11 ms·

Cancer Alley

181 points by Red_Tarsius 3y ago

Khelavaster 3y ago
Biden's former director of Public Engagement, Cedric Richmond, was the congressman from Cancer Alley's district, and a direct senior advisor to Biden.
selimthegrim 3y ago
See also: https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2023/11/21/louisiana-environmental-justice-groups-oppose-6-million-subsidy-for-koch-ethanol-plant-expansion/ https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2023/11/21/louisiana-environmen...
johnea 3y ago
[flagged]
- fsflover 3y ago
  What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- shapenamer 3y ago
  linking random wiki articles with 0 context is extremely common and seemingly accepted on HN. Always confused me as well but /shrug.
  - tempestn 3y ago
    You're not really expected to provide context when posting to HN. If something's interesting, it's interesting. I think of the Wikipedia articles as implicit "TIL" posts.
    - shapenamer 3y ago
      It seems like lowest effort submission possible to me. It's not really related to tech news at all. There's no recent news or changes. The op didn't post anything about why they found it interesting. The conversation happening here is sparse and not interesting. Aside from the fact that I've had comments downvoted for "being low effort" in the past. People can find anything interesting but not everything is a good submission to HN.
      - tempestn 3y ago
        Comments are different from posts. The comment needs to have content to be valuable. With a post, you don't need to add any editorial; it's the thing being posted itself that needs to be interesting - but not to everyone. If no one finds it interesting, people won't vote for it, and it'll never reach the homepage. But given that people did vote for it, obviously a number did find it interesting.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Probably the best kind of news IMO
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Long Island (where I live), is likely just as bad, but probably from the water (as opposed to the air). But we have a lot of billionaires, and developers, with significant investment in local real estate. I'm sure that has nothing to do with how quiet things are, about it.
- RyanHamilton 3y ago
  The richest live at the very end in the cleanest area: https://www.savethesound.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/MapCombo.png https://www.savethesound.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/MapC... though the good news it's been getting better.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    Lots in Northern Nassau (Gold Coast), like Muttontown, Old Brookville, Locust Valley, etc. New money is out East. Old money is nearer the city.
- nickjj 3y ago
  Where would you say in LI is just as bad or comparable or at higher risk than average?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    Nassau County, for sure. I know there's at least one town that is a known breast cancer hotspot. I was attending a gathering, about two years ago, that had a lot of folks (about 40), attending remotely. Mostly women; many immuno-compromised. I remember looking at the remote attendees screen, and counting the women that were currently getting, or had just gotten over, cancer treatment. I counted six. I also knew of a couple of men, sitting in the room with me, that had had treatment, over a year, previously. I don't know what the average is supposed to be, but I think 6/60 (10%), is a wee bit high.
    - throwup238 3y ago
croisillon 3y ago
20% of the article have been removed on September 6th
- sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
  Which means?
  - croisillon 3y ago
    i don't know enough about the topic to derive any meaning unfortunately
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      Here are the changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cancer_Alley&diff=1187263652&oldid=1173909119 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cancer_Alley&diff...
      - orf 3y ago
        Here’s the talk page of the person who removed the content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bon_courage#January_2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bon_courage#January_... Some strangely interesting flame wars there about similar edits.
iambateman 3y ago
> Louisiana Chemical Association President Greg Bowser responded to President Biden's remarks on the region, refuting claims that residents of the industrial corridor have a higher risk of developing cancer in multiple articles. I don't doubt his sincerity...but this illustrates how far people are willing to go to keep power. It is sad to think that a person would ignore evidence that their business kills people to protect profit. This is why we need strong regulatory bodies.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Solving this problem, along with nurturing a more empathetic culture in general, would really move our species forward IMO
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  "I don't doubt his sincerity." You should doubt it. This guy knows exactly what's going on but chooses to lie blatantly for profit. Same applies to oil execs, tobacco execs, fast food industry execs, US health insurance execs, chemical industry execs and many others. They know exactly that they are damaging the environment and/or killing millions of people but they prefer profit. And somehow we as a society let them get away with it.
