I think about this book a lot. The point that stuck in my mind was that many of the folks living there were devout Christians. When one family was asked why they vote for the party that pollutes their land and waters they said that it's also the pro-life party and essentially nothing else matters if they don't vote pro life since they'll go to hell in the end.
Yes though iirc the author probed at that a bit and while not directly contradicting them points to this being more a matter of social cohesion, justified by that one specific policy when pressed in this instance. But others gave more prosaic answers about industry and employment.
Re the christian thing though, it was unsettling to read about their understanding of right relationship between humans and creation being essentially (and uncharitably) "god put us in charge of it to do what we want with it." Which is maybe a natural extension of historical european/north american christian doctrine on the subject but that still I had never really heard a contemporary christian state clearly and proudly like that. I'm also christian and it's pretty foreign to my tradition.
You could ask the same question to the people who think the environment is very important but don't seem to care about how their electric car or its Lithium ion batteries are mined or manufactured. So long as it's not in their back yard it is out of sight out of mind. And if they overload the regulations so that there is no local manufacturing and it's all imported from countries with poor environmental controls, they are effectively exporting all the pollution to poor people in China
