Environmental Justice and Environmentalism

I like the layout of the book because instead of the entire book being written by a single author, it's a collection of essays from various people. It is good because for one thing, I am able to see how this issue is being discussed from both sides and the writing style changes from author to author making it more enjoyable to read. However, I wished the class schedule would allow time to discuss each chapter singularly during each class period because in this book, opinions differ from chapter to chapter. I'd like to be able to thoroughly discuss each author's thoughts and opinion on the matter.

The first chapter I read kind of took me aback for the first half of the article because I felt the author was really opposed to the idea of integrating environmentalism and environmental justice like some NGOs have done. I got the feeling that he was opposed to the fact that environmental justice seems so human-centered compared to environmentalism. True, he said that sometimes protection of the environment has to come at the expense of poorer people and I disagree with that. I will explain why later on.

On the other hand, even though I disagree with his take on environmental justice, I agree with his stance on how people are part of nature. Anthropocentrism is a social construct like the author says but at the same time it is necessary in order to facilitate some form of social hierarchy. But in the aspect that man needs to be in the wild to realize that he's part of nature...I do agree with his point. A lot of the times, we fail to see the big picture; that we need natural resources in order to support our current way of life. Once we deplete food and energy sources, it will be impossible to sustain the current human population especially at current consumption rates. It is possible to integrate environmental justice and environmentalism which brings me to the next chapter.

In the second article, the author brings his case forward to address several common misconceptions regarding how the implementation of environmental friendly concepts usually have negative impacts on poorer communities. The author then provides possible solutions to the problems. His general argument is that environmental concepts would actually benefit the poor more because they are the ones who are usually disproportionately exposed to the negative impacts of environmental injustice. He claims that by practicing environmentally sound agendas, poor people are just as likely to benefit instead of being exploited as claimed.

The issue I have with the second article is that although the author provides several examples on how environmental agendas can actually benefit the poor; in reality, implementation of such policies is not as easy as he makes it seem. Like the implementation of public transportation such as trains take up a lot of funding and it takes time to plan out and complete the construction of the project. Integrating women rights into the environmental justice and environmental movement brings another issue to light which is the feminist movement. Indirectly, the effects of educating women leads to lower birth rates but the population decrease cannot be said that it is brought on by the education of women. Also, such effects take a long time to show because the education process does not happen overnight.

I wonder if Shrader-Frechette would argue that such policies violate the PPFPE or may even been seen as paternalistic. Also, in the book by Luke Cole, I would think that the people affected by environmental injustice and those who are involved in grassroots movements would disagree strongly with the first chapter because the author disagrees with the anthropocentric nature of environmental justice issues. Environmental justice deals mainly with the disproportionate effects of waste removal on people of color. It is easy to see how sometimes environmental justice and environmental advocates butt heads with each other as they are unable to find common ground to work from.

Personally, I think the issue is definitely intertwined but in order for both movements to successfully and effectively collaborate, there has to be compromises made. Not necessarily like that of the Sierra Club but one that is more effective in addressing both issues equally.

The How-To's

Lets start at the beginning. I think the part of this book that I find the most interesting are the various cases of EJ that the author presents to the readers. She uses them to expand on her theories but I think the cases tend to catch my attention more than what she has to say. Mainly because they're so unbelievable as they're happening in what we call a developed country.

I liked how she challenged what we usually call a "neutral" stand or take to the subject because neutrality is not necessarily not doing anything about the issue. Her take home message is that in today's world, no one and no institution is safe from the lure of economic profit. Be it institutions of higher learning who obtain funding from corporations in exchange for research and rights to their publication. We then cannot expect these once thought neutral inputs to stay the same.

I liked the idea that being neutral is not necessarily staying back and not doing anything but being neutral oftentimes requires us to be critical on both sides of the issue. By keeping mum and not pointing out possible flaws or disagreement in the value system of current issues, we're inherently taking sides with those who are the cause of environmental injustice.

The author is right in stating that in order to cause change of a large enough magnitude, we need to start changing the minds of the people. I think people usually fail to see that they're the ones who actually have the power in causing change. Oftentimes, we fail to invoke any significant change as individuals because we are not organized and are not numerous enough to rally against large corporations and governments.

