Confronting Economic and Social Realities, 1980–1999 173
hazardous waste activity will occur also
increases. The implications of that conclusion
are serious. The Heckler Report11 has detailed
the excess deaths of Blacks and other racial and
ethnic persons in this country; the presence of
hazardous waste sites only serves to compound
this problem. Since many facilities and uncon-
trolled sites tend to be located in those urban
areas where large numbers of racial and ethnic
Americans reside, the potential risk caused by
transportation spills, explosions, toxic emis-
sions, and groundwater contamination strikes
hardest at racial and ethnic Americans who have
been documented to be the most “at risk” when
it comes to health and well-being.Source: Commission for Racial Justice, United Church
of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States:
A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic
Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites
(New York: Public Data Access, 1987), pp. 3, 13,15-16, 17.It is significant that race was consistently a
more prominent factor in the location of com-
mercial hazardous waste facilities than any other
factor examined. This was clearly the case with
respect to socio-economic status. The most strik-
ing relationship between socio-economic status
and the location of commercial hazardous waste
facilities was revealed after the study controlled
for regional differences and urbanization. House-
hold incomes and home values were substantially
lower when communities with hazardous waste
facilities were compared to communities in the
surrounding area without such facilities. Mean
household income was $2,745 less and the mean
value of owner-occupied homes was $17,301 less.
It is clear from these studies that as the num-
ber of a community’s racial and ethnic residents
increases, the probability that some form of
DOCUMENT 137: James Hansen Makes the Case for
Climate Change (1988)In June 1988 the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources conducted hearings to examine the
global warming trend attributed to increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-
retaining gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels and to consider its energy and environmental implications.
James Hansen, who was then the director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, the premier climate research center in the United States, was among a number of
scientists, economists, and others invited to testify at the hearings before the committee, one of whose members
was Al Gore [see Document 155]. Hansen’s testimony, which presented three model scenarios for possible future
emissions of greenhouse gases, raised the hackles of many people both in and out of government, including Dixy
Lee Ray [see Document 138], who insisted that there was no proof of a connection between global warming and
human activity. The hearings sparked an ongoing debate about global warming and a continuing controversy
over the accuracy of Hansen’s models. Hansen is considered the father of climate change awareness.I would like to draw three main conclusions.
Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at
any time in the history of instrumental measure-
ments. Number two, the global warming is now
large enough that we can ascribe with a high
degree of confidence a cause and effect relation-
ship to the greenhouse effect. And number three,
our computer climate simulations indicate that
the greenhouse effect is already large enough to
begin to effect the probability of extreme events
such as summer heat waves.
My first viewgraph [Fig. 1]... shows the
global temperature over the period of instru-
mental records, which is about 100 years. The
present temperature is the highest in the period
of record. The rate of warming in the past 25
years, as you can see on the right, is the highest
on record. The four warmest years... have all
been in the 1980s. And 1988 so far is so much
warmer than 1987, that barring a remarkable
and improbable cooling, 1988 will be the warm-
est year on the record.