The Louisiana Environmental Apocalypse Road Trip
longreads.com
longreads.com
Additionally, the second paragraph of the article contains a misleading statement about the risk of cancer in Reserve -- "800 times the national average". The data [1] is still shocking and generally backs up the article: there is a lot of chloroprene being dumped in the air in John the Baptist Parish, and the cancer risk there is the highest in the nation. But the 800x metric is only a summation of specifically enumerated, mostly chemical "point sources". If you sort by total cancer risk (most notably including emissions from cars and trucks), some of the tracts in the parish are only 2-4x the cancer risk of tracts in Manhattan and San Francisco.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/2011-nati...
[1] https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/nata-freq...
There are several things at play in Louisiana:
- the US economy runs on noxious chemicals made in Louisiana
- families are tight
- people are at peace with adversity
- the food and music are like nowhere else
- everyone knows everyone
- the well off who stay in Louisana are very greedy and small minded
- people there have a way of life that is slowly going away and they feel threatened and short changed
This produces exactly what you'd expect.
I lived in central and western Louisiana for two years and also had business there off and on for several more years. I love Louisiana. I love the closeness of the families, the polite friendly attitudes, the amazing food, the laid back fun culture. I love the salt-of-the-earth people. Mixed in is a lot of ignorance, backwardness, and amongst those with money or power: selfishness, corruption, and nepotism.
Louisiana will remain in this low simmer of tragedy forever. As long as there are chemical plants there will be small communities of working poor. As long as there are small tight nit communities of working poor that can endure, along with pollution, there will be environmental tragedies.
Louisiana will never change. I imagine 200 years from now Louisiana will be one big superfund site which elite Americans are (once a year) horrified to find people still live in. It'll probably be some long-form bit of journalism just like this. People will say "oh that's terrible" and things will continue on as they always have.
Most people in that state are like most people in other states with respect to banal "exceptionalism." They believe that their culture and way of life is greater than that of other areas even though the average citizen is poorly educated.
The author talks to a lot of people in the state about the conflict between loving the outdoors (outdoor sports/hunting/recreation are big) and supporting companies that dump chemicals in the bayous, because of jobs. There's a lot of fatalism.
For humans, by humans.
Not an expert by any means, but aren't we looking at +2 meters sea level rise by 2100? Maybe less than 1 meter by 2050? Try it out!
IMHO, it would be better not to wait for global warming to take care of this for us. Coastal erosion due factors other than climate in Louisiana is a different (probably more urgent) problem which actually can be solved without world government. Just better government in Louisiana, which...well, OK, yeah, it's probably not going to happen. :)
I return to visit New Orleans about three to four times per year. On every visit, someone will half-jokingly ask me, "So when are you going to leave crazy California and move back?" I simply reply, "When are you going to flee Louisiana?" I have a convenient excuse in that I work in tech, and my family members convince themselves that's the only reason I don't move back. I tell them that I'm never moving back, but they stubbornly hold on to hope. My family isn't the stereotypical American-without-a-passport untraveled, uncultured types. My sisters have lived in Paris, London, Oregon, Maine, Maryland, DC, Texas, Georgia etc. My mom lived in Barcelona for stretches and speaks three languages. Yet they all end up back in the New Orleans area. Family bonds are that strong. Maybe I'm cold and too calculating for not living there with them.
After every good visit with the kids, nephews, aunts and uncles, my wife prods me, "Hey maybe we should live closer to your family." I just reply "No." The answer is simple: Louisiana, and New Orleans especially, is doomed as an ongoing entity. Call it fatalism, call it blindness, or call it stupidity, whatever the reason -- the people of Louisiana just keep on doing the same thing with the same reaction every time something bad happens; "Oh that's such a shame."
New Orleans' nickname is the "big easy"; I call it "the tiny difficult". Nothing ever changes. Progress is slow and glacial. Everyone knows everyone and has their nose in everyone else's business. You live a good life in Old Metairie with a nice weekend home in rural Louisiana. You find out that the wilderness near your home has recently been purchased. The land hasn't ever been touched, so you do some digging into it. You find out that they're going to clearcut the forest and wetlands and build an "oil services facility" on it with "mixed use commercial and residential" on the other side. This worries you because of the loss of wetlands and buffer zone (the forest would soak up flood waters in storms), and you're worried about pollution from the increased land use. You object to the project formally because you're well off and have some free time. Only later, you find out that your opponents are your very rich neighbors in Old Metairie -- doctors and lawyers speculating on land with their friends in the oil business. They start saying bad things and calling you names like a tree hugger and eco-mentalist. Others say that you're blocking progress and aren't thinking of the community and jobs. Eventually, the crooked tentacles of corruption will make their way through the bureaucracies and you will lose. Your neighbors will make more money, "progress" will happen, and you'll now deal with floods annually on a property that never flooded in hundreds of years.