She suggests that to be effective members of the EJ movement, we have to be involved in NGO's in order to keep in touch with current issues and to network with other organizations who might be in on the same issues. I can already see some problems that may arise with this idea; that each organization might have different goals or have different value systems. But the main point in networking is to find some common ground in fighting for the same cause as we're both trying to do good anyway.

She does come up with good theories as to why we should do what we do because if we don't, who's going to do them for us? I think the take home message of the book is that although we each may have different perspectives and beliefs when it comes to the EJ cause but in the end, in order to invoke meaningful change, we need to be able to work with each other and to be organized to be effective in addressing the various issues.

Seriously?

To tie in with Chapters 5 and 6 of the book, I came across an interesting article in my local newspaper.

"Malaysia to use nuclear energy by 2023"

The first thought that went through my head was, "Seriously?"

Like all citizens of a country, I'm sure some of you in one way or the other is critical of your own government. I on the other hand am highly critical of the Malaysian government. Recently, my country has gone through or I should say more accurately, is going through a period of political turmoil which hopefully will lead to some good change. Unfortunately, I have little faith in the government after recent events. I shall not go there but if you're interested in what's going on, please feel free to read "The Star Online" which is the largest circulated newspaper in Malaysia.

Anyway, back to nuclear energy. I can already foresee so many problems with the idea and even more so after reading Chapters 5 and 6. In comparison to the US, the landmass in Malaysia is just a little larger than New Mexico. Not a big country I would say in comparison to many other countries but I think we have too many big ambitions for our country and poor implementation practices.

First of all, I don't see the need to implement nuclear power because since we're located in the tropics, solar power is one source of renewable energy that I think is very viable. Also, interior mountain ranges provide good areas to site hydroelectric plants even though those plants come with their own environmental issues but seriously, anything is better than a nuclear reactor in the country.

The West coast of Malaysia is already so highly populated that to site a nuclear reactor nearby would be a bad idea just in case anything goes wrong. Not only that, where would the waste go? That is my biggest question. With regard to the issues revolving EJ that the book has been talking about, I don't think there will be much opposition from locals if the waste site is located in a less developed area as people will tend to be less informed about the risks associated with hosting nuclear facilities. Over in Malaysia, the government has the final say for a lot of things, even though they may be violating basic human rights to life and freedom.

In chapter 5, the author states her case against the Yucca mountain waste facility and how siting hazardous waste there will affect future generations as the impacts will last a million years. She also states that we are unable to fully act on the behalf of our future generations as they would be the ones who would bear the consequences of our actions. She also states that the current policy from the EPA regarding waste disposal is inadequate as environmental impact statements (EIS) cannot be generated for such a long period of time and leaks are definitely going to occur. Everyone has the right to free informed consent in such a way that their current disposition does not indirectly coerce them into making biased decisions.

Because the national energy company is run by the government, I suspect that the future nuclear reactor will also be run by the government. 5.1% of Malaysians live below the poverty line and that is quite a large number really come to think of it and out of all adults, only 88.7% of the population is literate. For a developing country, I would say we could do better. The probably of finding citizens in a situation of environmental injustice would be higher than expected I believe. There's a problem right there already.

The government might think that the current solution to rising coal prices would be to turn to nuclear, but I don't think they've realized that nuclear energy is probably more expensive than regular coal-based energy or even renewable energy. The US government has provided billions of dollars in subsidies to nuclear interests and I doubt the Malaysian government realizes how much money would be needed to go into running a nuclear energy source.

As I mentioned earlier, I think solar power would be more viable. There are so many tall buildings in the country and if the government is seriously thinking about finding new sources of energy, especially renewable ones...they should think about installing solar panels in the rooftops of buildings because those spaces are usually dead space anyway. No one uses the top of buildings for anything. I know the Des Moines Library has a green roof and instead of having a green roof, we could have roofs covered in clean energy producing solar panels backed by government subsidies and possibly tax incentives.

Once again, I may have too many idealistic ideas for Malaysia right now but I'm pretty sure it's implementable in the near future. The government should stop political bickering and instead, solve the problems of the people as they should. I know this post is not the conventional post regarding the book etc but I guess the topic just came out as I tried to make connections with the book and with current issues that I'm familar with.

Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy

I felt a little bit cheated after reading the first 2 chapters of this book. Why? Because it was on a lot of things that we just talked about in the last class. It talks about why it is hard to approach the issue of environmental injustice as there is no one person or institution that can be said as causing such issues directly. The author also gives an indication that she will be talking about possible solutions and ideas to countering environmental injustices and who should bear the brunt of the costs associated with it. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

The author first gives us a background as to how the environmental justice (EJ) movement started and how it differed in the beginning from the regular environmental movement. She then discusses how various interest groups deny or come up with excuses to refute EJ charges. In order to make a well-informed decision, I believe it is necessary to get an idea of where such interest groups are coming from. This is so that an inclusive solution can be made to accomodate the concerns of such groups, whether they are valid or not.

One of the ideas that was suggested in the beginning was one that we already discussed about in class. That in certain situations, it is good and logical for the government to intervene instead of leaving it to the people or market forces. Like that of regulating waste disposal. Having a centralized system and institution that deals with waste facility placement and management, it will be easier to coordinate and to place such facilities in areas that would avoid possible infringement on health rights. A centralized system would also be ideal because they will be able to provide adequate compensation or redistribution of resources if the need arises.

The book also talks about the idea of justice as equality. Not in the sense that everyone should get equal treatment and resources but everyone should be able to get adequate resources so that if they're lacking much, they will receive more than those who don't lack as much. This makes a lot of sense really but how to we implement this with the support of society? The author mentions that ever since the technological boom, the richer have become richer and the poorer have become poorer. The sudden influx of resources technically should be benefiting all classes of income but this is not the case. As such, these people become even more vulnerable to unequal treatment due to disparity of income and education.

Such infringement of human rights can also be linked to companies who intentionally mask their activities in such areas to reflect a positive outlook when in fact, they're damaging the land that these people live on. The government has to realize that it plays a large role in regulating such companies because the government is supposed to serve the people. However, to tie in with the idea of resource disparity, those with more money tend to obtain outcomes in their favor. Inherently, society is still run by money and we need to change that. I'm looking forward to what we're going to discuss in class on Monday.

My Wandering Jew and its Friends

This is a species of spiderwort (Tradescantia pallida) that is commonly known as a Wandering Jew. I've had this plant for over a year already and I first got it early last summer at a conference I was attending. I've faithfully watered it and pruned the dead stems and leaves off it while the rest of my friends who went there have either killed their plant or threw it out which is something I could never do.

It has lived with me ever since; in my house on Brattleboro last summer, in Jewett Hall last year and right now in my new house. It grew quite a bit from when I first got it and since it's shade tolerant, it's pretty hardy and I currently keep it on the windowsill in my kitchen.


It had been outgrowing it's pot for a while now and I never could find a larger pot that I liked to re-pot it into. Just before school started, I went to the IKEA store in Chicago and found a really nice pot for it. I have since re-potted it and it has grown many new green leaves ever since.

Along with it is my purple African violet that I acquired just this Spring and a baby aloe plant that my friend Sam gave to me as it budded off his large plant. They are all happily perched on the shelf next to the window at my kitchen sink.

Transformative Politics

This chapter is probably the more interesting one in the book. After Cole goes through the entire book elaborating on how the current system seem to fail on defending the rights of poorer communities, the last chapter seem to imply that all the grassroots struggles that these people had to go through wasn't such a bad thing afterall. Or at least that's what I felt when I read it.

The idea of transformative politics is that the people who went through such environmental injustice eventually learn new skills and improve their knowledge and understanding about the issue. It also implies that communities who seem indifferent to the issue will eventually realize that they need to do something to change the situation. Cole also claims that through grassroots struggle, small communities will learn to network and outsource for organizations that will support their fight for justice in their community.

All the above is true and it helps in educating the people but it comes at a price. People have to struggle and probably bear the consequences of such injustices before becoming adept at the issue. This brings me to the question if such information was in the first place, in some way, forced onto the people because they have to learn it or else face possible health consequences. In addition to this, they would also have to fight against corporations and maybe even the government (in some instances) in what seems like a losing battle most of the time. As mentioned in the book, losing can be bad for community morale and personal confidence.

