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.