Page one of the Democratic Party candidate handbook must forth the basic formula for winning elections: run centrist-sounding candidates, demonize the Republicans as tools of the rich and big business, hit up the fat cats for money, and agitate the minorities.
In recent years, one tactic used in furtherance of the last element of this formula is the so-called "environmental justice" movement. Led by the likes of Robert Kennedy, it would target industrial facilities like refineries and chemical plants and charge that they were sited purposely in poor and minority communities. And then scream racism.
A recent study by University of Colorado Professor Liam Downey debunks this highly charged accusation. In a study of the 61 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, Professor Liam Downey found that in some cities Hispanics live in the most polluted neighborhoods, but in other cities it is blacks and in still other cities it is whites. Moreover, the degree to which each of these groups is exposed to pollution varies greatly.
"Overall, there was so little correlation between what would be predicted by the two explanations of environmental racial inequality and the actual results of the study that the study "contradicts the residential segregation and income inequality hypotheses," Downey said.
Environmental racism is one of the biggest canards out there. Anyone who's not being chauffeured around on a private jet knows this. Hazardous material plants and facilities are strictly regulated and monitored in this country. The vast majority of them are sited well away from residential areas.
Paradoxically, the nuclear power plants that were sited well away from population centers in 60s and 70s are now being encroached by new residential development. Hmm? And I thought everyone was deathly afraid of nuclear energy.
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