- jodrellblank 3y ago
  > "It is sad to think that a person would ignore evidence that their business kills people to protect profit." Saudi Arabia has pledged to bring down their fossil fuel emissions, publicly launching the "Saudi Green Initiative" in 2022, signing the Paris Climate agreement, endorsing the UN's climate goals. They've also seen that there's a "risk" of reduced oil demand around the world and quietly setup the "Oil-demand Sustainability Program" to "artificially stimulate demand in some key markets", (promote combustion engine cars and aircraft travel in Africa and South East Asia) and their energy minister wants them to be "the last man standing, and every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out". They have a 46 point plan to promote oil, spanning 17 government entities, including things like investing in roads and airports, making sure ICE (gas/diesel) engines are low-cost and competitive potentially a JV with a car OEM to make a low-cost ICE car, supporting low-cost airlines, restarting development of supersonic aircraft because they use so much fuel, establishing local ICE car part manufacturing facilities which will have an oil uplift, accelerate deployment of last-mile delivery and ride-hailing apps in underserved markets and "ensure the deployment of an ICE-fleet", "support the deployment of bus transportation across developing countries to capture the increasing diesel demand", support research to make marine Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) scrubbers cheaper than switching to LNG or biofuels and promote regulations that allow continued use of HFO, etc. etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT0r_yJafmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT0r_yJafmg
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
[flagged]
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  DuPont built their plant in 1969. Was it intentional racism or just cheap land zoned for industrial use?
  - timkpaine 3y ago
    Zoning and racism are pretty intimately linked through time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning
- jollyllama 3y ago
  Get real. https://pazwv.org/ https://pazwv.org/
  - yterdy 3y ago
    West Virginia is an odd case with the same chewy nougat center as racism: the exploitation of labor and resources, and the extreme punishment of anyone who fights back, or who even simply truth-tells (hence GP being flagged), up to and including multi-generational blood libel becoming ingrained in the culture, enabling all kinds of long-lived atrocities. As for GP, one might expect his case to be bolstered if you had examples of his contention. And, well, gentrification exists. Should probably be unflagged and discussed civilly.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    -tl;dr -just looked at the picture Louisiana says, "If you don't have a cancer alley, get one!" West Virginia says, "OK."
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  You mean other than those parishes in Cancer Alley where there are white majorities and the primary source of household income are the chemical plants, you mean? Because I grew up in St. Charles Parish, which is 71% white, in the shadow of the Monsanto plant that makes the world's Roundup, down the road from a Dow plant, and across the river from Motiva, Shell, and Exxon refineries where you can see them light up the night sky with flares to burn off their excess gases.
poulpy123 3y ago
I'm confused to why there is also a french name. I get that it was french at one point but it was 200 years ago, and afaik very little people in the area still speak french
- sp332 3y ago
  Well, the whole place is still called Baton Rouge. Anyway there are a few French speakers left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Louisiana_parishes_by_French-speaking_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Louisiana_parishes_by_...
  - poulpy123 3y ago
    More than I was aware !
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  There are a lot of colloquialisms that come from French, or mix in French terms.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Codofil would like a word.
- cmpb 3y ago
  I'm from the area, so I feel I might be qualified to give you an answer. The short story is that some people here do still speak dialects of French [1]. The number of native speakers is rapidly declining (and will soon diminish completely), but many residents of Louisiana have grandparents or other family members who did grow up speaking it exclusively (or more commonly now, grew up speaking it with their exclusively-French-speaking parents/grandparents). There are probably several reasons that it has held on for so long here, but predominantly it's because of multiple waves of influx of French-speakers (from when Louisiana was owned by the French, then from people of the Acadia region of Canada who were forced out of their region and migrated here in the mid-18th century) combined with persistent poverty resulting in poor education and low travel into and out of Louisiana (so not a lot of mixing with the rest of the US). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_French
Red_Tarsius 3y ago