The craziest thing about this tale isn't that it's true. It's that the very people profiting from this and pulling the levers are in the state. They're not always far-off corporations. They're your neighbors: pillars of local industry and commerce who are lauded for their success. It's insane to me that these people are looting and ravaging the very land that they live, and that they will continue to live on. It's one thing to be a wild tycoon, burn the locals and flee. But they're knowingly (or blindingly) hurting themselves, their families, and future generations. Maybe it's the constant layer of corruption in the state at every level. Maybe there's a sense of fatalism. But the very people whose livelihoods are on the line just don't care. One would think that Louisianans would be the most read, most vested people in the US on the topic of climate change. They're not. They don't believe in it. Despite losing all the barrier islands, wetland loss, extinction of species from habitat loss, facing worse storms every year, etc. They just think of their jobs and their family. People don't like being told that their job and way of life is going away because of their own ignorance, but it's the truth.
There's not much that will save Louisiana at this point. Maybe the federal government (not in this administration) will step in and help? The best thing that happened to the New Orleans public school system was Katrina (the feds took over the local school system and turned it around). It pains me to write this. I love my homeland. I truly do. I love my family. I love my culture. I just can't be there. Especially now as I tend to my father's estate after he passed away at a relatively young age from a hyper rare cancer (squamous carcinoma of the pancreas). I like breathing clean air. I like drinking (relatively) clean water. I like being healthy. You won't get those things in Louisiana, and sadly, no one with any clout seems to give a damn.
I stayed after Katrina because I was all romantic on helping New Orleans recover. I have been so much happier since I left a few years ago. I love my friends in New Orleans, but I'm never moving back.
For those not familiar with the background, it's a reference to the gubernatorial race between Edwin Edwards (convicted felon and known outright thief) and David Duke (former? Ku Klux Klan grand wizard). Yes. Those were our two choices to lead the state: a criminal and a segregationist.
How do you end up in this predicament? It's not overnight, and it's not one person or group. While the bumper stickers were trying to make a joke out of a bad situation, I found them emblematic of the sad situation and became disgusted with it all. So I did the only thing in my realm of control, and I left.
Or maybe we should really treat it as The City That Care Forgot? Order another round, swing that doo-rag around the second line, and forget about the reality staring us in the face. Crank up the tunes man. Hey, at least WWOZ streams over the Internet now.
Those who have the ability and power to change the city are its citizens. Always stand up for what you believe in and contribute wherever you can. Engage with or become a civil servant. Vote. Democratic progress is slow but inevitable if we stay focused.
Perhaps the city in its current form is beyond saving. At the very least it may serve as a giant remediation laboratory should technology to reverse humanity's assault on nature and all its inhabitants be developed. Ironically, the solution will likely come from nature.
My mom is always sending me articles (she literally mails me newspaper clippings) about new tech jobs and a burgeoning startup scene in New Orleans... but I just cannot shake the feeling that it's all on borrowed time.
It obviously worked for our parents, but I cannot imagine investing my time and energy into a life and future there.
> The risk of cancer in Reserve, a community founded by freed slaves, is 800 times the national average, making the community, by one EPA metric, the most carcinogenic census tract in America—the cause is a DuPont/Denka chemical plant adjacent to the town that annually spews 250,000 pounds of the likely carcinogen chloroprene into the air. If you think the situation in Flint is bad, there are approximately 400 public water systems in Louisiana with lead or other hazardous substances leaching into the drinking water. Meanwhile, hundreds of petrochemical plants peppered across the state’s lush swampy interior freely emit carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and neurotoxins into the air and water, as well as inject them deep into the earth.
It often seems that there's something of an inverse proportion in the public outrage over some event vs. the actual damage caused.
VW cheats on emissions for cars that are a tiny of a percent of total cars sold in the USA --- huge fines, mass outrage, because why not? There's really no downside.
New Orleans is chemically polluted for decades, cancer hot zone, etc --- shut up, business as usual, because we need the jobs.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
I stopped reading there because I could think of no interpretation of that statement where the claim was even remotely plausible. The overall risk of developing some kind of cancer at some point in your life in the U.S. is about 40% [1]. Life expectancy is just shy of 80 years, so the annual risk of cancer is 0.5%. For the risk in Reserve to be 800 times that, the entire population would have to come down with cancer every three months. If that happened, it would be a bigger story.
