Pollution and Human Rights in a Louisiana Town

• Pages: 22-22

Page 22 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2010, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, July/August 2010

noTice & commenT

When Skepticism

Spills Into Denial

A

recent article in Nature Geoscience

raised the intriguing idea that hu-

man interference in the climate dates

back millennia, to the Pleistocene Era.

When people entered North America

for the f‌irst time about 13,000 years

ago, hunters wiped out the largest

animal genera. According to the ar-

ticle, by Felisa Smith of University of

New Mexico, the sacrif‌iced animals

would have emitted 9.6 megatonnes

of methane, a very potent greenhouse

gas, on an annual basis. Ice core re-

cords show that atmospheric methane

levels plunged from about 700 parts

per billion to 500 ppb at the time of

the extinction. e absence of the gas

caused by the extinction meant less

warming. “It is conceivable that this

drop in methane contributed to the

Younger Dryas cooling episode,” says

Smith.

As evidence for climate change in

our current era continues to accu-

mulate, so called skeptics continue to

deny that humanity is able to cause

dangerous climate forcing. But the

science has been compelling and has a

long lineage, with fresh evidence like

the Younger Dryas cooling arriving all

the time.

e notion of human-caused

change dates back more than a cen-

tury, to the Swedish chemist Svante

Arrhenius, who f‌ingered the green-

house ef‌fect as a player in the comings

and goings of ice ages. Arrhenius cal-

culated that infalling solar radiation

that normally would ref‌lect back into

space would be absorbed by carbon

dioxide and water vapor, increasing

the temperature of the planet. We’ve

known for a fact that CO2 has been

accumulating in the atmosphere since

the 1950s, when records began to be

kept by a research facility on a remote

mountain in Hawaii. Ever since, the

record has shown increasing levels of

the warming gas. At the same time,

we have observed the increase in

ocean acidity caused by absorption of

carbon dioxide, with the seas facing

an ecological collapse.

If the atmosphere and the oceans,

our two greatest commons, are facing

huge changes in their chemical com-

position, is there anything to worry

about? Will of‌fsetting factors, like in-

crease plant growth in response to the

fertilizing ef‌fects of CO2, mean that

global warming will not occur? Will

we be able to pump sulfur dioxide

particles into the atmosphere to serve

as cosmic ref‌lectors, reducing temper-

atures? Any iteration of the Precau-

tionary Principle would counsel pru-

dence when adjusting the chemical

makeup of the planetary ecosystem

— as we are undoubtedly doing, and

have been doing since the Pleistocene,

apparently — but so-called climate

skeptics continue to poke holes at the

latest models and predictions.

“What is the dif‌ference between a

skeptic and a denier?” appropriately

asks Michael Shermer, publisher of

Skeptic magazine and author of e

Skeptic column in Scientif‌ic American.

“A climate skeptic, for example, exam-

ines specif‌ic claims one by one, care-

fully considers the evidence for each,

and is willing to follow the facts wher-

ever they lead.” But that’s not what’s

happening in the anti-global warming

crowd. “A climate denier has a posi-

tion staked out in advance, and sorts

through the data employing ‘conf‌ir-

mation bias’ — the tendency to look

for and f‌ind conf‌irmatory evidence

for pre-existing beliefs and ignore or

dismiss the rest.”

Shermer states that “skepticism is

“ese reports show that the

state of climate change science is

strong. But the nation also needs

the scientif‌ic community to

expand upon its understanding

of why climate change is

happening, and focus also on

when and where the most severe

impacts will occur and what we

can do to respond.”

— National Academy of

Sciences President Ralph J.

Cicerone on the release of

three reports emphasizing why

the United States should act

now to mitigate climate change

to privacy and racial

equality in not forcing

local chemical plants to

stop polluting.

“It’s the rst time

the international or-

ganization has agreed

to hear complaints of

environmental racism

against the United

States by its own

“African-American

residents of Moss-

ville, a community just

west of Lake Charles

[Louisiana], have won

a hearing before the

Inter-American Commis-

sion on Human Rights

on charges that the

U.S. Government has

violated their rights

citizens, said a spokes-

woman for the law rm

that led the complaint.

“Mossville is adja-

cent to 14 chemical

plants and reneries

that release millions of

pounds of toxic chemi-

cals into the air, land,

and water each year,

according to federal

and state records.

“Its residents have

led a variety of law-

suits and complaints

against the plants

and the Environmental

Protection Agency in

attempts to recover

damages and reduce

pollution.”

— Times-Picayune

Pollution and Human Rights in a Louisiana Town