there's so much dumb in this thread it's not even worth a post. and no, there's no refinery or power plant in midtown. lol
Hey! Being from Pasadena, I am slightly offended (not really). In Pasadena, no one ever asks who farted. Have you guys driven on Hwy 225? ****e show.
All those dots also give people respiratory problems and cancer at an alarmingly high rate. Money is nothing when your health is bad.
No they don't, the article is talking about greenhouse gases and doesn't even do a good job of summing up the EPA report. For the type of cancer causing particle pollution you are talking about http://www.stateoftheair.org/ is a much better sauce. BY YEAR ROUND PARTICLE POLLUTION #1: Bakersfield-Delano, CA #1: Merced, CA #3: Fresno-Madera, CA #4: Hanford-Corcoran, CA #4: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside, CA #6: Modesto, CA #7: Visalia-Porterville, CA #8: Pittsburgh-New Castle, PA #9: El Centro, CA #10: Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington, OH-KY-IN #11: Philadelphia-Camden-Vineland, PA-NJ-DE-MD #12: Louisville-Jefferson County-Elizabethtown-Scottsburg, KY-IN #12: St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL #14: Canton-Massillon, OH #14: Macon-Warner Robins-Fort Valley, GA #14: Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ #14: Fairbanks, AK #18: Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville, GA-AL #18: Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ #20: Cleveland-Akron-Elyria, OH #20: Indianapolis-Anderson-Columbus, IN #22: Steubenville-Weirton, OH-WV #22: Wheeling, WV-OH #24: Dayton-Springfield-Greenville, OH #24: Birmingham-Hoover-Cullman, AL Where is Texas on this list? Every time I go to China I am so happy about how well we have taken care of our air.
What do you suppose we do, shut the whole chemical and refinery industry down. Maybe we could move all of it out of country along with the jobs, or to the moon.
Yea my friend moved here when he was 13, and when he was little he said he thought a blue sky was something they just painted on backdrops of movies and cartoons for effect. Over there it's just an unending grey pall hanging low over everything. In Beijing now you can't even see 50-100ft in a particular direction if the day is bad. Sometimes the rain washes the sky and makes things clearer but never completely gone. Sad state. But if Japan was able to completely mitigate its pollution issues over thirty years then China has a shot. It's almost a more egregious penalty to chop a tree down there as it is to kill a man. Japan's air is much better now. http://aqicn.org/map/japan/
And america won't be what it is without the manufacturing base that got us here, but people had no problem tossing it aside.
I don't like how they chose to demonstrate. The number of plants can be misleading, depending what kind of plant it is and how clean it runs. Houston is one of the country's most polluted cities thanks to the industries we have here. But, a map of pollutants tests would be more meaningful than number of factories. And, if they're arguing about the outsized impact on minorities and the poor, this is a terrible map. Picking cities is nonsensical since they ended up with a list of economic powerhouses that all have more than their fair share of affluence. And then looking within the town, plotting sites doesn't say much about the burden on poor communities there. One, only a native knows where on the map the poor live. Two, the map says nothing of the relative amount of pollution in rich areas and poor. And three, what am I to make of the 22 sites in affluent West Houston? Do I just assume they all happen to be sited in the poor pockets there? And the wording of the article is some interesting word-smithing as well. That make out like the big bad oil refinery companies sought out poor neighborhoods to build in so they could exploit the poor and protect the rich. No consideration of the fact that they chose their spots for their own geogrpahical needs, and that the poor came afterward to take advantage of how affordable the area is because of the nearby plants. Maybe that's a failure in regulation to allow anyone at all to live there, but it's not factory owners looking for people to repress. Finally, the criticism of the Mountain Creek Generating Station is very unfair. It's a gas-fired plant that increased it's CO2 ouput in 2012 over 2011. The reason it did was because it fired much more often in 2012 due to ridiculously low gas prices, and forced coal plants elsewhere in the DFW-area offline. The coal plants are in another stratosphere in producing CO2, and would have done so in the same metro area if not for the efficiency of gas-fired generation. The should send Mountain Creek a medal.
