N.Y. Times, Oct. 4, 2013

By Brent Staples

The Republican shutdown of government is compounding what was already a disastrous year for Head Start, the federal program that prepares disadvantaged 3 and 4 year olds for school. This critically important program is already reeling from the sequester, the senseless across the board budget cuts that began last spring, which caused Head Start centers to scale back on transportation, basic learning materials and, in some cases, to even close their doors.

According to the National Head Start Association, owing to the sequester cuts that began in March, 57,000 fewer children will have access to the program this year — with even deeper cuts to come if the mindless process of budget cutting continues.

The shutdown is doing even more damage. According to the association, for example, the shutdown has prevented Head Start programs serving about 19,000 children across 10 states and Puerto Rico from accessing the federal funds that they had been awarded. Furthermore, programs in five states — Alabama, Mississippi, Connecticut, Georgia and Florida — have already shut down.

As the shutdown and the sequester wear on, in other words, more and more young children will be deprived of crucial services that are intended to help them succeed at school and escape poverty. This backsliding comes at a time when the country should be improving the quality of Head Start offerings and broadening access to especially vulnerable groups like the children of the homeless.

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More In Taking Note
Closing the Government to Save Face
The Republicans’ crusade, ostensibly about dismantling health care reform, is really about showing angry constituents that they’re willing to fight.
With the Jobs Report, No News Isn’t Good News
Due to the shutdown, there’ll be no jobs report on Friday, and decision-making in all spheres will be less informed.
How the Shutdown May Hurt the Environment
Republicans who detest the E.P.A. were not bothered in the least by the fact that the agency furloughed more than 90 percent of its employees.
© 2013 New York Times Company

NJ Spotlight, Oct. 3, 2013

By Julia Sass Rubin

Policies that disproportionately harm and disenfranchise communities of color are incapable of improving either educational achievement or equity

Is public education the civil rights issue of our time? Yes! And the situation in New Jersey is alarming.

Public schools in our state are among the most racially and economically segregated in the nation. Equally troubling, recent policy initiatives are targeting public schools attended primarily by low-income children of color for harmful interventions while disenfranchising local communities from democratically governing those public schools.

Here are seven of the most significant examples:

Crumbling, Inadequate, and Unsafe School Facilities

Trenton High’s 1,800 students, and thousands of others, attend schools plagued by rats, roaches, asbestos, and black mold because the Christie Administration has all but frozen the work of the Schools Development Authority. The authority is charged by law with building and renovating public schools in the 31 former Abbott districts, while those school districts are precluded from repairing or rebuilding their dilapidated public schools.

State Control of School Districts

All four of the school districts taken over by the State — Camden, Jersey City, Newark, and Paterson — are populated overwhelmingly by students of color. There are many New Jersey school districts facing steep challenges, but only those in communities of color seem to be vulnerable to indefinite State takeover and the resulting loss of democratic control.

Reductions in School Funding

New Jersey public schools have been underfunded by the State by an astonishing $5.2 billion since 2010. This shortfall has been most severe in school districts populated primarily by children of color. For example, the Paterson, Elizabeth, and Newark school districts combined lost over $300 million since 2010. If the New Jersey Supreme Court had not intervened in 2012 to restore some of the funding, the damage would have been even greater. Gov. Chris Christie also tried repeatedly to permanently alter the State’s school funding formula, to reduce funding for the almost 40 percent of New Jersey public school students who are low-income and/or Limited English Proficient.

Taxpayer-Funded Vouchers for Private and Religious Education

Christie and some legislators in both parties promote taxpayer-funded vouchers specifically for communities of color. Vouchers were used in Southern states during the 1960s as a method of intentionally perpetuating segregation. To prevent children of color from attending all-white public schools, some districts closed those schools and issued vouchers to the white families that were only good at segregated private schools, known as segregation academies. The more recent history of voucher use in other states confirms that they continue to increase segregation. What vouchers have consistently failed to do is to provide a better education for children. In fact, Wisconsin and Louisiana voucher students actually performed worse than students who stayed in the public schools.

Because efforts to promote universal vouchers have failed to win popular support, proponents began marketing vouchers specifically to low-income communities of color. Despite the marketing, Rutgers Professor Dr. Bruce Baker found that most of New Jersey’s voucher money would actually flow to the parents of children already attending all-white religious schools.

