Air Pollution Is About Justice as Well as Health
A disturbing new finding about dirty air and the black-white inequality gap.
It starts here.
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
Many advocates of a Green New Deal insist that air pollution and racial justice are related and must be addressed simultaneously. In 2018, they point out, researchers from the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that black Americans suffer disproportionately from exposure to emissions.
More recent research does not merely provide fresh details about the relationship between environmental degradation and racial justice. It adds disturbing new findings about apparent inequities across racial lines. In brief: African-Americans and Hispanics are subject to far more air pollution than they cause by their consumption choices. By contrast, white people are subject to far less air pollution than they cause by their consumption choices.