I just saw this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9mrbIxeBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9mrbIxeBE and it sounded like an interesting topic to bring on HN. I didn't know about the "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana, but I figure most countries have their own alleys of death. I live in Italy and Taranto is notorious for this reason. The city was home to one of biggest steel producers in Europe. The local economy revolved around the steel plant, but people from the sorrounding neighbourhoods have suffered from abnormally high rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses for decades. After a trial which shed light on the environmental disaster, the government seized the plant in 2012. Long story short, its fate has been in a limbo since then.
- tremon 3y ago
  Although not quite as drastic, same with the Ĳmuiden region in Noord-Holland (originally Koninklĳke Hoogovens, "Royal Furnaces" -- just as royal as Shell) [0]: > Due to exposure to particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide emitted from the Tata Steel site, Wijk aan Zee residents have a life expectancy that is 2.5 months lower on average > approximately 4% of the future cases of lung cancer in Wijk aan Zee will be attributable to the current emissions of particulate matter > around 3% of future [asthma] cases will be associated with the current emissions And currently, also DuPunt/Chemours in Dordrecht [1]: > Chemours, which spun off from its legal predecessor Dupont (DD.N), opens new tab in 2015 to regroup the latter's performance chemical business, complied with its permit before July 1984 but that after that it should have better informed the towns surrounding its chemical plant in the city of Dordrecht And separately, there is an investigation against the local government because then-DuPont was tacitly allowed to exceed the amount of pollution granted by their permit. [0] https://www.rivm.nl/publicaties/bijdrage-van-tata-steel-nederland-aan-gezondheidsrisicos-van-omwonenden-en-kwaliteit https://www.rivm.nl/publicaties/bijdrage-van-tata-steel-nede... [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/dutch-court-rules-chemours-liable-environmental-damage-caused-by-pfas-2023-09-27/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/dutch-court-rule... (edit: found link in English)
- animatedb 3y ago
  sorrownding: neat
- 3y ago
max_ 3y ago
As humans our days on this planet are numbered. It surprises me how we are all sleep walking to extinction and "the masses" truly don't give a damn?
- LASR 3y ago
  Recently I've been fascinated at some of the long-term space missions that various space agency plan. Some of these missions span multiple decades simply because of the nature of space travel. A burning question in my mind: how does one get motivated to work on something that they'll probably not even live to see come to fruition/failure? Personally, I wouldn't be, unless if there was some pay involved. Dealing with climate change is like this. Humans, I think are basically unable to align behind initiatives that do not affect us immediately. I am a parent. I would like to set up my child for success. But being brutally honest, it's hard for me to even think of what going "above and beyond" means in this respect. I would do everything a normal good parent would do. But then what? Nobody is paying people to use less plastic or stop polluting etc. So few are incentivized to do anything above and beyond the normal. Superficial things like not using plastic - sure no problem. Keeping a 5 year old phone or wearing worn out shoes - I'll have trouble with these.
  - supertofu 3y ago
    > A burning question in my mind: how does one get motivated to work on something that they'll probably not even live to see come to fruition/failure? Personally, I wouldn't be, unless if there was some pay involved. "The wise man plants a tree whose shade only his grandchildren will enjoy." Some humans are capable of great compassion for the people who will come after us. That is the impetus to create a better world for our children's children (even those of us who don't even have children). Compassion. Concern for the well-being of the people who will inherit the world when we are gone. Empathy combined with a sense of duty. Some people have those qualities innately. Many people don't.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    it is a personal and cultural question, more than anything. There are cultures where people will pick up litter and sweep the public streets, because they take care in having and keeping things nice. There are cultures in which dumping your garbage on the street is normalized. There are even times and places where people complete to die and sacrifice their lives for their their social group.
saluki 3y ago
One of my friends were in St. Judes in Memphis for cancer treatment. I was there visiting multiple times and would talk to lots of other families whose children were getting treatment and I was stunned by the large percentage who were from New Orleans or Baton Rouge and many with fathers who mentioned they worked at a chemical plant. My friend had stage IV cancer, St. Judes did an amazing job they are still in remission after this initial treatment in the 1990s.
somethoughts 3y ago
I found this insightful: Why Louisiana Stays Poor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38 Definitely sounds very similar to CPG's "Rules for Ruler" video where he provides a description of rulers ruling in resource rich countries.
