Updated 2024

One reason the poor bear the biggest burden of pollution is because the toxic pollution is dumped near where the poor and disadvantaged live.

There are many other factors putting an unequal burden on minorities, women, and children as well. 

For other areas of rising poverty see the New Progressive Alliance article "Poverty is Getting Worse." 

The reason we have so many continuously updated references in the below articles covering many years is to show this has been going on for decades.

For articles like this covering different areas on the environment with over 2,500 references see https://www.newprogs.org/the_environment

References

1-An eye on environmental justice

2-UN Millennium Developmental Goals: ENVIRONMENT AND POVERTY, in detail:

3-Poverty and the Environment

4-Providence Maps Show “Apartheid Lines” of Environmental Racism

5-5 percent of polluters create 90 percent of toxic emissions. Guess where they’re located?

6-Minority And Low-Income Communities Are Targeted For Hazardous Waste Sites, Research Confirms

7-Tomgram: Rosner and Markowitz, Welcome to the United States of Flint

8-Reminders on MLK Day that pollution is often an affront to civil rights, too

9-What We’re Reading About the Flint Crisis - The tragedy tells us a lot about America in 2016. Here are some key points.

10-New Study: Philly’s Minority Communities at Greatest Risk from Oil Trains | PennEnvironment

11-Climate injustice: Those who emit the least pay the most - Conservation

12-Race Best Predicts Whether You Live Near Pollution | The Nation

13-The Flint River Lead Poisoning Catastrophe in Historical Perspective | Black Agenda Report

14-The Texas-Vermont-Maine Nuclear Dump: Bringing Environmental Racism Home

15-5 Things to Know About Communities of Color and Environmental Justice

16-Katrina, Climate Justice and Fish Dinners: Social Justice Lawyer Colette Pichon Battle

17-Our Story (Climate Justice, Environmental Justice)(video)

18-Detroit hits residents on water shut-offs as businesses slide (article and video)

19-40% of Detroit Will be Deprived of Life Sustaining Water: the UN Investigates Human Rights Violations

20-There’s Nothing Fair About Detroit’s Massive Water Shut Offs

21-EPA blasted over lack of protection of minorities

22-EPA blasted over lack of protection of minorities

23-Study Confirms Tar Sands Poisoning Air in First Nations Community - The air quality has 'been a cause for concern for the people of this community since 1966,' says Fort McKay First Nation chief

24-Yes, Climate Change Does Kill People of Color More

25-Crumbling Pipes, Tainted Water Plague Black Communities

26-As Houston Plots A Sustainable Path Forward, It’s Leaving This Neighborhood Behind

27-Children's health is disproportionately affected by climate change - They're more vulnerable than adults.

28-Race and Class Are the Biggest Issues Around Hurricane Harvey and We Need to Start Talking About Them

29-Tiny Homes Banned in U.S. at Increasing Rate as Govt Criminalizes Sustainable Living

30-Study: Black People Are 75 Percent More Likely to Live Near Toxic Oil and Gas Facilities - And they face serious health risks.

31-Parents Didn’t Want Fracking Near Their School. So the Oil Company Chose a Poorer School, Instead. The first school was 77-percent white. The second is 87-percent students of color.

32-‘People just give up’: Low-income hurricane victims slam federal relief programs  Nine months after Harvey, middle-class Houston has recovered, but low-income neighborhoods are in disarray.

33-What keeps families in one of the most polluted places in California?

34-People Of Color And White Rural Populations Are Going To Suffer The Most From The EPA’s War On Renewable Power

35-While the rich world braces for future climate change, the poor world is already being devastated by it

36-UNESCO Report Shows World's Most Vulnerable and Poor Paying More Than Rich for Clean Water

37-Several Fifth Ward families have a cancer diagnosis; nearby rail yard blamed

38-'Vulnerable Communities Continue to Pay the Price' of Climate Inaction as PG&E Cuts Power to 180,000 More Californians - "For the second time in two weeks, hundreds of thousands of Californians will be left in the dark by their electricity company and public officials who haven't done enough in the face of climate change."

39-Rising heat could disproportionately harm African-American communities

40-‘That’s Lethal, Communities Completely Exposed to This Kind of Heat’  CounterSpin interview with Vivek Shandas on climate impacts

41-Climate Coverage Must Stop Ignoring the World's Poorest - The global poor have been living, and dying, from climate-driven disasters for years—but the mainstream media in richer nations is nowhere to be found.

42-Impacts of poverty alleviation on national and global carbon emissions

43-Why climate change is inherently racist

44-At least $132 billion in finance for fossil fuels is locking Africa out of a Just Transition, shows new report - African countries kept in fossil fuel stranglehold by overseas money

45-The Progenitor of Inequalities—Corporate Personhood vs. Human Beings The biggest prize of all for the uses of corporate-dominant inequality over real people is the control of the Congress, state legislatures, country boards, city councils, and elections, along with the selection of judges.

46-Q&A: Cancer Alley Is Real, And Louisiana Officials Helped Create It, Researchers Find - Two researchers from the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic in New Orleans discuss their peer-reviewed studies that challenge the official narrative from government and industry.

47-Before disastrous flood, officials knew Pajaro River levee could fail but took no action

48-How Climate Change and 'Heat Islands' are Killing Black People - The nation’s history of redlining and other forms of housing discrimination means that climate change and the Black community are on a deadly collision course.

49-The climate emergency really is a new type of crisis – consider the ‘triple inequality’ at the heart of it

50-Australia, Africa, Asia & South America have become dumps for polluting cars (YouTube)

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