Caroline McArdle PHIL 3990 Professor Van Buren March 7 th , 2018 Environmental Justice Environmental justice (EJ) is defined as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.” In simpler terms, no person or group should be subject to bearing a “disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies.” Too often, the burdens of environmental injustices are born by minorities whose voices are not considered in the policy that determines their own well-being and environmental benefits. The term environmental justice became commonplace during the civil rights movement in which many civil rights issues at stake also concerned environmental racism and justice. An article by
Transcript
Caroline McArdle
PHIL 3990
Professor Van Buren
March 7th, 2018
Environmental Justice
Environmental justice (EJ) is defined as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement
of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the
development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.”
In simpler terms, no person or group should be subject to bearing a “disproportionate share of the
negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial
operations or policies.” Too often, the burdens of environmental injustices are born by minorities
whose voices are not considered in the policy that determines their own well-being and
environmental benefits.
The term environmental justice became commonplace during the civil rights movement
in which many civil rights issues at stake also concerned environmental racism and justice. An
article by NOLA Live, Unwelcome Neighbors discusses the origins and pivotal events of the
environmental justice movement. The early environmentalism movement, being a grassroots
movement, was tarnished by disagreements and inability to articulate practical goals within its
supporters. Civil rights and environmental justice, though by nature intertwined, were seen as
opposing forces – the environmentalist movement was seen as primarily white, middle class, and
focused on nature rather than urban issues. However, issues like toxic waste and pollution which
clearly overlap both urban areas and environmentalism did bring minorities and white activists
together on an issue, bridging the gap that divided the civil rights and environmentalist
movements from the beginning. Such issues coming to light erased the “conventional view that
civil rights was about access to voting booths, schools and jobs,” and that it was about much
more. (NOLA)
Growing concern about hazardous
was largely responsible for drawing
attention to the environmental justice and
civil rights movements in cases like the
Love Canal, in which an old toxic waste
dumping ground was turned into a neighborhood.
Some years later “investigators found 88 toxic
chemicals in high concentrations, including 22
known to cause cancer” that had seeped back from
underground. (NOLA) 700 families had to be
relocated. This event drew national attention and urgency to the issue of environmental justice,
but similar events continue, a primary example in North Carolina’s, specifically Warren County,
the county with the highest percentage of African American residents in the state. Out of 4 toxic-
waste dumps in the South, “three dumps, including the Warren County site, were in or adjacent
to communities with majorities of black
residents. At the fourth, the black
population was a relatively high 38 percent
[though] African-Americans make up about
12 percent of the U.S. population.” As
stated by NOLA, this was not an isolated incident; in Figure 1, a map of Los Angeles provided
by a Pomona College study shows the percentage of minorities in areas where toxic waste sites
are located throughout the city (red = minority population 80-100%, yellow = 0-40% minorities,
green dots = toxic release facilities). Clearly, minorities bear a disproportionate share of these
FIGURE 1
FIGURE 2
environmental conditions and their consequences. Another study done by Teaching Tolerance
reveals similar patterns in terms of exposure to pollution (Figure 2) and hazardous waste sites
(Figure 3) in Massachusetts.
Majora Carter, a black woman from California who spearheaded the project “Green the
Ghetto,” gave a TED talk on the issue of
environmental justice and racism back in 2007. Sadly, the issues she discusses remain pressing
today. Carter pointed out that African Americans are 2x more likely to live in an area where air
pollution is the greatest threat to their health and are 5x more likely to live within walking
distance of a power plant or chemical facility, posing even more health risks. Such living
environments lead to medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and asthma. Hospitalization
rates of children due to conditions like asthma are 7 times higher than the national average in
areas subject to environmental injustices. Yet such injustices are largely ignored because these
areas are populated by low-income minorities – those who sadly are considered a last priority by
many cities, especially in cost-benefit analyses. In greedy business owners’ eyes, there is little
interest in fixing these environmentally challenged communities – in most cases, it would make
their work more expensive. However, Carter acknowledges that capitalism rules, but holds the
often-rejected view that there is money to be made off sustainable businesses and changes and
that, while it is not wrong to make money, businesses shouldn’t exploit these vulnerable
communities for profit.
Voices like Carter’s bring hope that politicians and business owners will recognize the
importance of environmental justice issues. Environmental justice does not concern only health,
though that is an immediately pressing concern, but it also effects social class and dynamics.
