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.