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I don’t believe that the concerns of the environmental justice activists at this conference were unfounded. This nation has a long sordid history of systematic oppression of minorities. For instance, until recently, it was not uncommon for Native American women living on reservations to be sterilized against their will while under medical supervision during childbirth. As such, I sympathize with concerns like those voiced on pages 257-259 about biocolonialism’s potential threat toward minority communities. My biggest concern with the concept of biocolonialism is that its principle goal as outlined in this chapter acts as nothing more than a quick fix for environmental injustice. Di Chiro explains that a new wave of geneticists are attempting to develop “science in the public interest” by identifying genetic predispositions for the sort of health effects that result from environmental injustice. These biocolonialists target minorities, in particular indigenous peoples, in order to gather knowledge about the most typical victims of environmental injustice and ultimately use that knowledge to benefit these marginalized groups. While reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but think that all the human effort and technology dedicated to this cause is wildly misguided. Although genetic work of this sort is very promising for its implications in improving public health, it’s inefficient to consider biocolonialism as the solution to environmental injustice. Biocolonialism treats the symptoms without addressing the greater disease of environmental injustice, thereby allowing environmental injustice to continue.

Violet revisited

A couple of weeks ago, I was deathly ill with food poisoning and stayed home from class. Between sporadic naps and periods of laying on the floor of my apartment moaning at the ceiling, I spent a lot of time with my African violet. Apparently, my violet appreciated the attention, because it’s starting to bud!

I cannot adequately express my glee at the sight of three tiny, fragile, purple stems bearing furry little buds. Not only is my plant not dead, it’s actually thriving on my bookcase. Yaaaay!

I was worried at first because some of the leaves were rotting off at the soil surface. The remaining leaves are healthy now; I haven’t picked out a dead leaf in a while. Possible explanations for this phenomenon include a) the Home Depot in West Des Moines doesn’t take very good care of their plants and my violet was able to rebound on my bookcase, b) it missed its friends, or c) the pot was too small for the plant and it lost leaves to compensate. I’m leaning toward the latter.

Today I brought my violet to my desk and we listened to NPR’s All Songs Considered. The program: “The 80’s–Were they really that bad?” Our consensus: yes. Yes, they were.

Chapter 8

In his essay, Cox identifies the primary argument in favor of what he calls Neoliberal economic globalization, the principle doctrine of which is the North American Free Trade Agreement. Proponents argue that globalization improves national economies and leads to improved quality of life and environmental quality. Cox calls this perspective the “golden trope” of globalization, which he accuses of “diverting attention from profoundly antidemocratic aspects of recent trade and investment agreements.” Using Robert Zoellick’s projected relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation, Cox points out that, although environmental degradation eventually declines as a nation’s income increases (page 236), “the accumulated damages in the meanwhile may far exceed the present value of higher growth.”

The case study that Cox presents to support his thesis, Metalclad v. Mexico, was illuminating and shocking. The NAFTA panel’s ruling against the San Luis Petosi government was blatantly antidemocratic. The Mexican government responded to concerns for public health and environmental safety when they refused Metalclad’s proposed waste facility and demanded that the company clean up their last mess. This is a case in which the alleged economic growth of a Third World nation is far outweighed by the consequences. What’s the use of a functioning economy if the country’s population has been eradicated by cancer? Cox points out an important criticism of free trade agreements, one that I heard echoed by concerned Costa Ricans before the government passed the Central American Free Trade Agreement last year. An “open market” often leads to privatization of socialized services, including health care, which is universal in Costa Rica.

Cox’s essay helped clarify the central flaws with free trade agreements and their social and environmental effects on Third World nations. I’m not very well-versed on economics, and this is the first article I’ve read on the topic that really makes sense to me.

Chapter 7

The goal of this study was to “identify possibilities and constraints for fostering sustainable community developing.” The authors interviewed residents of border communities in Texas to determine “the logics behind the life choices made by those assumed to be victims of environmental injustice.” The value of this study rests in the utility and lack of discourse regarding its topic. In cases of environmental injustice, people often “blame the victim,” asserting that poor people of color choose to live in environmentally hazardous areas and ought to pick up and move if they don’t like it. The authors write that discourse in environmental justice places “an inordinate focus on the results of environmental injustice as compared to the physical processes and social practices that create [environmental injustice].” (page 195) The survey given to respondents aimed to remedy this bias by 1) exploring perspectives of environmental justice, the environment and its degradation, 2) determining whether respondents actively participated in “any public process to address an environmental problem,” and 3) identified basic demographic information in order to determine if patterns in the two aforementioned fields paralleled with race, education level, political affiliation, etc.