Expansion of Charter Schools

In the wake of significant pushback against the opening of new charter schools in the suburbs, the Christie administration has limited new charters primarily to urban communities of color. These schools are being opened with complete disregard for community wishes.

The administration also has ignored the fact that many of the charter schools are contributing to the segregation of students by income, language proficiency and race.

For example, New Jersey Department of Education 2012 – 2013 data shows that Hoboken’s three charter schools educate 31 percent of the City’s total public school students, but a significantly larger proportion of its white students (51 percent), and a significantly smaller proportion of its impoverished students (6 percent of the free lunch and 13 percent of the reduced lunch). The charter schools also educate none of the city’s Limited English Proficient students.

In this way, the charter schools not only substantially increase the economic and racial segregation in Hoboken, they also contribute to the city’s most impoverished students being concentrated in traditional public schools. That concentration makes it much more challenging for the Hoboken school district to provide a high-quality education for the 69 percent of public school students who attend the district’s schools.

Priority Schools and Regional Achievement Centers

Children of color made up 97 percent of the population of schools that the New Jersey Department of Education classified as “priority” in 2012, and subjected to intervention by state-controlled Regional Achievement Centers (RACs). The RACs are staffed by individuals who report to education commissioner Chris Cerf and are given tremendous power over schools, disenfranchising school boards, parents, and other community members and draining educational resources.

If priority schools do not meet RAC-imposed benchmarks by the summer of 2014, they may be closed, turned into charter schools, or handed over to private management companies, all with no concern for the wishes of their host communities.

Forced School Closings

In New Jersey, forced school closings have taken place exclusively in cities populated by low-income people of color. These closings are likely to increase with the advent of Regional Achievement Centers and the expansion of charter schools, consistent with a national pattern of forced closings of public schools that primarily educate children of color — most recently in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Forced school closings increase instability for children who already face significant life challenges and destabilize communities for whom the public schools are critical anchors.

Policies like these, which disproportionately harm and disenfranchise communities of color, are not only morally deplorable, they also are ineffective at improving either educational achievement or equity. Neither outcome can be attained by increasing segregation or by destroying community participation and democratic control of public education.

We know what is effective: addressing concentrated poverty; involving parents and communities in decision-making; providing adequate funding and healthy and safe facilities; ensuring access to high-quality pre-kindergarten and wraparound social services. The research is clear and consistent. We only need the political will to follow.

========

Julia Sass Rubin, PhD, is an associate professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. She also is one of the founding members of Save Our Schools NJ, a nonpartisan statewide organization.

Gallup, Sept. 12, 2013

N.Y. Times, Oct. 2, 2023

By Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff

A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times.

Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help. The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years.

Those excluded will be stranded without insurance, stuck between people with slightly higher incomes who will qualify for federal subsidies on the new health exchanges that went live this week, and those who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid in its current form, which has income ceilings as low as $11 a day in some states.

People shopping for insurance on the health exchanges are already discovering this bitter twist.

Gladys Arbila of Houston with her son, Christian Vera. Texas chose not to expand the Medicaid program, so Ms. Arbila does not qualify for it or for new federal insurance subsidies.
MICHAEL STRAVATO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
“How can somebody in poverty not be eligible for subsidies?” an unemployed health care worker in Virginia asked through tears. The woman, who identified herself only as Robin L. because she does not want potential employers to know she is down on her luck, thought she had run into a computer problem when she went online Tuesday and learned she would not qualify.

At 55, she has high blood pressure, and she had been waiting for the law to take effect so she could get coverage. Before she lost her job and her house and had to move in with her brother in Virginia, she lived in Maryland, a state that is expanding Medicaid. “Would I go back there?” she asked. “It might involve me living in my car. I don’t know. I might consider it.”

The 26 states that have rejected the Medicaid expansion are home to about half of the country’s population, but about 68 percent of poor, uninsured blacks and single mothers. About 60 percent of the country’s uninsured working poor are in those states. Among those excluded are about 435,000 cashiers, 341,000 cooks and 253,000 nurses’ aides.

“The irony is that these states that are rejecting Medicaid expansion — many of them Southern — are the very places where the concentration of poverty and lack of health insurance are the most acute,” said Dr. H. Jack Geiger, a founder of the community health center model. “It is their populations that have the highest burden of illness and costs to the entire health care system.”

