The impact of environmental disaster and the injustice of a community left behind | Gay Alcorn

There are communities that sacrifice so much so we might have cheap energy - Morwell in eastern Victoria is one of those places

In This Changes Everything, climate change activist Naomi Klein identified something that few people would openly admit, but most know deep down. Industrialisation lifted the living standards of millions, and the key to it was cheap energy. Yet a few people bore a heavier cost than the rest of us for industries that were always polluting.

Klein called them "sacrifice zones", or "middle of nowheres", those communities living right next to coal mines, for instance, who may have had employment for a time but who suffered disproportionately, out of sight and out of mind.