equally. Let's face it, no matter what color you are, areas where poverty exists are last on the list when it comes to enforcing our environmental laws.
One trick to making sure all laws are effective is to reduce poverty. Every sustainability plan must include local job training and placement services for under-employed people. Let's use this blossoming clean, green economy to reduce our carbon emissions and our poverty emissions at the same time. Some of the upfront costs of "going green" are offset by reductions in social-welfare services that good green jobs provide.
Poor people have paid the high price of living with the dirty economy for decades in increased cancer and respiratory disease rates. We owe them -- with interest. Green collar job training for our fellow citizens in need will fix our environment, help our economy, and keep the two in balance for generations. Make sure that Green for All is a part of your local solution at every level.
Do you agree? Tell us below in comments.
Follow Majora Carter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/majoracarter
there is a win/win/win/win solution out there, but it will loosen (not remove) the Big Utilities' chokehold over our energy, stabilize the grid, create 20 times more jobs and protect all our open spaces from ecosystem death. some people don't want this.
for example, LADWP is teaming up with Citizen's Energy, which claims to be caring for low-income people, to destroy the homes and lives of tens of thousands of rural people by building a massive powerline and attendant "solar and wind" farms through the Joshua Tree Area (cynically called the Green Path North). Citizen's is willing to shell out roughly a Billion Dollars for this, and their nod to conscience will come in very small electricity bill subsidies to low-income residents of LA. never mind that their bills will be double what they are now, and that 100,000 of their homes could have PV coverage that zeroes out their bills. increasing the culture of dependence and destroying the lives of rural people and obliterating our nation's gorgeous, vital natural habitats instead of doing what's right. then congratulating themselves on being "green" and "helping low income people." it's despicable. please make your voice heard to Mayor Villaraigosa! the people of LA (and the people outside LA who will be forced from their homes to feed gluttonous LA McMansions, who are not being asked to conserve) deserve better.
I am sorry, but I am utterly confused by your post. I don't understand the logic of any of your paragraphs, despite the fact there's some good nuggets of thought wedged between.
I think that more than anything, environmental laws effect more poverty stricken areas more than not, because the industry that surrounds them is most effected by the environmental laws, which makes a horrible situation just less horrible. Most of the time persons that live in poverty live in heavily industrialized areas, because property values are lower, because of the area's proximity to chemical plants, whathaveyou, and this is where persons who live in poverty can afford to live. I live in St. Louis, Missouri, a city that makes for a great case study for environmental racism. In that in St. Louis, zoning laws forced manufacturing, especially the chemical industry, to move out of the St. Louis area, over into Illinois, into an area called East St. Louis. When the chemical companies moved in, people that could afford to move away, did, and those that couldn't, stayed behind, and other people moved in. To me, it's a chicken-egg conundrum.
Secondly, I agree with your second paragraph, in that we DO need to make sure that availabilty and access to green jobs is broadcast to all economic levels, and that new jobs is good for everyone. However, I am completely confused by this sentence: "Some of the upfront costs of "going green" are offset by reductions in social-welfare services that good green jobs provide." I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around this sentence.
Finally, I do not agree with the first sentence of your final paragraph. I do not believe that we owe the poor people that live in dirtier areas, with interest. Why? Again, it's the chicken and the egg. Property values are lower in more industrialized cum polluted areas, and are more affordable by lower income persons. Lower income area choices are available in many other places, and lower income persons can choose to live in other lower income places, that do not abut industrialized areas. I agree with the rest of the paragraph, because access to these jobs WILL help everyone, and it will help our environment as well.
Majora, it's awesome to see you on the Huffingtonpost.com, because the topic of environmental racism absolutely need to be addressed.
Thank you,
Tony
In the example you give of East St. Louis, the chemical industry drove down property values precisely because it gets away with polluting the hell out of people's communities. Majora is saying that if the laws were fully enforced, chemical plants (and other polluting facilities) wouldn't be the kind of neighborhood destroyers they now are.
Pollution is a subsidy that government gives to corporations and that's largely paid for by poor people who live next door to the polluters.
urbangreen