tschwimmer 3y ago
Somewhat related, True Detective season 1 is set in this area. Reading this article made me realize that the the cinematography is very effective in using the pollution as a metaphor for social decay. Some stills: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/3FleEbfQmPxX0b0pXp--7OF3GlI=/0x0:1920x1080/1600x900/media/img/mt/2014/03/TrueDetective_church/original.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/3FleEbfQmPxX0b0pXp--7OF3... https://gerryco23.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/true-detective-5.jpg https://gerryco23.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/true-detective...
- klysm 3y ago
  The color grading and film is so excellent at giving it an eerie feel.
jklinger410 3y ago
deleted
- paxys 3y ago
  You get what you vote for
ipnon 3y ago
In the spirit of hacking, can this be moved to orbit? What would make the economics work out? What would be the environmental effects?
- ww-picard-do 3y ago
  Are you suggesting we send crude oil into space, refine it and then bring back?
fredrickhumphre 3y ago
[flagged]
cmpb 3y ago
Strange seeing not just my state, but my hometown, rising on HN. Sad, too. Related: For those interested in point-and-click / text-based games, check out the game NORCO, which is about the city Norco (named for the refinery that graces its skyline), a suburb of New Orleans. It's actually an extremely accurate representation of the socioeconomics of the area (which is painful to admit), and has some truly gorgeous pixel art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norco_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norco_(video_game)
_yb2s 3y ago
California has its own version of this in the north east Bay Area- with a high density of refineries blowing directly downwind into dense poor communities. Chevron owns and pays for the local newspaper covering that area, which spreads misinformation about the health risks to the community. It amazes me you have this dense urban area with ultra strict vehicle emissions rules, where low income people struggle to get their cars to pass, and yet you have these refineries down the street flaring regularly and sending up massive plumes of black soot.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  What came first, the refinery or the people? It was the refinery in most (all?) of those cases in north east Bay Area. People chose to get more bang for their buck and live near an oil refinery (but doesn't excuse any misinformation about the risks), like people move next to railroad tracks and then complain about the noise and want them to stop blowing horns. Still I agree with you that there should be almost zero tolerance for any emissions and an "oopsie" every year should be met with a fine of a year's profits every year then.
  - _yb2s 3y ago
    The refineries were there first, well before these areas were populated at all. I don't think that should give them a forever license to massively pollute. Back when they were built, and started to become populated the health risks were unknown... the people living there now mostly grew up there, and there was never a conscious choice to move somewhere dangerous. In the case of Richmond, the poor black communities directly downstream of the plant are mostly descended from the workers brought in to build liberty ships during World War II. This was during a time when black people were legally restricted from getting decent jobs other than these temporary wartime exceptions, so moving to this place was their only opportunity to get a decent job. They lacked the legal freedom to make a choice about where to live in the sense you are implying, because of racist laws. As a society, it is time to look at phasing these refineries out entirely, rather than relocating them. We already have the technology to do transportation in other ways, and it's already much cheaper when you count all of the health and environmental externalities. Already, 50% of diesel fuel in California is from renewable biomass, so you don't need an electric car for non-petroleum transportation. One of the north bay refineries was shut down a few years back, and converted to a renewable diesel plant.
lazyant 3y ago
Reminds me of the “discovery of hunger” in 1967 when Robert F. Kennedy visited the Mississippi Delta https://www.processhistory.org/green-hunger-health/ https://www.processhistory.org/green-hunger-health/
dogman144 3y ago
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. Good book on the topic, specifically around why it continues.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Hochschild’s interviewees were largely in Lake Charles as I understand.
refurb 3y ago
While an interesting read, where is the data? You even look at the sources on the wikipedia page and it says [citation needed]. Cancer isn't evenly distributed across the countries (i.e. every city of 1M has 100 colon cancer cases), and clustering would be expected even from random distribution. Then layer on top things like genetic makeup of the population, smoking rates, diet, etc, etc, etc and you end up in a situation where confounding factors can make it really hard to tease out causes, especially if the effect is small in size. I'm not saying there aren't higher rates of cancer in this area or that industrial pollution can't contribute to cancer rates, but this wikipedia article seems like nothing but a bunch of talk.

