Two Sides of California

The first way people think of California's cultural divide is usually along a North/South axis - Giants vs. Dodgers, SF granola vs. LA bling and all the rest. But the environmental justice reading selections brought home the more recent notion that the real dividing line is the coastal and privileged CA West leaving the inland CA East in the dust.

For example, mentioned in Price's engaging and metaphysical essay on the nature of nature in L.A. was this alarming stat: "The Southeast L.A. area - the most industrialized urban area in the U.S., with many of L.A.’s lowest-income and most heavily Latino neighborhoods - occupies 1 percent of the county by acreage but generates 18 percent of the toxic air emissions." This is a prime example of the platform of the environmental justice movement, which Solnit summarizes well: "The founding notion was to address the way that environmental hazards, refineries, incinerators, toxic dumps are often sited in poor communities and communities of color." This feels a million miles away from the exclusive Hollywood hills and the verdant canyons of Malibu.

Water issues paint another dire picture. While San Francisco and San Mateo counties have some of the best drinking water in the country courtesy of the damn Hetch Hetchy, a recent KQED Forum feature on Central Valley drinking water contamination found, "Californians living in the state's agricultural regions are at risk of drinking water contaminated with harmful levels of nitrates, according to a new UC Davis report."

Environmentally conscious folks would like to think that something like the creation of more parks will at least put a finger in the dike of this dangerous trend and lead to some relief from these environmental injustices, but Roberts and Chitewere find that "the establishment of parks has done little to allay the social ills arising out of inequality, unfairness, and the poor distribution of wealth." (p.357)

Solutions seem hard to come by, outside of a major realigning of priorities and a re-distribution of wealth from (yes) higher taxes that seems laughable in this neoliberal and polarized political climate. But perhaps Schendler's surprising conversion to a spiritual stewardship of environmental issues is a start to try and form a bridge to join these two sides of California. To tackle environmental justice issues (and slow if not slay the beast of climate disruption), this new united California would likely live by a motto from Bill Moyers quoted by Schendler: "What we need to match the science of human health is the science of the heart: the capacity to see, to feel, and then to act as if the future depended on you."

Q:What if the Sierra contained rich coal deposits? Would the process of mountain-top removal be permitted in California, or would it be drowned out by a loud chorus of protests and demonstrations? I would hope so.. If that is true, how is it possible that this "government-sanctioned bombing of Appalachia." continues?