While the world’s largest single oil spill has been dominating headlines for the past weeks, the deleterious effects of our petro-gluttony have been longstanding. A couple examples to think about:

• Ecological harm and environmental injustice are part of regular petroleum extraction, not just massive newsworthy oil spills. From Adam Nossiter of the New York Times:

The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless. [Read the full article]

• America’s overuse of petroleum leads to geopolitical conflict, national insecurity, and bloated defense budgets. Read Michael Klare’s book Blood and Oil, or watch the trailer for the film version:

Politicians and the public in the United States need to take responsibility for the environmental and social externalities of oil consumption. Paying five dollars per gallon at the pump, and accordingly being more conscientious about our energy choices, is far better than paying hundreds of billions of dollars worth in human deaths, ecological destruction, and the misadventures of our military as what Klare terms a “global oil protection service.” If we don’t accept the realities of the high costs of oil, rather than trying to hide these costs behind a long string of violent, imperialist conflicts, we’re in for a disastrous future.

Today marks one year since the beginning of the 2009 greenRELAY Youth Training Institute.  Here are some highlights from last summer.

“http://greenrelay.org”

From greenRELAY, posted by Anson Stewart on 6/26/2009 (42 items)

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The producers of RENEWAL, the groundbreaking documentary film that is inspiring diverse faith communities across the country to take action for the environment, have launched a new venture.

Producer Marty Ostrow says, “The RENEWAL Web Festival is the perfect way to share your engagement in the religious-environmental movement. We’re inviting people to submit their own stories: videos, writings, photos, drawings, and poems.”

Ostrow explains, “We especially hope to hear about  how commitment to the environment has affected your experience of faith.”

Entries will be posted on the RENEWAL Project website, in coming weeks.

Read the producers’ Invitation and visit the RENEWAL website to learn how you can submit your own stories about renewal of the earth and renewal of faith.

An article by Janet Wilson in the Christian Science Monitor highlights the environmental justice work of residents of Maywood:

Across the country, studies have increasingly shown that low-income, minority communities endure a disproportionate share of poor living conditions and contamination. A 2007 study by four universities found that nonwhites are far more likely to live near hazardous waste than whites. Greater Los Angeles led the nation with 1.2 million people living less than two miles from such waste, 91 percent of them minorities.

Maywood, the state’s most densely populated community, is a textbook case. Eight miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, it sits at the crossroads of an American manufacturing and freight-hauling juggernaut with a legacy of industrial pollution. Nearly 50,000 residents – 98 percent Latino – are squeezed into aging apartment blocks and tidy tract houses between diesel-truck-clogged Interstate 710 and “exclusively industrial” Vernon, home to 1,200 factories and sprawling freight rail yards…

“The idea is not to be stuck in those little regulatory boxes,” says Steven John, head of the EPA’s southern California division. Toward that end, the agencies are also wrestling with bringing together bitterly divided factions in Maywood. At the first meeting of the joint agency initiative with the community in August, a water district manager and an activist ended up in a screaming match over a single mercury testing sample as a translator struggled to keep up with hurled insults.

The manager ultimately apologized. At least the two sides were talking, many said.

Mr. John says Maywood’s activism, however fractious, was extraordinary. “[W]hat really for me has been the hallmark of Maywood,” he says, “is the commitment from the citizens.”

In November, EPA dministrator Lisa Jackson named Maywood and its neighbors along the 710 freeway “environmental justice showcase” communities. She awarded $100,000 to the EPA’s regional office to work with the cities, starting with Maywood. In addition, she sent $160,000 to the state DTSC to spearhead joint agency efforts.

Read the full article here.

Today’s Los Angeles Times detailed the fight over a polluting metal plating company in South LA:

Opened in 1941, it’s the type of factory that drew thousands of working-class families to the city during the boom years of World War II. Yet it was wedged onto a narrow street next to homes and across from 28th Street School, which soon became one of the largest elementary campuses in the nation.

According to government officials, Palace Plating generated hazardous waste, including cyanide and chromium, and faced charges of illegal dumping. The waste gave the nearby students nosebleeds, headaches and worse, according to residents and lawsuits.

Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times – Full Article

I’ve only been in Oxford for two weeks now, but I’m in love. Why? The city planning and public transit here seem to make a huge difference, compared to what I regularly see in LA and NYC, in racial integration, accessibility of jobs and healthy foods, and overall health. I can’t tell you how many elderly people have cut me off on the sidewalk because I was walking too slowly for them. I also see old people riding bikes all the time! It’s great! It not only implies that the infrastructure is set up so that it’s easy for people for walk and bike, but it also makes clear that living in a city that emphasizes these environmentally friendly methods of transport contributes to better health and independence.

A huge problem in LA is the disproportionate amount of money spent on freeway and car-related transit, and the transportation racism/classism and residential segregation that results. The first two things I noticed about Oxford were 1) how easily accessible everything is and 2) how visibly racially diverse the city is. I daresay these two observations are inextricably related.

