Energy Policy and Race

Equating laws that protect the environment and encourage a shift away from fossil fuels with the brutal segregation laws of the old South is offensive beyond belief. Yes, people of color are hit disproportionately hard by high gas prices, but they have also been hit disproportionately hard by decades of carbon-based pollution in cities, and will bear the brunt of adverse effects on the climate if America's energy consumption patterns don't change. What would really transform the lives of people of color now living in poor communities is massive investment in a green-collar economy, which would produce millions of jobs in urban areas that would not be created through more oil drilling, and would prevent worsening global warming. Besides, a new federal report says that if we opened up the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve to oil drilling today, we wouldn't start getting the gasoline in our tanks until 2018, and it would reduce the price of oil (now over $130 a barrel) by, at the most, $1.40 a barrel — in 2025. We can't wait that long, and through conservation and by deploying existing green technologies and researching new ones, we don't have to.