In the first chapter, Shrader-Frechette offers an overview of the book, in which she states that one of the goals of the book is to “encourage all citizens—especially scientists and other professionals—to accept three ethical responsibilities.” These responsibilities are for “policing private-interest science, blowing the whistle [when the integrity of scientific research is questionable], and using the tools of democracy to help prevent threats to life and to human rights.” One of the most interesting sections in this chapter is Shrader-Frechette’s evaluation of deliberative democracy. She argues that voting cannot be the primary political act for citizens in a deliberative democracy, and that “full citizen participation in authentic debate and deliberation” is necessary in order to produce transformative change within in a society. This rang true to me after a number of our discussions regarding our helplessness in response to environmental injustice. Usually the most obvious solution to a systemic problem is to commit your ballot to a political candidate who shares your ideals, but this is horribly inefficient and unsatisfying in terms of creating change within a democratic medium.
Another interesting passage in the first chapter concerns the need for democratic responsibility and ethical responsibility. The former calls for us to recognize that we contribute to pollution harm. The latter requires that citizens “recognize that, at others’ expense, they benefit from pollution harm.” I think we can all agree that our class discussions about the global North lifestyle and its implications for injustice abroad have done a great deal to inspire democratic responsibility in our perspectives on environmental injustice. Ethical responsibility, I think, is a little more difficult to stomach for some people. It requires acknowledging that, as citizens within a democracy, we ought to be liable for the consequences of our nation’s actions. Incidentally, it’s arguable that we live in a democratic nation, which raises the question of whether Shrader-Frechette’s normative ideal of deliberative democracy is at all practical given certain structural aspects of our government, but I digress.
Shrader-Frechette outlines the major themes of this book: 1) private-interest science promotes private-interest ethics and threatens public health, 2) societal change in necessary for transformative growth, 3) unchecked institutional power threatens democracy, and 4) civic responsibility can yield public health benefits. She goes on to list some incredibly depressing facts and statistics concerning cancer, air pollution, and environmental injustice in poor and minority communities and developing countries.
Chapter two outlines the unethical strategies that polluters use to mislead citizens and profit from pollution. This was a particularly interesting chapter; it helped clarify a number of specific processes in government regulation (or lack thereof) and the exercise of U.S. industry power which lead to patterns of environmental injustice and compromise democratic ideals. For instance, regulatory capture (the control or influence of government regulators by the industries they’re supposed to regulate) was a process I always assumed was real because I’m a skeptical and generally pessimistic person (especially when it comes to corporate or governmental power) but have never learned about specifically. Shrader-Frechette concludes that special-interest behaviors like regulatory capture and “white collar crime” ought to be challenged with action, and furthermore that citizens are obligated to fulfill this role in a deliberative democracy.