[1] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probabi...
Even if we take this 826 number at face value (and I don't see that number anywhere on the EPA page) then for that to be 800 times higher than the national average, then the national average would have to be 1 in a million -- over what time period? Annually? Life time? This whole discussion is a hopeless mess. But again, I can't think of any interpretation under which one in a million is a reasonable measure of anything. There are only 300 million people in the U.S. One in a million means there are 300 people who are affected. Three times that many people are diagnosed with cancer every day in the U.S.
"One can only imagine the zilch level of concern for a compound like chloroprene by President Trump, who had at his side when he signed an executive order in February stipulating the roll-back of government regulations the chief executive of Dow Chemical—“Andrew, I would like to thank you for…the fantastic job you’ve done,” Trump told Dow chief Andrew Liveris, then handed him his signing pen to keep as a souvenir."
Trump is the president. He should care.
The 40% risk of getting cancer doesn't mean 40% of the population will get cancer. Environmental factors increase the risk. I'm not quite sure how you're arriving at that conclusion.
Actually, that's exactly what it means. 42% will develop cancer at some point in their lives, and 22% will die of it. Follow the link I provided to see the details.
So... what are we then supposed to gather from this statement?
The writer has clickbait syndrome?
Obviously there must be something stopping them, what is it?
Could a firm step in in hopes of getting a big pay day going up against the huge titans of the Chemical industry? Probably. Just hasn't happened yet, I'd say.
If that sort of pressure can be applied to people working cases that affect just one doctor in a community like this, I sure wouldn't want to to see what kind of pressure the chemical companies could bring to bear.
also since when is binary camouflage a thing for the military?
I doubt the Argentinians will go along with that.
Alternatively, put them next to the houses of the owners and management and the schools of their children.
Of course it's competitive.
I'm saying, pull requests are welcome.
Of course, taking a purely economic view is fairly cold and uncaring. The other issues should also be at play. But I don't think they offer anything more generous to these companies
Also, enforcing economic solutions does not necessarily prevent adding other non economic solutions. For an economic activity, such as production of these chemicals, economic solutions can go a really really long way to bettering behavior.
Unfortunately the other option is to move the plant to the third world and kill poor people who can't afford to fight back.
Regulate. A dirty word on HN, surely. Regulate the production of and, possibly, the import of neoprene, etc. Force industries to innovate - I know that's not a dirty word here - in order to sell these goods to Americans. Maybe then America becomes the sole producer of environmentally-friendly wet-suits to the whole of the word.
I think this is the only solution since your proposed solution of just "put the plants somewhere else" is, as you've pointed out, untenable.
Green chemistry[1] designs systems and reactions that don't produce waste. This can be as simple as reusing water or as complex as alternative reactions (as is the case for making nylon without nitric acid). In some cases green chemistry can even save money. You can also collect and use waste for other purposes or put it into long term storage eg using it as a filler in concrete. There is practically no such thing as useless waste, only coordination problems.
The only "problem" here is stopping people/companies from dumping into the ground and water.
Agent Orange is not a chemical weapon, it is a defoliant. Dioxin contamination was a result of improper manufacture, not a deliberate ingredient. Read the wikipedia page, FFS.
I hate it when this happens. Do I now have to question the rest of the article?
Indeed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Agent_Orange_on_the...
Relevant quote:
"Agent Orange is a chemical weapon most notably used by the US armed forces during the Vietnam War, classified as defoliant. "
The US saying it is not a chemical weapon is a bit like them declaring 'enhanced interrogation' not torture.
And yes, the original article definitely plays pretty fast and loose with scientific terminology to amp up the scare factor. A cup of coffee contains "likely carcinogens", mutagens and teratogens, the issue is the quantity and the likely effect.
Agent Orange is an herbicide and defoliant chemical.
Furthermore, this question was actually litigated and decided "not a chemical weapon" in the US. Again, from the wikipedia article on Agent Orange (emphasis mine):
"Three judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Weinstein's ruling to dismiss the case. They ruled that, though the herbicides contained a dioxin (a known poison), they were not intended to be used as a poison on humans. Therefore, they were not considered a chemical weapon and thus not a violation of international law. A further review of the case by the whole panel of judges of the Court of Appeals also confirmed this decision. The lawyers for the Vietnamese filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. On March 2, 2009, the Supreme Court denied certiorari and refused to reconsider the ruling of the Court of Appeals."
No matter how you feel about Agent Orange the original article's statement about dioxin is just factually wrong.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/monsanto-roundup...