The disproportionate impact on poor blacks introduces the prickly issue of race into the already politically charged atmosphere around the health care law. Race was rarely, if ever, mentioned in the state-level debates about the Medicaid expansion. But the issue courses just below the surface, civil rights leaders say, pointing to the pattern of exclusion.

Every state in the Deep South, with the exception of Arkansas, has rejected the expansion. Opponents of the expansion say they are against it on exclusively economic grounds, and that the demographics of the South — with its large share of poor blacks — make it easy to say race is an issue when it is not.

In Mississippi, Republican leaders note that a large share of people in the state are on Medicaid already, and that, with an expansion, about a third of the state would have been insured through the program. Even supporters of the health law say that eventually covering 10 percent of that cost would have been onerous for a predominantly rural state with a modest tax base.

“Any additional cost in Medicaid is going to be too much,” said State Senator Chris McDaniel, a Republican, who opposes expansion.

The law was written to require all Americans to have health coverage. For lower and middle-income earners, there are subsidies on the new health exchanges to help them afford insurance. An expanded Medicaid program was intended to cover the poorest. In all, about 30 million uninsured Americans were to have become eligible for financial help.

But the Supreme Court’s ruling on the health care law last year, while upholding it, allowed states to choose whether to expand Medicaid. Those that opted not to leave about eight million uninsured people who live in poverty ($19,530 for a family of three) without any assistance at all.

Poor people excluded from the Medicaid expansion will not be subject to fines for lacking coverage. In all, about 14 million eligible Americans are uninsured and living in poverty, the Times analysis found.

The federal government provided the tally of how many states were not expanding Medicaid for the first time on Tuesday. It included states like New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee that might still decide to expand Medicaid before coverage takes effect in January. If those states go forward, the number would change, but the trends that emerged in the analysis would be similar.

Mississippi has the largest percentage of poor and uninsured people in the country — 13 percent. Willie Charles Carter, an unemployed 53-year-old whose most recent job was as a maintenance worker at a public school, has had problems with his leg since surgery last year.

His income is below Mississippi’s ceiling for Medicaid — which is about $3,000 a year — but he has no dependent children, so he does not qualify. And his income is too low to make him eligible for subsidies on the federal health exchange.

“You got to be almost dead before you can get Medicaid in Mississippi,” he said.

He does not know what he will do when the clinic where he goes for medical care, the Good Samaritan Health Center in Greenville, closes next month because of lack of funding.

“I’m scared all the time,” he said. “I just walk around here with faith in God to take care of me.”

The states that did not expand Medicaid have less generous safety nets: For adults with children, the median income limit for Medicaid is just under half of the federal poverty level — or about $5,600 a year for an individual — while in states that are expanding, it is above the poverty line, or about $12,200, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. There is little or no coverage of childless adults in the states not expanding, Kaiser said.

The New York Times analysis excluded immigrants in the country illegally and those foreign-born residents who would not be eligible for benefits under Medicaid expansion. It included people who are uninsured even though they qualify for Medicaid in its current form.

Blacks are disproportionately affected, largely because more of them are poor and living in Southern states. In all, 6 out of 10 blacks live in the states not expanding Medicaid. In Mississippi, 56 percent of all poor and uninsured adults are black, though they account for just 38 percent of the population.

Dr. Aaron Shirley, a physician who has worked for better health care for blacks in Mississippi, said that the history of segregation and violence against blacks still informs the way people see one another, particularly in the South, making some whites reluctant to support programs that they believe benefit blacks.

That is compounded by the country’s rapidly changing demographics, Dr. Geiger said, in which minorities will eventually become a majority, a pattern that has produced a profound cultural unease, particularly when it has collided with economic insecurity.

Dr. Shirley said: “If you look at the history of Mississippi, politicians have used race to oppose minimum wage, Head Start, all these social programs. It’s a tactic that appeals to people who would rather suffer themselves than see a black person benefit.”

Opponents of the expansion bristled at the suggestion that race had anything to do with their position. State Senator Giles Ward of Mississippi, a Republican, called the idea that race was a factor “preposterous,” and said that with the demographics of the South — large shares of poor people and, in particular, poor blacks — “you can argue pretty much any way you want.”

The decision not to expand Medicaid will also hit the working poor. Claretha Briscoe earns just under $11,000 a year making fried chicken and other fast food at a convenience store in Hollandale, Miss., too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to get subsidies on the new health exchange. She had a heart attack in 2002 that a local hospital treated as part of its charity care program.

