There is more than one price to pay for our energy choices. The most obvious prices are listed on utility bills and legislative budgets. Less obvious is the price people pay for living near mining operations and power plants with deficient environmental management. Less told is the story of people who live with toxic air, poisoned water and contaminated soil.
On a road tour dubbed "Cleaning the Air," a group of concerned individuals set out on a ten-day, nine-city tour around Earth Day 2010 to explore this untold story and set the record straight. The tour was an intiative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Little Village Environmental Organization and the Envirnonmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative. The tour precedes a report ranking the nation's coal power plants based on their emissions of air pollutants (nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide) in proximity to low income communities of color.
Read more about the climate justice initiative on the NAACP website here, http://www.bvblackspin.com/2010/04/22/naacp-honors-earth-day-with-climate-justice-initiative-videos/. To follow the tour from your computer, check out Jacqui Patterson's blog and interviews here, https://climatejusticeinitiative.wordpress.com/.
The Cleaning the Air Road Tour raises key questions of equity and human rights. It names the price people have paid, and should mobilize action toward cleaner, healthier, more equitable energy policies.
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