It’s rare to find a city where, with any given glance, you see Whites, Blacks, Asians, Indians, and others, who all seem to be of similar socioeconomic status. While LA is diverse, the odds of regularly seeing wealthy Black or Hispanic people in Santa Monica or Beverly Hills are pretty low. This might well be related to the fact that you absolutely do not need a car here in order to have access to the same job opportunities. So even if Oxford is residentially segregated and I just don’t know about it, it doesn’t seem have the same social, socioeconomic, environmental or health impacts apparent in LA.

Part of the Bodleian

The city is small enough that you could walk the whole place if you had the desire and the whole day to spare. But it’s also big enough that every time I walk the city, I find something new. If walking doesn’t suit, about 90% of the population owns a bike, and there are bike lanes everywhere. The public transportation is excellent and affordable (and clean!). They only have buses because most of the underground is owned by the Bodleian Library, and it’s too small to make lightrail financially or environmentally sensible. I got a monthly key card, equivalent to the TAP, for 42 pounds, and I’ve taken the bus everyday, which I still have never done in LA despite having lived there my whole life.

I’ve only been here for two weeks, so I’m sure some dystopian race-related observations will come my way, but It’s the first European country I’ve been to where, as a Black person, I could easily be a well-off local.

Is LA too big to achieve this sort of accessibility? Possibly, but after being here for a short time, I have even more faith in the BRUs push for more clean air buses and bus lanes. I see a definite correlation between (apparent) increased racial equality and prevalence of affordable, quality (particulate free!) public transportation.

As you may or may not know, Friday September 25, 2009 was a day where the city of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas in the basin suffered from some of the worst air quality due to a refinery explosion in Wilmington, CA. Communities around Wilmington, San Pedro, Gardena, Del Amo and many others literally became ghost towns due to the toxic levels in the air, schools were mandated to keep their students and staff inside to prevent ingestion of the chemicals that have been spread around. However in San Diego, the only concern to those who live there is whether or not gas prices can stay the same. In the September 26, 2009 Los Angeles Times business article, the only concern to people’s health is the pit of their pockets.

As of Friday afternoon, the severity of the fire was still being assessed and the refinery was operating at reduced levels, Tesoro officials said.

“Before this fire, the price was about to drop like a rock,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service in New Jersey. Kloza said the Wilmington incident and a smaller fire at a Chevron refinery in Richmond in the Bay Area were particularly ill-timed for California consumers.

“Instead of falling sharply, the price will go back up,” Kloza said.

Another price expert, Bob van der Valk, said retail costs in California would jump by an average of a nickel a gallon in the short term, and perhaps more. But he also predicted a collapse in retail prices by the Thanksgiving holiday that he said would be brought on by low demand and increasing supplies.

“The national average will be around $1.75, and even California gasoline will be under $2 a gallon,” said Van der Valk, who tracks fuel prices for 4Refuel, which helps companies buy fuel more economically for their fleets.

Concerns over the magnitude of the fire damage also kicked oil higher during the trading day, but much of that earlier gain was lost. Crude oil futures for November delivery closed up 13 cents at $66.02 a barrel.

I hate to sound shallow but, the cost of a barrel of oil or gas could mean less right now, many others such as myself suffer from periodic symptoms of allergies and in Los Angeles you can experience an allergy attack 4-5 times each year. So at the end of the day you will not suffer the most from paying a few more dollars for gas, you will suffer due to dirty and polluted air as I did this past weekend.

I was sitting in a cafe in Oxford, UK today when I noticed an article in the Oxford Journal, which encouraged readers to formally speak out against two potential county council-backed incinerators that would both be placed within Sutton Courtenay.

The campaign group called Sutton Courtenay Against the Incinerator has facilitated the formal opposition by gathering over 12,000 signatures for a petition, protesting, and showing people how to register their complaints and where to send letters.

Here are their listed reasons for opposing the incinerators, most of which deal with environmental degredation and a distaste for large polluting industry. Learning from Chester, PA, I’d say there are also several social risks related to health and labor. Like Chester and many cities in LA, Sutton Courtenay already has a high concentration of polluting industries, and these incinerators would aggravate any current environmental injustices.

I’m unsure of whether or not the installment of these incinerators is as blatantly racist or classist as toxic industry placement in Chester and in LA, but I’m still glad to see local community forces, regardless of their race or socioeconomic status, getting the attention they deserve for supporting EJ causes and increasing individual agency!

Adding to the growing evidence of the health harms of freeways and auto-dependency, a recent study highlighted by Infrastructurist found that particulate matter from freeways triggers the fight or flight response in humans:

Scientists at the University of Michigan, led by Dr. Robert Brook, found that [polluted air] can increase your blood pressure, and cause unhealthy changes in your blood vessels that last for hours and perhaps even days. […] [Study] participants were exposed in the lab to the same amount of particulates and ozone that would be found near a local highway. People who breathed in polluted air registered higher blood-pressure readings a short time after exposure and their blood vessels showed impairment as long as 24 hours later.

In a series entitled Toxic Waters, the New York Times has been chronicling hazards to the nation’s drinking water supply:

Almost four decades after Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the rate of water pollution violations is rising steadily. In the past five years, companies and workplaces have violated pollution laws more than 500,000 times. But the vast majority of polluters have escaped punishment.

A map of Clean Water Act violators in California is available here.