“I skip months on my blood pressure pills,” said Ms. Briscoe, 48, who visited the Good Samaritan Health Center last week because she was having chest pains. “I buy them when I can afford them.”

About half of poor and uninsured Hispanics live in states that are expanding Medicaid. But Texas, which has a large Hispanic population, rejected the expansion. Gladys Arbila, a housekeeper in Houston who earns $17,000 a year and supports two children, is under the poverty line and therefore not eligible for new subsidies. But she makes too much to qualify for Medicaid under the state’s rules. She recently spent 36 hours waiting in the emergency room for a searing pain in her back.

“We came to this country, and we are legal and we work really hard,” said Ms. Arbila, 45, who immigrated to the United States 12 years ago, and whose son is a soldier in Afghanistan. “Why we don’t have the same opportunities as the others?”

© 2013 New York Times

N.Y. Times, Sept. 30, 2013

By the Editorial Board

The New Jersey Supreme Court has wisely rejected an attempt by Gov. Chris Christie to undermine its 30-year-old-ruling in the Mount Laurel fair housing case, one of the more important civil rights decisions of the modern era. In last week’s strongly worded decision, the court made clear that it would be keeping a close eye on both the Christie administration and wealthy communities that might be inclined to flout the law, which limits the use of exclusionary zoning as a means of preventing the construction of affordable housing.

The original case dates to the 1960s, when low-income minority citizens found themselves priced out of the suburb of Mount Laurel, not far from Philadelphia. The families went to court after local authorities barred the construction of a small affordable housing development. The court ruled that municipalities could not exclude affordable housing and, further, had an affirmative obligation to write zoning laws that provided for a “fair share” of such housing based on growth, job opportunities and income.

The landmark ruling has encouraged the construction of tens of thousands of homes for low- and moderate-income working families, giving less-well-off families access to jobs and allowing their children to grow up in safer communities with better schools. Mr. Christie, however, has been attacking the Mount Laurel decision from almost the day he was sworn in. He also sought to dismantle the independent agency that oversees affordable housing, but he was prevented from doing so by the court.

The central issue in last week’s ruling was Mr. Christie’s effort to interpret the “fair share” mandate in a way that would essentially allow communities to decide for themselves how much affordable housing should be built. This, in turn, would give hostile communities license to block affordable housing.

Confronted with this threat, the court asserted that it had a clear duty to enforce the rights of low-income citizens under the State Constitution. In so doing, it served notice that it would brook no more foot-dragging on the part of the state.

© 2013 The New York Times

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/09/republicans-health-care-fight-rich

The Republican Party is bending its entire will, staking its very soul, fighting to its last breath, in service of a crusade to….

Make sure that the working poor don’t have access to affordable health care. I just thought I’d mention that in plain language, since it seems to get lost in the fog fairly often. But that’s it. That’s what’s happening. They have been driven mad by the thought that rich people will see their taxes go up slightly in order to help non-rich people get decent access to medical care.

That’s a pretty stirring animating principle, no?

New York Times, Sept. 19, 2013
In what can be seen only as an act of supreme indifference, House Republicans passed a bill on Thursday that would drastically cut federal food stamps and throw 3.8 million Americans out of the program in 2014.
The vote came two weeks after the Agriculture Department reported that 17.6 million households did not have enough to eat at some point in 2012 because they lacked the resources to put food on the table. It came two days after the Census Bureau reported that 15 percent of Americans, or 46.5 million people, live in poverty.
These numbers were basically unchanged from 2011, but in a growing economy steady rates of hunger and poverty amount, in effect, to backsliding. Cutting food stamps would accelerate the slide. Food stamps kept four million people out of poverty last year and kept millions more from falling deeper into poverty. Under the House Republican bill, many of these people would be impoverished.
The struggling middle class is also faring poorly. Though the unemployment rate dropped to a low of 7.8 percent last year from a high of 9.1 percent in 2011, median household income was virtually unchanged, at $51,017. In a healthy economy, income would rise when unemployment falls. But in today’s weak economy, much of the decline in the jobless rate is not due to new hiring, but to a shrinking work force — the very definition of a feeble labor market in which employed people work for years without raises and unemployed job seekers routinely end up in new jobs that pay less than their previous ones.
Even so, congressional Republicans have shown no inclination to end the automatic budget cuts that, if left in place, will lead to an estimated loss of 900,000 jobs in the coming year, keeping poverty high and incomes stagnant. In addition, there seems to be little Republican appetite for renewing federal unemployment benefits — a lifeline for millions of unemployed Americans — when they expire at the end of 2013.
It is nothing new that poor people are stuck and those in the middle class are struggling. The poverty rate, though steady last year, has worsened or failed to improve in 11 of the last 12 years. The latest numbers would have been worse but for “doubling up.” There are currently 10.1 million adults age 25 to 34 who are not in school and who live with parents or others who are not spouses of cohabitating partners. If they were on their own, 43 percent of them would fall below the poverty line, which last year was $11,945 for someone under age 65.
Similarly, while median household income held steady last year, it was still lower by 8.3 percent, or $4,600, (measured in 2012 dollars) than in 2007, before the recession. And the longer the historical perspective, the more dire the situation. From 2000 to 2012, median income for working-age households headed by someone under age 65 (again in 2012 dollars) fell almost $7,500, from nearly $65,000 to just under $57,500, a decline of 11.6 percent.
Against that backdrop, there is no justification for savaging the safety net and decimating the budget.

