Jim Crow returns to California – UnHerd

California s leaders might see themselves as a vanguard of progressive and eco-friendly values. But in reality, their draconian climate policies have created a racially segregated state more akin to the pre-Civil Rights era South. As Attorney Jennifer Hernandez puts in a startling new report for the environmentalist Breakthrough Institute, California has been plunged into a new Green Jim Crow era .

The soaring environmental rhetoric of the state s affluent, largely white technocratic leadership , she concludes, is deepening the state s shameful legacy of racial injustice . Certainly, the impact is stark. California now suffers the nation s worst cost-adjusted poverty rate; and according to the United Way of California, more than 30% of California residents lack sufficient income to meet basic costs of living, even after accounting for public assistance programmes. Those struggling families include half of Latino and 40% of black residents.

There are two main factors driving this new Green Jim Crow era . The first, and most obvious, is California s energy policy, which has made the state s electricity and gas prices the highest on the mainland, with electricity prices 50% above the national average and gasoline costs that exceed even import-reliant Hawaii in the centre of the Pacific Ocean.

via unherd.com