When these low-income, minority families develop medical conditions due to their environment,
they have to pay increasing medical bills, then they become poorer. Many of these communities
have low health-insurance rates, so these bills take an even larger toll on these communities than
higher-income ones. They may have to move to even lower income areas and the cycle
continues, the lowest-income areas plagued by the worst environmental conditions and thus the
highest medical expenses. Hence, minorities in urban areas are often stereotyped to live in
“projects,” a reality that has come about due to environmental racism, not to mention that the
more concentrated low-income minority populations become, the easier it is for companies to
quietly take advantage of money-making opportunities at the expense of the communities’ well-
beings. The primary problem is that governments, city planners, businesses, etc. prioritize
development and cost-efficiency over people’s quality of life and environmental efficiency.
These people are not treated with dignity, but rather used as a means for these industries and
governments to make or save money on. Treating human beings with dignity, at the very least, is
something most philosophers and theorists can agree on, even strong and weak anthropocentric
views like Baxter and Norton. Kant stresses treating others as an end in themselves as one of the
3 parts of his categorical imperative for deontological ethics, and even Utilitarianism (which
shares few principles with deontology) considers the happiness of all persons in a given situation
– the best situations result in the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.
That a basic recognition of dignity in every human is held by nearly every philosopher,
politician, and human alive is testament to the true wrongfulness of these environmental
injustices. Yes, people may disagree on the moral standing of animals/nature and how our
actions impact these “others,” but when did we start ignoring the implications on our neighbors?
Issues of environmental justice also call into question the rights of future generations.
Many people consider climate change an especially pressing issue because its consequences will
be left to their children, or their children’s children. Others consider the right to future humans,
and to maintain an environment and “leave it the way we found it” so to speak, so that later
generations will not have to live in hostile conditions. Others, however, argue that this obligation
is nonexistent given that these people do
not exist, and we cannot have obligations to
nonexistent things. However, I believe the
question of future generations and current
generations is rather trivial, for whether or
not we care about future generations, we
should care about the present people
effected by climate change and do our best to mitigate the effects the undeserving and poor
disproportionately bear. Here, I outline my argument that the issue of environmental justice in
lower-income communities also occurs on a global level and that it is not only in the interest of
human kind to do something about it, but a duty. Global warming, for example, is an
environmental issue that effects the entire planet, but the effects of which are disproportionately
born by the poor and developing countries (Figure 4). In fact, there is almost a directly inverse
relationship between the countries who contribute the most to climate change (in terms of CO2
emissions) and the countries most vulnerable to its effects (flooding, hurricanes, drought, etc.)
The disturbing truth is that the countries who have the highest emissions are often the most
wealthy, and they experience the fewest consequences; the developing nations suffer – though
they have neither the resources to clean up from natural disasters as a result of climate change,
let alone invest in renewable energies that could prevent such change from progressing. The
wealthy nations have both, but yet still consider it a last priority, as seen through Trump’s
decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Accord. The US is the only country now
not in the accord, a fact which alone reiterates how the selfish nature of capitalism can cause
deep environmental injustice, in this case on a global scale. On a strictly Kantian standpoint, we
must act in a way that could be made universal law, as if we had autonomy in a kingdom of ends
(meaning that the world would not go to pieces if everyone acted the way we did, and that we
would accept everyone else acting the way we did). For everyone to emit as much as the US
would mean an imminent and serious international crisis. Climate change would be severely
worse than it stands now and we would have little hope of fixing it. Thus, there is little question
that the country is acting unethically by implementing (or not implementing) policy that creates
these environmental injustices to people who do not deserve them (the US and other large
emitters might be the only ones who could ethically stand to bear these consequences). Second,
in John Stuart Mill’s outline of Utilitarianism, he distinguishes perfect and imperfect duties. An
imperfect duty concerns questions of ethics that do not concern someones direct rights to life,
liberty, and property; we have a choice in fulfilling these. But perfect duties concern justice, and
justice deals with these human rights. It is our perfect duty not to jeopardize these rights of
others, and climate change impacts all of these rights. Natural disasters as a result of global
warming cause destruction and loss of life and property. Further, when people do not have a say
in the environmental cleanliness of their home, this too is a question of property and, in the case
of those who develop medical conditions, can turn into a question of life or death. Thus, we owe
it to the current generation (and maybe the future generations too, but the distinction is trivial) to
limit these environmental injustices to the best of our ability. Not only is it unethical, it is unjust.