ClimateProgress, Sept. 23, 2013
By Katie Valentine
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions won’t just help alleviate climate change – it could also help save millions of lives each year, according to a new study.

The study, published Sunday in Nature Climate Change, found up to 3 million premature deaths could be avoided each year globally by 2100 if aggressive emissions cuts are made. By reducing carbon emissions, the study states, the world will also reduce “co-pollutants” such as ozone and particulates. Long-term exposure to these pollutants has been linked to premature death.
“It is pretty striking that you can make an argument purely on health grounds to control climate change,” said Jason West, one of the study’s lead authors.
The study broke the potential lives saved from reducing carbon emissions into increments: in 2030, aggressive carbon cuts would save 300,000-700,000 premature deaths a year, jumping to 800,000 – 1.8 million in 2050 and 1.4 million to 3 million in 2100. The study also found another surprising co-benefit of reducing emissions: By cutting each ton of CO2, the associated cost savings of were $50 to $380, based on a cost-benefit analysis that associates saving lives with saving money — more, the study found, than the estimated cost of cutting carbon in the next few decades.
Though the study is one of the first to take a global look at how reducing air pollutants could save lives, its findings back up previous examinations that have taken a regional approach. This month, researchers from MIT found that in the U.S., exposure to air pollution leads to about 200,000 premature deaths each year, with California experiencing the most early deaths from air pollution. A study from April found that in 2010, air pollution was linked to 1.2 million premature deaths in China, making it the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths in the country. That study also found that globally in 2010, air pollution contributed to 3.2 million deaths, ranking it seventh on the global list of risk factors for death. And a new NASA map, which was put together with the help of West’s research, displays the regions of the world most prone to early death from air pollution, with China, Europe and India displaying some of the worst rates of pollution-induced premature death.

The study’s findings also make sense given the large body of research linking air pollution to adverse health effects. Studies have found long-term exposure to air pollution is linked to kidney damage, heart attack and stroke, lung cancer, and of course asthma and respiratory illnesses. Women’s exposure to high levels of traffic pollution in the first two months of pregnancy has been found to dramatically increase the risk of severe birth defects in the unborn child.
In the U.S., more than 40 percent of Americans live in regions with unhealthy levels of particulate and ozone pollution, according to the American Lung Association. That’s part of the reason why public health advocates have lauded President Obama’s climate plan, saying it has the potential to cut down on incidences of asthma and respiratory illnesses. The president’s plan and any further cuts to emissions have the potential to help city-dwellers and poor and minority communities most of all: a 2012 report found people in non-white and low-income communities breathe in more toxic particulate pollution than people in white, affluent communities.

Climate Progress, Sept. 23, 2013
By Katie Valentine
The traditional environmental movement has a diversity problem.

