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This chapter focuses on the ways in which adverse weather conditions impacted upon the supply and price of grain. The famine was described by Smout as ‘a terrible instance of the vulnerability of a primitive economy to bad weather’, and some of the ways in which the economy, and particularly the grain market, responded to these adverse conditions and grain shortage are explored. The central government's ability to implement adequate famine relief measures, particularly during this period of economic difficulty, is a further determinant of the severity of the famine. The wider impact of the other ‘disasters’ of the 1690s clearly not only limited the government's ability to provide financial relief, but also town councils, kirk sessions and some landowners may have found their income reduced due to the convergence of a number of economic crises which further limited the amount of specie circulating in the country. The chapter considers some of the influences of foreign markets upon the Scottish economy.

This chapter examines the government's response to toxic contamination in African American communities and the health consequences for the residents of those communities. It begins with an overview of the federal Superfund program, created in 1980 when Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), which allowed the federal government to respond to releases or potential releases of hazardous wastes that might harm people or the environment. It then considers the legacy of unequal protection in the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement of its Superfund laws, increasing the risk for African Americans and other communities of color. It also presents case studies that highlight environmental racism and slow government response to disasters that threaten the health and welfare of African Americans in the Deep South.

This chapter analyzes the government's response to the arsons. The government responded vigorously to allegations of white racists burning black churches in the South. When publicity about the church burnings reached a peak in June 1996, President Clinton created the National Church Arson Task Force.

This chapter examines how incompetent government response to disasters endangers the health and safety of African Americans by focusing on the case of the town of Dickson in Tennessee. Dickson is the poster child for environmental racism: for more than forty years, the town's mostly African American Eno Road community has been used as the dumping ground for garbage and toxic wastes. As a result, Dickson's drinking water supply was poisoned by deadly chemicals from the Scovill-Schrader automotive company that ultimately made local residents sick. This chapter describes the Dickson County landfill and explains how an African American family's wells on their homestead were contaminated. It also shows how the combination of toxic waste, institutional racism, and poisoned water creates a deadly mix for African Americans. Finally, it offers policy recommendations to government and nongovernmental organizations in the wake of the environmental health disaster created by the Dickson County Landfill and government inaction.

This chapter focuses on two studies, separated by a quarter of a century, in which the Commission took a critical look at institutional structures and the conceptual underpinnings of environmental policy. In its fifth report (1976), it advocated a system of integrated pollution control, based on its concept of ‘best practicable environmental option’ (BPEO), to be implemented by a new pollution inspectorate. Though rejected at first, its recommendations had a profound influence on policy over several decades. The Commission’s twenty-third report (2002) proposed a more coherent system of land use and environmental planning, involving Integrated Spatial Strategies. In this case (at a time of planning reform) its ideas had only modest short-term impact and little lasting effect. The processes contributing to these different outcomes, including the changing political and institutional contexts, are carefully examined. Taken together, these cases tell us much about the Commission’s experience when it tried to change the policy frame, and highlight interesting differences in government responses to its reports over time.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it was said that nothing would be the same again. They were aided by the ambiguity of the initial media reports, which facilitated the rise of a host of urban legends. The sheer scope of the attacks and the dramatic, real-time television coverage created potent apocalyptic imagery. Millennialists began issuing their end-time analyses. The key issue for millenarians was what the attacks meant in terms of history's final trajectory. Conspiracists quickly responded to the attacks, rejecting the conventional explanation that Al Qaeda was responsible. Unintended consequences involve conspiracists and fall into two categories: those that result directly from the attacks themselves, and those which derive from the government's response to the attacks. It remains to be seen whether that volatile conjunction of perception, belief, and action will emerge out of the post-September 11 environment.

This chapter examines how Hurricane Katrina exposed the limitation of local, state, and federal government operations to implement an effective emergency preparedness and response plan. It first considers the post-Katrina reconstruction and rebuilding efforts in New Orleans and the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast region. It then analyzes the “second disaster” that occurred in New Orleans after Katrina due to racism, classism, elitism, paternalism, and greed. In particular, it describes the “Twenty-Point Plan to Destroy Black New Orleans,” which included the Federal Emergency Management Agency's slow response in getting aid to Katrina survivors, insufficient insurance settlement amounts awarded to African Americans, and discrimination in the application of environmental cleanup standards. The chapter also assesses the impact of the demolition of public housing on New Orleans's African American neighborhoods and concludes by offering a number of policy recommendations that could prevent delays and unfairness in government response to disasters in the future.

This chapter focuses on the ways in which the Commission’s ideas came to have effect, and on the conditions in which they were most or least likely to do so. The Commission had impact, but its influence is best conceived of in terms of a spectrum or continuum, with rapid responses at one end and long-term conditioning of the policy environment at the other. In between are ‘dormant seeds’, diffuse forms of influence, invisible levers, and changes in the policy frame, all shading into one another along the spectrum and sometimes co-existing. The ‘dogs that didn’t bark’—recommendations that sank without trace—are also considered. This fine-grained analysis draws on the cases considered in Chapters 4 and 5, but also ranges widely across the Commission’s contributions and government responses. Setting its findings within a wider conceptual framework (Chapter 1), and drawing on ideas such as framing, policy learning, and boundary work, it helps to illuminate relations among knowledge, expert advice, and processes of policy evolution.

This chapter examines government response to disasters by presenting presents case studies of industrial accidents and other incidents that have affected African Americans dating back to the early 1930s. It first discusses the risk of toxic chemicals in the United States before analyzing each of the cases, including the Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, mine disaster in 1930; the Gaylord Chemical tank car accident in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1995; the Norfolk Southern Railway train wreck that released toxic chlorine gas in Graniteville, South Carolina, in 2005; the ExxonMobil Baytown, Texas, refinery gas spill in 2006; and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The chapter also explores the role of race and race-based decision making and industrial practices in responding to threats from locally unwanted land uses and risky facilities in African American communities.

This chapter examines how bias figures in government response to disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods. Focusing on natural disasters that have occurred over the past eight decades, including the 1927 flood along the Mississippi and the 1999 Hurricane Floyd in eastern North Carolina, the chapter highlights the impact of race and class dynamics on vulnerability and adaptation. It considers the claim that “natural” disasters are in fact acts of social injustice perpetuated by government and business on the poor, African Americans and other minorities, and the elderly, and that measures to prevent or contain the effects of disaster vulnerability are not equally provided to all. It also looks at the ways that black farmers were subjected to institutional racism when applying for the Department of Agriculture's disaster relief.

This book explores government responses to natural and man-made disasters, from hurricanes to bioterrorist attacks, and their impact on African American communities in the southern United States. Using an environmental justice and racial equity framework, the book traces the unequal protection and unequal treatment afforded African Americans over eighty years and looks at the factors that have made them vulnerable, including their socioeconomic status and race. It presents case studies to illustrate how environmental hazards develop into public health threats and how their effects are either mitigated or amplified by design factors. It also examines special challenges and barriers faced by African Americans on a daily basis and how government response to disasters compounds these obstacles. Finally, the book recommends policy strategies for preventing inept government responses to various threats to African Americans.