Environmental Injustice: Those who would Pollute Poor People because their Lives are Worth Less.

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

This column by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post today is immoral crap. In an effort to defend the indefensible, Larry Summers 1991 writings suggesting we off-source pollution to poor countries, this jerk fully endorses polluting the poor overseas, and implictly, at home.  It is the antithesis of environmental justice.  

If an industrial plant that causes pollution is going to be built somewhere, it ought to be built where life is worth less.

Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy

This diary is not about Larry Summers and whether he should be Treasury Secretary.  It is about this asshat, Michael Kinsley. The smarmy obscenity of his writings reveals a person without conscience.  Karma will get his ass one day.    

More, after the fold.

(also on Dkos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/… )

As defined by wikipedia, environmental justice is:

Environmental justice (EJ) is the confluence of social and environmental movements, which deals with the inequitable environmental burden born by groups such as racial minorities, women, or residents of developing nations. It is a holistic effort to analyze and overcome the power structures that have traditionally thwarted environmental reforms.

Environmental justice

The United States EPA states this about environmental justice:

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Environmental Justice

What it means is the impact of pollution falls heavily on poor folks and people of color or other minorities.  This is no accident.

Dr. Robert Bullard, one of the founders of the movement, explained it well in a 1999 interview:  

We are saying that environmental justice incorporates the idea that we are just as much concerned about wetlands, birds and wilderness areas, but we’re also concerned with urban habitats, where people live in cities, about reservations, about things that are happening along the US-Mexican border, about children that are being poisoned by lead in housing and kids playing outside in contaminated playgrounds.

An Interview with Robert Bullard

Barack Obama understands what it is:

“As both a father of two young daughters and a lawmaker, it pains me to think that each year nearly 28,000 children needlessly suffer from lead-paint poisoning,” said Obama. “We need to take immediate action to protect our children by ensuring that dangerous lead-paint is cleaned up properly.“

Barack Obama, Champion of Children, Protecting them from Lead Poisoning

Now that I have established what it is, let me show you what this asshat Kinsley wrote, what the face of environmental injustice, class privilege and the lack of decency is:

Opponents of Lawrence Summers for a second turn as Treasury secretary have, of course, brought up his 1991 memo as chief economist of the World Bank, in which he wrote that poor countries need more pollution, not less.

snip

Summers’s main point was that life and health are worth less in poor countries than in rich ones. He measured that worth by the earnings lost when a person is sick or dies prematurely. But another good measure, maybe clearer, would be the amount a society will spend to save a life. Treatments that are routine in the United States, although they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are simply not available to citizens of poor countries. You get cancer and you die. Of course this shouldn’t be true, but it undeniably is true, and rejecting the idea of poor countries earning a little cash by “buying” pollution from rich ones will do nothing to make it less true.

Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy

Buying pollution from rich countries?  Don’t you love how they hide their evil in cold “economics.”  

This SOB goes on:

If an industrial plant that causes pollution is going to be built somewhere, it ought to be built where life is worth less. This sounds brutal, but it isn’t. Or rather, it is less brutal than reality. Turn it around: If a life is worth less, it is also cheaper to save. For what we spend in the United States to save a single life, you could save dozens or hundreds of lives in poor countries. So if the plant is going to be built somewhere, building it in a poor country will enable more lives to be saved than building it in a rich one.

Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy

Huh?  So we export pollution.  And when do we export saving all the people dying from cancer?

Here’s his fundamentally obscene point:

The general point is that clean air and other environmental goods are luxuries.

That’s right. Clean air and water are luxuries for the wealthy nations and, logically, for the wealthy areas of those nations.  Not only do you not get health care if you’re poor, and many middle class people are joining that group, but we’ll kill you with pollution.  And we’ll export pollution to the poor.

FU, Mr. Kinsley.  If I were a person of faith, I’d say there’s a special place in hell waiting for you.

Like I said, this is not about Summers.  There are reasons to oppose Summers based on his economic philosophy.  I don’t like what he wrote in 1991, but it was a long time ago, and I hope he learned a little since then.

But with defenders like Micheal Kinsley, Summers does not need enemies.

It’s a damn good thing we have a President who really does understand environmental justice, who’s seen South Chicago and Gary, who sees the impact of lead poisoning on children.  It may not get all the press all the time, but I have no doubt Barack Obama will save lives by implementing programs on lead poisoning and will be an advocate of environmental justice.  That’s real hope and change.