Becker, Rachel. CalMatters. (2022, January 31). Has California’s landmark law cleaned communities’ dirty air?
Retrieved February 1, 2022, from https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/01/california-air-quality-environmental-justice-law/
This article mainly talks about the increased risks of air pollution and respiratory illnesses among communities of color, specifically in San Joaquin Valley. Essentially, the article is a detailed review on whether California’s environmental justice law has created a positive impact on the communities who have suffered most from heavily polluted air, and thus increased asthma rates and other respiratory illnesses. The simple conclusion is that it hasn’t done as much as it was projected to do, and the most polluted Californian air is still not safe to breathe. Thus, residents living in these areas, mostly Black and Latine people, are still suffering disproportionate effects of dirty air.
While informative, this article was quite a long read, and wasn’t as concise as I hoped it would be. Nonetheless, the information provided was beneficial to know and understand. Again, like many of the other articles, I appreciated the inclusion of quotes from actual people, from those who were experiencing air pollution first hand, leaders who pledged to help the issue, and environmental justice activists who criticized the effectiveness of the law.
I thought this article was interesting because it connects to what I am learning in my ap us history class, which is about redlining communities. Redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as ‘hazardous’ to investment; these residents largely belong to racial and ethnic minorities, which means that people of color are more vulnerable to these dangerous conditions. That being said, do you believe there will be a significant change to these practices in the near future?
I really liked reading this abstract because I think this issue is extremely important, and not talked about nearly enough. Too many communities are being subjected to this. Hopefully, this issue will be addressed sooner rather than later. If you were one of the leaders who pledged to fix this issue, what would you do first?