181 points by Red_Tarsius 3y ago

Biden's former director of Public Engagement, Cedric Richmond, was the congressman from Cancer Alley's district, and a direct senior advisor to Biden.

selimthegrim 3y ago

See also: https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2023/11/21/louisiana-environmental-justice-groups-oppose-6-million-subsidy-for-koch-ethanol-plant-expansion/ https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2023/11/21/louisiana-environmen...

johnea 3y ago

[flagged]

fsflover 3y ago
What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
shapenamer 3y ago
linking random wiki articles with 0 context is extremely common and seemingly accepted on HN. Always confused me as well but /shrug.
- tempestn 3y ago
  You're not really expected to provide context when posting to HN. If something's interesting, it's interesting. I think of the Wikipedia articles as implicit "TIL" posts.
  - shapenamer 3y ago
    It seems like lowest effort submission possible to me. It's not really related to tech news at all. There's no recent news or changes. The op didn't post anything about why they found it interesting. The conversation happening here is sparse and not interesting. Aside from the fact that I've had comments downvoted for "being low effort" in the past. People can find anything interesting but not everything is a good submission to HN.
    - tempestn 3y ago
      Comments are different from posts. The comment needs to have content to be valuable. With a post, you don't need to add any editorial; it's the thing being posted itself that needs to be interesting - but not to everyone. If no one finds it interesting, people won't vote for it, and it'll never reach the homepage. But given that people did vote for it, obviously a number did find it interesting.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Probably the best kind of news IMO

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

Long Island (where I live), is likely just as bad, but probably from the water (as opposed to the air). But we have a lot of billionaires, and developers, with significant investment in local real estate. I'm sure that has nothing to do with how quiet things are, about it.

RyanHamilton 3y ago
The richest live at the very end in the cleanest area: https://www.savethesound.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/MapCombo.png https://www.savethesound.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/MapC... though the good news it's been getting better.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Lots in Northern Nassau (Gold Coast), like Muttontown, Old Brookville, Locust Valley, etc. New money is out East. Old money is nearer the city.
nickjj 3y ago
Where would you say in LI is just as bad or comparable or at higher risk than average?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Nassau County, for sure. I know there's at least one town that is a known breast cancer hotspot. I was attending a gathering, about two years ago, that had a lot of folks (about 40), attending remotely. Mostly women; many immuno-compromised. I remember looking at the remote attendees screen, and counting the women that were currently getting, or had just gotten over, cancer treatment. I counted six. I also knew of a couple of men, sitting in the room with me, that had had treatment, over a year, previously. I don't know what the average is supposed to be, but I think 6/60 (10%), is a wee bit high.
  - throwup238 3y ago

croisillon 3y ago

20% of the article have been removed on September 6th

sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
Which means?
- croisillon 3y ago
  i don't know enough about the topic to derive any meaning unfortunately
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    Here are the changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cancer_Alley&diff=1187263652&oldid=1173909119 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cancer_Alley&diff...
    - orf 3y ago
      Here’s the talk page of the person who removed the content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bon_courage#January_2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bon_courage#January_... Some strangely interesting flame wars there about similar edits.

iambateman 3y ago

> Louisiana Chemical Association President Greg Bowser responded to President Biden's remarks on the region, refuting claims that residents of the industrial corridor have a higher risk of developing cancer in multiple articles. I don't doubt his sincerity...but this illustrates how far people are willing to go to keep power. It is sad to think that a person would ignore evidence that their business kills people to protect profit. This is why we need strong regulatory bodies.

