Happy New Year, Decipherers! This month, we are reviewing Dorcetta Taylor’s text Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. Taylor is a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and a distinguished researcher in the areas of environmental justice and racism in the environmental movement. Her 2014 text is a deep dive on the history of environmental justice caselaw and a really interesting (if somewhat depressing) look into waste management.
While we may be vaguely aware of the rising of global temperatures and the accumulation of the world’s plastic in the great pacific garbage heap, the more banal aspects of our own local trash, like the locations of landfills and incinerators, may go overlooked. Taylor’s book asks us to take a look around and ask–if we are so lucky as to live away from our own environmental hazards, who is forced to live with them? Check out our thoughts in the podcast below:
Cover image: The New Hope Power Partnership, a biomass power plant in Florida. It represents some of the newest technology in cleaner fuels. It will interestng to see what the impacts, if any, are to nearby communities.