Furthermore, Cole mentions that such battles against environmental injustices brought such issues to light in the eyes of the EPA and other government officials/bodies. Even though there are new laws enacted to protect such communities from further injustices, in page 163 it says" Some offices within EPA now operate with environmental justice as part of their approach; others are still actively hostile to it". Now, shouldn't that sentence raise a few eyebrows?

There are people within the EPA who oppose the idea of environmental justice! Why is that, I wonder. It is just crazy to think about it. The last 2 pages of the chapter gives us an insight as to how some semblance of environmental justice can be practiced and it is through the "fusion" of various movements. It makes sense but in practice, it is not that easy to get 2 completely different interest groups to find common ground and agree on something.

The Executive Order in Environmental Justice made justice a policy of the federal government. So if offices within the EPA are hostile to it, then isn't it against the law? Enacting such a law may have taken a lot of hard work and struggle from activists but it doesn't work if there is no enforcement of the law.

I guess no matter now much we try and fix the system, there is no fail-proof method in ensuring the common practice of environmental justice.

Chopping down trees is not neccessarily a bad thing

As long as I can remember, I've always thought that trees are good for the environment. I suppose my views on environmental ideas have yet to be challenged until yesterday. I was out working in the field despite the rain on an area in Jester Park as part of a project for my Ecological Restoration class. We were supposed to restore an overgrown Oak Savanna.

However, part of the process involved chopping down maple trees with bow saws. I mean, I know that certain species can be invasive...like Buckthorn trees which foresters in Chichaqua are cutting down. But Maple trees?

Apparently, maple trees are very shade tolerant and tend to overgrow in areas, slowly choking off growth of Oak trees along with inhibiting the growth of baby oaks that are dependent on sunlight. Honestly, I wasn't too comfortable with the idea of cutting down those tress but I did it anyway in the name of restoration.

I guess a lot of it is due to personal convictions about dealing with the issue of trees and emissions. Trees suck up excess CO2, so they can't be bad right? But if the tree is invasive and chokes of the growth of other species, then it is a bad thing because it is slowly pushing other species towards extinction or loss of habitat.

Personal dilemma I guess... Never thought in a million years that some part of my learning experience would involve the chopping down of trees because that has always been what I've been fighting against. Live and let learn I suppose.


I also learnt that there were several Native American burial mounds around the area and we managed to visit one site. That was kind of cool because I never knew that there were any Native American history or culture in Iowa. I don't think that they're any left today.

Processes of Struggle & In Defense of Mother Earth

The 2 above chapters I found, elaborated further on the "problem" that environmental decisions are made by different interests groups at all levels which leads to a flaw in the system of which the end result is deemed environmental injustice. In Chapter 6, it talks about how the activism of grassroots movements are shaped by current environmental laws, available resources and of course...reaction to the movement.

As I was reading Chapter 6, I felt really frustrated at the fact that there was so many dissimilarities in the goals of the grassroots movement, the government and of course, the perpetrating waste companies. Firstly, it was hard to get together various grassroots movements to form a large enough movement with a similar goal because of different cultural practices and deep-rooted distrust among communities of different income levels and ethnicities. Current laws and processes only seem to be discouraging further active participation by grassroots movements in carrying out essential civil rights due to the fact that there are so many procedures to go through and jargon to get by that the average Joe would rather be in denial or sit back and not care about what goes on in his backyard.

The ironic thing is that the laws that were created such as NEPA were supposed to be inclusive and protect the people but somehow ended up making things more complicated than they should be just because of the pleuralistic background of such acts. I can see how the idea of implementing a multi-faceted approach to decision-making seemed like a good idea in the beginning. How corporations, the government and interested parties are technically given a chance to voice out their concerns or ideas as to why a waste plant should or should not be located in a certain area. However, as highlighted in the book it also shows how much disparity of current available resources go on between large corporations and grassroots movements.

A small local community with limited private funds, when pitted against a multimillion dollar corporation has a small...possibly miniscule chance of winning any attention let alone deterring a proposed project. The system was intended to be fair but somehow, due to economic resources seem like an unfair situation indeed.