candiddevmike 3y ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Solving this problem, along with nurturing a more empathetic culture in general, would really move our species forward IMO
rqtwteye 3y ago
"I don't doubt his sincerity." You should doubt it. This guy knows exactly what's going on but chooses to lie blatantly for profit. Same applies to oil execs, tobacco execs, fast food industry execs, US health insurance execs, chemical industry execs and many others. They know exactly that they are damaging the environment and/or killing millions of people but they prefer profit. And somehow we as a society let them get away with it.
jodrellblank 3y ago
> "It is sad to think that a person would ignore evidence that their business kills people to protect profit." Saudi Arabia has pledged to bring down their fossil fuel emissions, publicly launching the "Saudi Green Initiative" in 2022, signing the Paris Climate agreement, endorsing the UN's climate goals. They've also seen that there's a "risk" of reduced oil demand around the world and quietly setup the "Oil-demand Sustainability Program" to "artificially stimulate demand in some key markets", (promote combustion engine cars and aircraft travel in Africa and South East Asia) and their energy minister wants them to be "the last man standing, and every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out". They have a 46 point plan to promote oil, spanning 17 government entities, including things like investing in roads and airports, making sure ICE (gas/diesel) engines are low-cost and competitive potentially a JV with a car OEM to make a low-cost ICE car, supporting low-cost airlines, restarting development of supersonic aircraft because they use so much fuel, establishing local ICE car part manufacturing facilities which will have an oil uplift, accelerate deployment of last-mile delivery and ride-hailing apps in underserved markets and "ensure the deployment of an ICE-fleet", "support the deployment of bus transportation across developing countries to capture the increasing diesel demand", support research to make marine Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) scrubbers cheaper than switching to LNG or biofuels and promote regulations that allow continued use of HFO, etc. etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT0r_yJafmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT0r_yJafmg

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

[flagged]

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
DuPont built their plant in 1969. Was it intentional racism or just cheap land zoned for industrial use?
- timkpaine 3y ago
  Zoning and racism are pretty intimately linked through time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning
jollyllama 3y ago
Get real. https://pazwv.org/ https://pazwv.org/
- yterdy 3y ago
  West Virginia is an odd case with the same chewy nougat center as racism: the exploitation of labor and resources, and the extreme punishment of anyone who fights back, or who even simply truth-tells (hence GP being flagged), up to and including multi-generational blood libel becoming ingrained in the culture, enabling all kinds of long-lived atrocities. As for GP, one might expect his case to be bolstered if you had examples of his contention. And, well, gentrification exists. Should probably be unflagged and discussed civilly.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  -tl;dr -just looked at the picture Louisiana says, "If you don't have a cancer alley, get one!" West Virginia says, "OK."
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
You mean other than those parishes in Cancer Alley where there are white majorities and the primary source of household income are the chemical plants, you mean? Because I grew up in St. Charles Parish, which is 71% white, in the shadow of the Monsanto plant that makes the world's Roundup, down the road from a Dow plant, and across the river from Motiva, Shell, and Exxon refineries where you can see them light up the night sky with flares to burn off their excess gases.

poulpy123 3y ago

I'm confused to why there is also a french name. I get that it was french at one point but it was 200 years ago, and afaik very little people in the area still speak french

sp332 3y ago
Well, the whole place is still called Baton Rouge. Anyway there are a few French speakers left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Louisiana_parishes_by_French-speaking_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Louisiana_parishes_by_...
- poulpy123 3y ago
  More than I was aware !
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gwbas1c 3y ago
There are a lot of colloquialisms that come from French, or mix in French terms.
selimthegrim 3y ago
Codofil would like a word.
cmpb 3y ago
I'm from the area, so I feel I might be qualified to give you an answer. The short story is that some people here do still speak dialects of French [1]. The number of native speakers is rapidly declining (and will soon diminish completely), but many residents of Louisiana have grandparents or other family members who did grow up speaking it exclusively (or more commonly now, grew up speaking it with their exclusively-French-speaking parents/grandparents). There are probably several reasons that it has held on for so long here, but predominantly it's because of multiple waves of influx of French-speakers (from when Louisiana was owned by the French, then from people of the Acadia region of Canada who were forced out of their region and migrated here in the mid-18th century) combined with persistent poverty resulting in poor education and low travel into and out of Louisiana (so not a lot of mixing with the rest of the US). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_French

Red_Tarsius 3y ago

I just saw this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9mrbIxeBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9mrbIxeBE and it sounded like an interesting topic to bring on HN. I didn't know about the "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana, but I figure most countries have their own alleys of death. I live in Italy and Taranto is notorious for this reason. The city was home to one of biggest steel producers in Europe. The local economy revolved around the steel plant, but people from the sorrounding neighbourhoods have suffered from abnormally high rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses for decades. After a trial which shed light on the environmental disaster, the government seized the plant in 2012. Long story short, its fate has been in a limbo since then.

