Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Sparks

The Picture of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Just Keeps Getting Worse

A report from Human Rights Watch includes new data on incidence of birth defects in the region.

A Louisiana petroleum refinery.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

For decades, oil and gas producers have built their facilities along an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River in Louisiana between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Today, that area is known as Cancer Alley.

A report by Human Rights Watch released last week documents in painstaking detail how lax oversight of Louisiana’s fossil fuel and petrochemical industries contributed not just to devastating rates of cancer diagnoses, but also to elevated incidence of birth defects and respiratory ailments. The area is a “sacrifice zone,” per the United Nations, in which the area’s Black residents bear the brunt of harms created by nearby polluting industries.

“The failure of state and federal authorities to properly regulate the industry has dire consequences for residents of Cancer Alley,” said Antonia Juhasz, a senior researcher on fossil fuels at Human Rights Watch. “It’s long past time for governments to uphold their human rights obligations and for these sacrifices to end.”

The report, titled “We’re Dying Here,” brings a sharper focus to reproductive complications linked to fossil fuel pollution. The region’s rates of low birth weight and preterm birth are triple the United States average, according to new data from Tulane University researchers. In addition, chronic asthma, bronchitis, and persistent sinus infections are also common. “It’s just like a death sentence, like we’re sitting on death row waiting to be killed,” Sharon Lavigne, a St. James Parish activist, told a UN panel in 2021. “We are being a sacrifice zone for the state.”

The “Cancer Alley” nickname itself is nothing new, but the area has once again been in the spotlight amid the Biden administration’s consideration of 17 new export facilities for liquified natural gas. One of those, the proposed $10 billion Calcasieu Pass 2 project, would be built in Louisiana’s Cameron Parish, about a three-hour drive from the Cancer Alley zone. Last week, the White House announced that it would pause the approval process for new LNG terminals to allow for an updated review of their climate effects.

According to one former Environmental Protection Agency official, CP2 alone would add “an unbelievable amount of pollution.” Nonetheless, as Human Rights Watch notes, “at least 19 new fossil fuel and petrochemical plants [are] planned for Cancer Alley, including within many of the same areas of poverty and high concentrations of people of color.”

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Sparks

Trump’s Pro-Gas, Transition-Skeptical Pick to Run the Nation’s Energy Data

Tristan Abbey would come to Washington from a Texas think tank that argues peak oil is way off base.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s pick to run the Energy Information Administration works for a think tank that denies the existence of an energy transition.

The Energy Information Administration is the nation’s primary energy fuel and power forecasting agency. Since its inception in 1977, EIA has become a go-to source of data for many U.S. businesses, analysts, and policymakers alike. The agency’s previous administrators have been relatively apolitical academics and industry experts, including under the first Trump administration, whose EIA administrator came to the role from a faculty position at Rice University. The office’s current acting administrator is Stephen Nalley, who was appointed deputy administrator by Trump in 2018 after serving in various other roles at the agency.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Sparks

Why Are AI Stocks Falling Again?

Microsoft is canceling data center leases, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Microsoft headquarters.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The artificial intelligence industry is experiencing another TD Cowen shock.

The whole spectrum of companies connected to artificial intelligence — the companies that design the chips, that supply the power, that make the generation equipment — shuddered Wednesday when the brokerage released another note from analysts pointing to evidence that Microsoft was giving up on its data center leases.

Keep reading...Show less
Sparks

The IRS Is Taking Mercy on Electric Car Buyers

The tax agency reopened its online portal to allow dealerships to register sales retroactively.

The IRS building.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As recently as last month, some electric vehicle buyers were running into roadblocks when they tried to claim the EV tax credit on their 2024 returns. Their claims were rejected, it turned out, because the dealership where they bought their EV never registered the sale with the Internal Revenue Service.

On Wednesday, the IRS instituted a fix: It reopened the online portal for dealerships to report these sales retroactively.

Keep reading...Show less
Green