The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution
Bullard offers a disturbing account of the environmental and human cost of the excesses of capitalism in this follow-up toUnequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. This volume takes a fresh look at the often unequal distribution of environmental hazards to poor and minority communities, examining locations from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" to Nigeria. In part one, women activists detail their gutsy battles against the combined power of business and government when their minority neighborhoods were threatened by industrial pollution. Part two tells the stories of people (again, mostly minorities and the poor) living in "sacrifice zones," such as Cancer Alley—the stretch down the Mississippi River in Louisiana where "approximately 80 percent of the total African American community in the nine parishes lives within three miles of a polluting facility." Parts three and four examine Chicano struggles in the Southwest and global justice issues, including "corrupt... petro-capitalism" in Nigeria, where deep poverty persists despite the country's oil wealth. Readers can learn much about those who pay the costs in safety and health for many of modern life's conveniences.(Oct.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.