tremon 3y ago
Although not quite as drastic, same with the Ĳmuiden region in Noord-Holland (originally Koninklĳke Hoogovens, "Royal Furnaces" -- just as royal as Shell) [0]: > Due to exposure to particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide emitted from the Tata Steel site, Wijk aan Zee residents have a life expectancy that is 2.5 months lower on average > approximately 4% of the future cases of lung cancer in Wijk aan Zee will be attributable to the current emissions of particulate matter > around 3% of future [asthma] cases will be associated with the current emissions And currently, also DuPunt/Chemours in Dordrecht [1]: > Chemours, which spun off from its legal predecessor Dupont (DD.N), opens new tab in 2015 to regroup the latter's performance chemical business, complied with its permit before July 1984 but that after that it should have better informed the towns surrounding its chemical plant in the city of Dordrecht And separately, there is an investigation against the local government because then-DuPont was tacitly allowed to exceed the amount of pollution granted by their permit. [0] https://www.rivm.nl/publicaties/bijdrage-van-tata-steel-nederland-aan-gezondheidsrisicos-van-omwonenden-en-kwaliteit https://www.rivm.nl/publicaties/bijdrage-van-tata-steel-nede... [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/dutch-court-rules-chemours-liable-environmental-damage-caused-by-pfas-2023-09-27/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/dutch-court-rule... (edit: found link in English)
animatedb 3y ago
sorrownding: neat
3y ago

max_ 3y ago

As humans our days on this planet are numbered. It surprises me how we are all sleep walking to extinction and "the masses" truly don't give a damn?

LASR 3y ago
Recently I've been fascinated at some of the long-term space missions that various space agency plan. Some of these missions span multiple decades simply because of the nature of space travel. A burning question in my mind: how does one get motivated to work on something that they'll probably not even live to see come to fruition/failure? Personally, I wouldn't be, unless if there was some pay involved. Dealing with climate change is like this. Humans, I think are basically unable to align behind initiatives that do not affect us immediately. I am a parent. I would like to set up my child for success. But being brutally honest, it's hard for me to even think of what going "above and beyond" means in this respect. I would do everything a normal good parent would do. But then what? Nobody is paying people to use less plastic or stop polluting etc. So few are incentivized to do anything above and beyond the normal. Superficial things like not using plastic - sure no problem. Keeping a 5 year old phone or wearing worn out shoes - I'll have trouble with these.
- supertofu 3y ago
  > A burning question in my mind: how does one get motivated to work on something that they'll probably not even live to see come to fruition/failure? Personally, I wouldn't be, unless if there was some pay involved. "The wise man plants a tree whose shade only his grandchildren will enjoy." Some humans are capable of great compassion for the people who will come after us. That is the impetus to create a better world for our children's children (even those of us who don't even have children). Compassion. Concern for the well-being of the people who will inherit the world when we are gone. Empathy combined with a sense of duty. Some people have those qualities innately. Many people don't.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  it is a personal and cultural question, more than anything. There are cultures where people will pick up litter and sweep the public streets, because they take care in having and keeping things nice. There are cultures in which dumping your garbage on the street is normalized. There are even times and places where people complete to die and sacrifice their lives for their their social group.

saluki 3y ago

One of my friends were in St. Judes in Memphis for cancer treatment. I was there visiting multiple times and would talk to lots of other families whose children were getting treatment and I was stunned by the large percentage who were from New Orleans or Baton Rouge and many with fathers who mentioned they worked at a chemical plant. My friend had stage IV cancer, St. Judes did an amazing job they are still in remission after this initial treatment in the 1990s.

somethoughts 3y ago

I found this insightful: Why Louisiana Stays Poor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTic9btP38 Definitely sounds very similar to CPG's "Rules for Ruler" video where he provides a description of rulers ruling in resource rich countries.

