CO2 emissions, global warming, and black folk
I stumbled across this interesting graph while looking for some information on African-American public opinion:
Basically, the graph shows that relative to whites, African-Americans are responsible for fewer CO2 emissions at every income level. And other graphs in the report show a similar trend, for instance, when you look at per capita emisssions, African-Americans still come up far short of their white counterparts. Which makes perfect sense; there’s a fairly direct positive relationship between income level and amount of CO2 emissions – the higher your income, the more likely it is you’re producing a significant tonnage of CO2. And since African-Americans are disproportionately concentrated at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, they are – on average – producing less CO2. In a very big way, this “disparity” is another legacy of Jim Crow and African-American’s attendant isolation from the mainstream economy.
On the international scene, a major roadblock to establishing international standards is the fact that we don’t yet have a clear answer to the question of fairness, that is, the question of “how much should we ask of developing countries as we attempt to deal with global warming?” The simple fact on the global stage is simply that developing countries, regardless of their level of development, are considerably less responsible for the volume of CO2 emissions than Western nations. Likewise, recognizing the difference between African-American emissions and white emissions forces us to ask similar questions of our domestic efforts to stem global warming. “How much should we ask of historically underprivileged communities in fighting global warming?” If white Americans are disproportionately responsible for the level of CO2 emissions, is it fair to ask African-Americans, Latinos and other historically disenfranchised minorities to curb their activity on a level similar to white Americans? And if we do, should we compensate minorities to make up for any economic activity lost as a product of those efforts?
I don’t really have any suggestions, much less answers, to these questions. But I think they’re worth considering, especially as we begin to take real, serious action on global warming.
Clearly we should all stop deferring to whites when it comes to fixing the environment.
Clearly.
This graph is misleading, the per capita graph shows that, in each income level bracket, the direct emissions for African-Americans and White Americans are equal.
There is nevertheless a degree of inequality, in terms of burdens etc…, but all this graph really shows is that there are a lot more white people.
Before reading the above comment, I was going to speculate that this is a legacy of white flight to the suburbs, and hence longer commute times, bigger houses, and more lawns to water.