That’s according to Van Jones, founder of Green for All and environmental and civil rights advocate. But Jones says it’s not just that the staffs of many large, mainstream environmental organizations have been historically mostly white — it’s that most of the smaller environmental justice groups are getting a fraction of the funding that the big groups receive.
Jones says for the environmental movement as a whole to succeed, that needs to change. Environmental justice groups are the ones serving populations that are often most vulnerable to climate change and affected most by pollution — Americans who are low income, live in cities and are often people of color.
“The mainstream donors and environmental organizations could be strengthened just by recognizing the other ‘environmentalisms’ that are already existing and flourishing outside their purview,” Jones said.
These environmental justice groups work on a smaller scale than the major mainstream groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund — they’re groups like the Bus Riders Union in Los Angeles and West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT) in New York City, groups that are working towards improving the environmental health of their communities. Danielle Deane, Energy and Environment Program Director at the Joint Center, said the groups don’t always get the credit they deserve for their support of environmental issues.
“For whatever reason, often the innovation, the hard work by community leaders that’s happening to help prepare their cities as they expect extreme weather events like Sandy, often those leaders don’t get the level of attention they deserve even though they’ve been working on some of these issues for decades,” she explained. “I think that’s slowly changing, but I think there’s a lot more activity by a wide range of folks that isn’t yet getting its due.”
One of the biggest reasons for that, as Jones said, is the funding gap that exists between the small-scale environmental justice groups and the large, mainstream environmental organizations. A recent report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy found from 2007 to 2009, just 15 percent of environmental grants went towards benefiting marginalized communities, and only 11 percent went towards advancing “social justice” strategies.
The Washington Post investigated the issue in March and found that environmental justice-focused organizations operate “on shoestring budgets.” In fact, according to the Post, a 2001 report found the environmental justice movement gets just 5 percent of the conservation funding from foundations, with mainstream environmental groups getting the rest.
Jones said diversifying the donor lists of foundations that usually give to environmental groups would help black Americans in particular make their voices heard in the environmental movement. Polls show that, as a group, black Americans support environmental and climate change specific regulations as much or more than white Americans do. A 2010 poll from the Joint Center found black Americans in four swing states supported action on climate change and a solid majority of respondents said they wanted the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions before the 2012 election. The poll also found a majority of respondents said they would be willing to pay up to $10 per month more in electric rates if the extra charge if it meant climate change was being addressed, and more than 25 percent said they would pay an additional $25 per month.
A Yale poll from 2010 yielded similar results: it found Hispanics, African Americans and people of other races and ethnicities were “often the strongest supporters of climate and energy policies and were also more likely to support these policies even if they incurred greater cost.” It also found 89 percent of black respondents said they would strongly or somewhat support regulating carbon as a pollutant, compared to 78 percent of white Americans.
“I think there’s always been way more support in the black community for climate solutions and environmental solutions than we have credit for,” Jones said. “Some affluent white communities are more vocal and maybe have more intensity, and also more resources to single this one issue out, but the polling data’s pretty clear that African Americans are among the most supportive of environmental regulation and climate solutions.”
Deane agrees. She said black Americans have reason to care about the environment, because they’re one of the groups most affected by its health. A 2008 study found 71 percent of black Americans live in counties in violation of federal air pollution standards, compared to 58 percent of white Americans. That increased exposure to pollution contributes significantly to the high rate of asthma in the community — black children are twice as likely to have asthma as white children, and overall, black Americans have a 36 percent higher rate of asthma than whites. In addition, according to the 2008 report, 78 percent of black Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared to 56 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Blacks are also 52 percent more likely to live in urban heat islands than whites, which makes them more vulnerable to heat waves.
“I think there’s still a disconnect where the public perception of who really cares about environmental issues and who wants action on climate — a disconnect between what’s happening on the ground and public perception, ” Deane said. “Because African Americans know they tend to suffer disproportionately from pollution, you tend to see high levels of support for action to make sure companies all have to meet higher standards, but often when you see environmentalists you tend to see folks that are not necessarily as diverse as what we know and what we see on the ground.”
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), co-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Taskforce, says fighting for environmental causes is about much more than protecting natural resources — to her, environmental issues are civil rights issues. Just recently in her own district of Houston, she helped fight against a grease recycling plant that was proposed for a residential neighborhood.
“I’ve found the black community to be very well informed about environmental issues, and that’s because they live them every day,” she said. “One of my minority neighborhoods had to fight against a cement factory. Another had to fight against a waste facility in their community. So most African Americans know what it is to try to keep their neighborhood well. That makes them more sensitive, it makes their members more in tune.”
Jackson Lee says environmental justice weaves into all the decisions the CBC makes. According the League of Conservation Voter’s annual environmental scorecard, the lifetime environmental voting record of the current members of the CBC is 86 percent — meaning they voted in favor of environmental issues 86 percent of the time. And in 2009, Jones said, every member of the CBC except one — Rep. Artur Davis (R-AL) — voted in favor of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, making the CBC one of the “greenest” caucuses of the last Congress.
Jones said there’s long been tension between mainstream environmental groups and environmental justice organizations. Mainstream groups can feel like they’re unfairly being called racist and that claims of lack of support for environmental justice groups can be unfounded, and environmental justice groups often are jealous of the publicity and funding the mainstream groups get and wary to reach out to them for fear of being rejected. But the onus to make the change, he said, isn’t on the environmental justice groups — it’s the donors and foundations who need to expand who they send their money to, and mainstream environmental groups have the power to help them do that.
“If you go to Detroit, you will find lots of community gardening going on, lots of community cleanup going on, lots of small-scale manufacturing going on. None of this is being directed by any mainstream environmental group — these are organic, well-considered responses from people who are trying to make their lives better,” Jones said. “Those people should be called environmentalists as much as anybody who is standing up for endangered species.”
Andrew Breiner contributed the graphics to this piece.