tschwimmer 3y ago

Somewhat related, True Detective season 1 is set in this area. Reading this article made me realize that the the cinematography is very effective in using the pollution as a metaphor for social decay. Some stills: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/3FleEbfQmPxX0b0pXp--7OF3GlI=/0x0:1920x1080/1600x900/media/img/mt/2014/03/TrueDetective_church/original.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/3FleEbfQmPxX0b0pXp--7OF3... https://gerryco23.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/true-detective-5.jpg https://gerryco23.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/true-detective...

klysm 3y ago
The color grading and film is so excellent at giving it an eerie feel.

jklinger410 3y ago

deleted

paxys 3y ago
You get what you vote for

ipnon 3y ago

In the spirit of hacking, can this be moved to orbit? What would make the economics work out? What would be the environmental effects?

ww-picard-do 3y ago
Are you suggesting we send crude oil into space, refine it and then bring back?

fredrickhumphre 3y ago

[flagged]

cmpb 3y ago

Strange seeing not just my state, but my hometown, rising on HN. Sad, too. Related: For those interested in point-and-click / text-based games, check out the game NORCO, which is about the city Norco (named for the refinery that graces its skyline), a suburb of New Orleans. It's actually an extremely accurate representation of the socioeconomics of the area (which is painful to admit), and has some truly gorgeous pixel art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norco_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norco_(video_game)

_yb2s 3y ago

California has its own version of this in the north east Bay Area- with a high density of refineries blowing directly downwind into dense poor communities. Chevron owns and pays for the local newspaper covering that area, which spreads misinformation about the health risks to the community. It amazes me you have this dense urban area with ultra strict vehicle emissions rules, where low income people struggle to get their cars to pass, and yet you have these refineries down the street flaring regularly and sending up massive plumes of black soot.

reducesuffering 3y ago
What came first, the refinery or the people? It was the refinery in most (all?) of those cases in north east Bay Area. People chose to get more bang for their buck and live near an oil refinery (but doesn't excuse any misinformation about the risks), like people move next to railroad tracks and then complain about the noise and want them to stop blowing horns. Still I agree with you that there should be almost zero tolerance for any emissions and an "oopsie" every year should be met with a fine of a year's profits every year then.
- _yb2s 3y ago
  The refineries were there first, well before these areas were populated at all. I don't think that should give them a forever license to massively pollute. Back when they were built, and started to become populated the health risks were unknown... the people living there now mostly grew up there, and there was never a conscious choice to move somewhere dangerous. In the case of Richmond, the poor black communities directly downstream of the plant are mostly descended from the workers brought in to build liberty ships during World War II. This was during a time when black people were legally restricted from getting decent jobs other than these temporary wartime exceptions, so moving to this place was their only opportunity to get a decent job. They lacked the legal freedom to make a choice about where to live in the sense you are implying, because of racist laws. As a society, it is time to look at phasing these refineries out entirely, rather than relocating them. We already have the technology to do transportation in other ways, and it's already much cheaper when you count all of the health and environmental externalities. Already, 50% of diesel fuel in California is from renewable biomass, so you don't need an electric car for non-petroleum transportation. One of the north bay refineries was shut down a few years back, and converted to a renewable diesel plant.

lazyant 3y ago

Reminds me of the “discovery of hunger” in 1967 when Robert F. Kennedy visited the Mississippi Delta https://www.processhistory.org/green-hunger-health/ https://www.processhistory.org/green-hunger-health/

dogman144 3y ago

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. Good book on the topic, specifically around why it continues.

selimthegrim 3y ago
Hochschild’s interviewees were largely in Lake Charles as I understand.

refurb 3y ago

While an interesting read, where is the data? You even look at the sources on the wikipedia page and it says [citation needed]. Cancer isn't evenly distributed across the countries (i.e. every city of 1M has 100 colon cancer cases), and clustering would be expected even from random distribution. Then layer on top things like genetic makeup of the population, smoking rates, diet, etc, etc, etc and you end up in a situation where confounding factors can make it really hard to tease out causes, especially if the effect is small in size. I'm not saying there aren't higher rates of cancer in this area or that industrial pollution can't contribute to cancer rates, but this wikipedia article seems like nothing but a bunch of talk.