Some of the correlations between public action on environmental issues and demographic information were predictable. People with higher education levels are more likely to participate in public action than those with lower education levels, which strongly suggests that communities at risk to environmental injustice ought to be targeted for activities improving community education. Interestingly, this study found that “Hispanic respondents were more likely than whites to have participated in environmental politics.” I’m interested to discuss why this might be; the authors don’t speculate. Latino communities typically have strong family ties, which may produce an attitude of interconnectedness and thus motivate community members to protect each other. Of course, I’m not an authority on the subject, that’s just my observation.

The three most frequently discussed environmental issues were trash-dumping, crop-dusting and pollution by adjacent maquiladoras (factories). Amazingly, 88% of the respondents who identified crop-dusting as a major threat to the community “lived directly adjacent to an agricultural field that was currently being farmed.” (page 209) This suggests that environmental threats have to be pretty obvious to get a community’s attention. Similarly, more people considered trash-dumping a problem after the county delivered receptacles to their houses than before.

While reading the results of this study, I was struck by the fact that the respondents most directly victimized by environmental injustice refrained from identifying themselves as victims of environmental injustice, instead describing “the generic ‘other’ as the victim.” In class last week, Professor McCrickerd asked us to raise our hands if we have directly experienced environmental injustice, and I was surprised and immediately skeptical that only two people raised their hands. If you’re a woman, regardless of your race or class, you’ve most likely been victimized by environmental injustice because of the cosmetics and other products we’re compelled to use. Tampons, for instance, are made of cotton—the single most heavily pesticide-sprayed plant in the world—and rayon, a plastic product that secretes dioxin, which is carcinogenic. Dioxin also makes you bleed more, hence its marketing appeal in this particular product. I have a friend who suffered excruciating abdominal pain for years due to an enlarged cervix, which she found out was attributed to tampon use. Maybe most women just don’t know about the toxic hazards of tampon use, or maybe they’re not aware of safer alternative options. In any case, this is just one example of how most of our class has likely been disproportionately exposed to man-made environmental hazards. Yet only two people raised their hands.

This was perhaps the most fascinating and troubling phenomenon exposed in this study. Throughout the readings in this class, a clear connection between exposure, awareness and action has emerged. So what causes this disconnect between personal exposure and self-awareness in victims of environmental injustice, and how do we overcome this obstacle in striving toward environmental justice action?

Collaborating for Change

In his essay about the chronic asbestos poisoning of citizens in Libby, Montana, Steven Schwarze advocates a collaboration between different groups (including, but not limited to, the mainstream environmental movement and the environmental justice movement) under one overarching goal: to “sustain a clean and healthful environment for all living beings.” Schwarze anticipates that this endeavor will address and alleviate the sociopolitical aspects and the systematic silence or inaction leading to such cases of environmental injustice. Daniel Faber presents a successful and innovative system in Massachusetts that has apparently accomplished exactly this collaboration.

The most compelling aspect of Faber’s essay was his argument in favor of the environmental justice and mainstream environmental movements essentially setting aside their differences in order to unite against a common enemy (threats to the environment and, by extension, public health and wellbeing). Faber writes that, “although mainstream environmentalists and environmental justice activists adopted different tactics, both chose to support one another in a larger strategy to win these improvements.” (p 142) He points out that the two movements found their contributions to the collective cause to be complimentary, and that their unique “political skills, experiences and constituencies… are far more effective [when combined] than when the groups work in isolation.” This is a crucial line of reasoning in our recent discussions of the apparent dichotomy between the two movements. Faber’s insights on the process by which various advocacy groups within Massachusetts were able to unite in order to better the community has clear implications for the asbestos case in Libby, Montana.

