Geographies of nowhere : Smeltertown and the rising wave of environmental refugees

We don't often think of modern American communities as places that disappear. But lead pollution erased the tiny Texas community of Smeltertown from the map. And Smeltertown isn't alone. Across America we've scraped communities from the landscape, smudged them from our memories. Pollution made these places unfit for human habitation. It turned the residents of these communities into environmental refugees. Another kind of pollution climate change - threatens to push even more people from their homes. That these communities are gone is tragic. That there are billions of climate change refugees poised to join these environmental refugees is terrifying. What can we do to stop this tide? What can lessons can we learn from the towns that have already disappeared? What lessons can we learn from Smeltertown?

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Graduate Program in Science Writing

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Pierre-Louis, Kendra

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Thomas Levenson.

• Graduate Program in Science Writing.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106763

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/106763