The Environmental and Conservation Issues Room
For those who want to know about these topics, two books excel. 'Dark Money' and 'Strangers in their own Land'
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...their-own-land
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833494-dark-money
Dark Money is a deep dive, long and detailed, it gives you the players and their reasons, Stranger is more grounded in the human factors.
See page 8 quote below from 'Stranger'.
"Inspired by Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas?, I began my five-year journey to the heart of the American right carrying with me, as if it were a backpack, a great paradox. Back in 2004, when Frank's book appeared, there was a paradox underlying the right-left split. Since then the split has become a gulf.
Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. Red states suffer more in another highly important but little-known way, one that speaks to the very biological self-interest in health and life: industrial pollution.
Louisiana is an extreme example of this paradox. The Measure of America, a report of the Social Science Research Council, ranks every state in the United States on its "human development." Each rank is based on life expectancy, school enrollment, educational degree attainment, and median personal earnings. Out of the 50 states, Louisiana ranked 49th and in overall health ranked last. According to the 2015 National Report Card, Louisiana ranked 48th out of 50 in eighth-grade reading and 49th out of 50 in eighth-grade math. Only eight out of ten Louisianans have graduated from high school, and only 7 percent have graduate or professional degrees. According to the Kids Count Data Book, compiled by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Louisiana ranked 49th out of 50 states for child well-being. And the problem transcends race; an average black in Maryland lives four years longer, earns twice as much, and is twice as likely to have a college degree as a black in Louisiana. And whites in Louisiana are worse off than whites in Maryland or anywhere else outside Mississippi. Louisiana has suffered many environmental problems too: there are nearly 400 miles of low, flat, subsiding coastline, and the state loses a football field-size patch of wetland every hour. It is threatened by rising sea levels and severe hurricanes, which the world's top scientists connect to climate change.
Given such an array of challenges, one might expect people to welcome federal help. In truth, a very large proportion of the yearly budgets of red states-in the case of Louisiana, 44 percent-do come from federal funds; $2,400 is given by the federal government per Louisianan per year. "
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Originally Posted by spunkloaf