Chapter 7 gives an idea as to how such a situation can be somewhat resolved. The solution of the Native American tribes was to partner with well-established and well-funded international environmental groups such as Greenpeace. I can see where such groups will take interest in defending and helping smaller grassroots movements but I find it hard to imagine that Greenpeace will be able to fund small movements every where. After all, their pockets are not that deep. Another question that came to mind is that sometimes, affiliation with such groups may not be helpful to gain the attention of environmental decision-makers because such groups may be considered too liberal or extreme by conservative decision-makers that are in power.

It would be nice if we could just say..."Change the damned system" so that things would work out but if only things worked that way. What started out with good intentions as a democratic system turned out not to be very democratic afterall when "free" market and economic forces came into play.

How do we make this a fair fight then? Any ideas?

I'll have to think about mine.

Environmental Racism & Buttonwillow

I don't know about other people but reading about "structural racism" is not new to me. Having taken Environmental Politics, it's easy to see where loopholes in the justice system have become opportunities for profitability to certain groups of people. However, most times I think the general public is not adequately exposed to such incidences hence a large part of society tends to brand what seems to subtle racism as outcomes of a "free-market" economy.

In page 61, Cass Sunstein suggests that market dynamics are usually due to choices that are socially and culturally influenced. As a result, it is hard to pinpoint the exact cause of environmental racism as there are numerous factors that intertwine with each other to produce such outcomes. Examples that were given in the book show how decisions that are made at every level, by the individual affected or by others involved contribute to the end result.

As much as people would like to say that waste facilities are biasly situated by large companies in neighbourhoods that are poorer and have a larger proportion of colored people, they have to keep in mind that their decision not to stay in those neighbourhoods also contributed to this. Since a lot of the causes are indirect most of the time, I think it will be difficult to undo the current situation or at least, try and pinpoint the blame on some party without them having enough wriggle room to get out of it.

Structural racism is a culmination of political loopholes, indirect bias, racial history, denial, corruption but more importantly, indifference.

The case of the Latino community in Buttonwillow was intruiging to the very end even though the community lost the fight against Laidlaw. In this instance, it is easy to see why such corporations target poorer immigrant communities largely due to their lack of education and ignorance. There was one part I found rather funny...though I'm not sure if its supposed to be...but it was about Paco and how Rosa Solorio-Garcia had a hard time convincing him that there was corrupt practices going on because he thought that the American government was too good for such things (pg 85).

Coming from a different country, I can see where such naivete would stem from. The US has been the world's superpower for a very long time and in more ways, have stood for everything good and prosperous. In a lot of ways, the US stands up to this reputation but in a lot of other ways it doesn't. But I shall not talk about this for now. Like what Rosa Solorio-Garcia says, corruption over here is extremely subtle and money can get you anywhere. If one had little knowledge of English, let alone the law, I doubt they would question the legitimacy of what was going on with Laidlaw and LAC.

The one thing that I would have been extremely annoyed at if I were part of the Latino Buttonwillow community was that the LAC refused to provide translators for them. That in itself is blatant racial discrimination. Imagine a poor immigrant worker trying to make a living by doing hard labor to earn enough money to feed his family and those people wanted them to take English lessons just because he does not understand much of the language. Even those in the community who spoke English could not fully understand the technical terms of the reports that the LAC went through. The worst part was that the general sentiment to this was "Well, they can learn English" (pg 94).

What Montoya said in page 101 was really interesting:

"More than anything, I was disillusioned. Because I really believed that the United States government was different than the Mexican government," says Montoya. "The only difference
is that, in Mexico they do what they do outside of the law. And in the U. S. they want to make the laws legitimate what they do. In other words, they want to make things appear legal."1

I still find it hard to accept that politics is the way it is.

Notes
1 Cole, Luke. From the Ground Up : Environmental Racism & the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement.
New York, NY, USA: New York University Press, 2000. p 101.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/drake/Doc?id=10032503&ppg=114

Copyright © 2000. New York University Press. All rights reserved.

Procrastination

I think the first week of school is the toughest. There's always tons of errands to run, catching up with friends, meeting new people and of course...getting to class.

Inevitably, there is little time for other things...like homework and laundry.

Of which I will be getting to right now.