New Scientist, Sept. 22, 2013
By Michael Marshall 
Switching to clean energy might seem like the expensive option, but it would pay for itself almost immediately, according to a new analysis. The reason? Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels will cut air pollution, saving lives and therefore money.
By 2050, 1.3 million early deaths could be avoided every year. From estimates of how much society values a human life, researchers deduce that the new energy supplies should be worth the cost.
The conclusion offers a strong incentive to countries to start cutting back on fossil fuels as soon as possible. It also offers support for the US Environmental Protection Agency, which on Friday proposed limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new coal-fired and gas-fired power plants to 499 kilograms [1100 pounds] per megawatt-hour of electricity generated. (On average, a typical coal-fired power station in the US emits 940 of CO₂ kilograms [2072 pounds] per megawatt-hour.)
“The work strengthens the case for these new regulations by pointing out the air quality and health benefits,” says Jason West at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the analysis.

Smog, smog everywhere

As well as releasing greenhouse gases that warm the planet, burning fossil fuels gives off large quantities of polluting chemicals. These can build up into dense smogs, like the one that smothered China’s capital Beijing in January. Such smog is a major public health hazard. West estimates that worldwide, air pollution kills over 2 million people annually.
Now West and colleagues have estimated how much air pollution would be reduced if humanity slashed its fossil fuel use. The team simulated global air pollution in 2030, 2050 and 2100, using two scenarios: one in which humanity cuts its greenhouse gas emissions fairly quickly, and a similar scenario with no global climate policy. Then, using the patterns of global air pollution, they calculated how many people would die as a result of smog, using real epidemiological data as a guide.
In each of the three future years selected, cutting fossil fuels saved lives compared with a control scenario. In 2030, 0.5 million premature deaths per year were avoided, and this rose to 2.2 million in 2100. Keeping these extra people alive means that they can work and continue to contribute to society.

Statistical life

West’s team estimated this economic benefit using a statistic called the Value of Statistical Life. This measures how much value society puts on a person’s life, for instance, by looking at how much people demand to be paid before risking their life.
The team found that for every tonne of CO₂ not emitted, the average global benefit at any one time was between $50 and $380 depending on where you are in the world. In 2030 and 2050, these benefits outweighed the cost of cutting emissions, which was less than $100 per tonne of CO₂. The benefits were less clear by 2100, because by then the easiest reductions had already been achieved so any further cuts were more expensive, at around $300 per tonne. But even then, “the benefits are of the same order as the costs,” says West.
The calculations do not include pollution’s effects on children or the costs of caring for people suffering from pollution-related disease, so the economic benefits may be underestimated.

Short-term gains

If the calculations stand up, the gains from cutting air pollution are greater than expected, says Gregory Nemet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Pollution will only fall if we cut greenhouse gas emissions in the right way, cautions Martin Williams of Kings College London. For instance, burning biomass could be very polluting if done carelessly. “Uncontrolled and inefficient combustion of wood can lead to the emission of lots of particles.”
Even if greenhouse gases are cut, other benefits, like reducing extreme weather events, will not become apparent until the end of the century, according to a recent study by Nigel Arnell at the University of Reading in the UK. That gives politicians a reason to prevaricate.
But the drop in air pollution, and its consequences, changes that equation. “This gives us a benefit that’s immediate,” says West, giving an incentive to act now.
Journal reference: Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2009