According to Shrader-Frechette, Native American tribes (and, by extension, other minority communities in the United States) are disproportionately affected by environmental injustice because a) “waste proponents” argue that it’s not exploitative, and b) “they [waste proponents] claim that efforts to protect Native Americans amount to unethical paternalism.” In this chapter, the author questions whether paternalism is unethical by considering the arguments presented by Noah Sachs. She concludes that paternalism can be justified to remedy distributive injustice, violations of free informed consent, participative injustice, and the prima facie principle of political equality.
Paternalism involves “limiting the liberty of people in their own interests or for their own good.” According to Shrader-Frechette, paternalism by an unstated party on behalf of the Mescalero Apache tribe is justifiable. She surveys the arguments of Noah Sachs, who supported the Mescalero agreement to accept a nuclear waste facility and opposed efforts toward paternalism, and disproves them in order to show that arguments against paternalism are unjustifiable. Firstly, the Mescalero’s decision was not a “private venture” as the facility’s waste will affect third parties like future generations. Also, as Shrader-Frechette argued in previous chapters, it is prima facie wrong “to allow” marginalized people to accept environmental risks “because such people often are unable to engage in genuinely free transactions or decisions.” The author points out that Native American unemployment is usually above 50% and per capita income is significantly below the national average. According to the author, a marginalized group suffering poor education and a depressed economy would be placed in an unfair position when asked to accept environmental hazards that may economically benefit their community, and are therefore incapable of exercising free informed consent by virtue of the fact that the voluntariness criteria is questionable.
Where I take issue with this argument is the apparent alternative: rich, white people ought to make decisions for the poor minorities who are clearly incapable of making their own decisions. Paternalism may work to correct the pattern of disproportionate environmental burdens in minority communities, but it appears to exacerbate the participative injustices in these communities by removing the agency and autonomy of these communities. I sympathize with Sachs’ cry of injustice in response to paternalism. The U.S. government has a long, sordid past with regard to disenfranchising Native Americans. Shrader-Frechette states that no single party should be “completely free to pursue economic options that could seriously jeopardize the welfare of innocent third parties,” and I agree. Obviously it’s the federal government’s responsibility to protect the safety and rights of its citizens, although paternalism under the current administration has been, well, less than ethical. In this case, the federal government ought to take the role of decision-maker by 1) preventing siting at the proposal level in socioeconomically depressed areas in order to promote distributive justice, and 2) improving the quality of life in these areas such that community members are not pressured to accept undue risks and are thus necessarily capable of free informed consent.
