Of the 50 U.S. power plants emitting the largest amount of all the pollutants considered, the majority -- 31 facilities in all -- are located in the South. In fact, all of the nation's 11 top polluting power plants are located in just two Southern states: Alabama and Arkansas.Reading this just reminds me of all the other measures in which the South fares poorly:
Children in poverty: Mississippi (50th), followed by Louisiana (49th), Alabama (44th), Arkansas (44th), South Carolina (42), North Carolina (39th), Tennessee (39th), Georgia (36th).
Infant mortality rates: Louisiana (50th), Mississippi (49th), South Carolina (48th), North Carolina (46th), Alabama (45th), Tennessee (43rd), Georgia (42nd), Arkansas (40th).
Teen motherhood: Missisippi (50th), Arkansas (45th), Alabama (45th), Louisiana (45th), Georgia (42nd), South Carolina (41st), Tennessee (40th), North Carolina (38th).
On many of these measures, southern states are multiple times worse than northern states. When you break it down to the county level, these disparities are even more horrific, with statistics in some poor counties in the deep South literally indistinguishable from the numbers in some third world countries.
--Steven White