I was also very pleased to finally read a solution principle to environmental injustice that justifies my own thoughts and principles on the subject. That sounds self-validating; let me explain. In principle, I don’t believe that risk assessments are the optimal measure of a company’s success at meeting environmentally sound criteria. From a practical standpoint, there are complex sociopolitical factors at play (such as corruption of federal oversight organizations) in the risk assessment process. Quite frankly, if risk assessments worked, there would be no cases like Libby, Montana. From a more ethical standpoint, risk assessments evade the central problem of environmental injustice: that our nation continues to produce and distribute known toxic chemicals. Think about it: our government (an institution in place to protect our interests and public health) ascribes a certain amount of poisonous chemicals to which private companies can legally expose civilians, and when private companies are caught exceeding the limit, they receive a nominal fine or the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. It’s obscene. Let me state the obvious: WE SHOULDN’T BE PRODUCING POISON IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Faber eloquently describes an alternative that promises to “prevent environmental risks from being produced in the first place,” what he refers to as clean production. He writes: “The struggle for environmental justice must be about the politics of production per se and the elimination of the ecological threat, not just the ‘fair’ distribution of ecological hazards via better government regulation of inequities in the marketplace.” YES. Yes, yes. I was thrilled to read that someone out there thinks that it’s possible to end production and distribution of harmful products, and furthermore that doing so is essential to rectifying our nation’s environmental injustices at home and abroad. It’s a step up from “But where are we supposed to put all the landfills if not in the poor, black neighborhoods?” In hindsight, I think that Shrader-Frechette would agree in principle, but that she might respond that such a system is impractical because pollution is an inevitable byproduct of the human race’s advancement. I hope she’s wrong. I sincerely hope that people open their eyes to the very eminent threat of climate change and realize that it’s not only pragmatic to halt our environmentally abusive behavior, but that it’s ultimately essential to our survival.

Initial Reactions to Jamieson and Allen et al.

I’m calling this post an initial reaction to the readings because 1) I wasn’t particularly moved by the readings and therefore don’t have much to offer for the proverbial table of discussion, and 2) I anticipate that my thoughts on the readings will improve after we discuss them in class.

In Justice: The Heart of Environmentalism, Dale Jamieson argues (ineffectively) that implementing justice in the environmental movement can reconcile the conflicting perspectives on environmentalism. As near as I can tell, the two conflicting perspectives that Jamieson means to reconcile are the two primary ways in which people tend to relate to science: those who are distrustful of and those who put their faith in science. He also identifies two ways in which people tend to relate to nature: the first regards nature as “radically other,” the second considers humans to be “part of nature.” This was not a particularly effective argument; Jamieson’s musings were disjointed and abstract at points, which made it difficult to follow his arguments.

Jamieson defines justice within the context of the environment using Aristotle’s teachings. Aristotle identified two types of justice, distributive and corrective. Jamieson writes that “the environment is a resource whose distribution should be governed by principles of justice,” which is frustratingly circular, but nonetheless essentially the same definition we heard from Shrader-Frechette’s writings. Under this perspective, environmental goods are distributed similarly to money or land. Jamieson also includes a clause for participatory justice in conjunction with the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit’s “Principles of Environmental Justice” we’ve read so much about. Jamieson also characterizes the scope of environmental justice similarly to Shrader-Frechette, arguing for spatial and temporal justice, which is reminiscent of chapter five in Shrader-Frechette’s Environmental Justice.

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The results of this study were very interesting, although the perspectives presented against the environmental movement were not unique. The authors explain that “because they focused on people as victims of environmental degradation, most of the environmental justice activists in our study did not identify with, and did not want others to identify with, the more biocentric stances of environmentalism.” After reading the anecdotes and analyses in this article, I’m beginning to respect anthropocentric environmentalism a bit more than I have in my previous posts. However, I still support Wenz’ counter-argument to charges of misanthropy against environmentalists—namely, that protecting the environment in turn protects the people living on this planet.

I was interested to read accounts about the struggle of environmental justice advocates accessing the environmental movement. A number of the people interviewed for this study accused the environmental movement of racism and classism, charging that the movement is accessible only to the white upper- and middle-classes. On page 122, one advocate explains that “most of the whites are concerned about the [quality of] surface waters because it is recreation for them” and that those people “who live in rural communities… are more concerned about the ground water because it is life for us.” Charges like this smack of fallacy and are simply unfair. If protecting the environment in turn protects its people, why is one movement more just than the other when they both lead to the same outcome? Why does it matter that one group protects a body of water for the “wrong reasons” as long as that water is preserved for the parties using it and future generations to enjoy it?

I agree that a lot of environmental groups are driven by the “wrong” motivations (ie, recreation for rich white folks), but that’s just one sect of environmentalism. It’s not fair to chalk up the whole of environmentalism based on one interest group’s focus, and I think that’s what this study accomplished. If Ducks Unlimited focuses on preserving bird populations so that rich white folks can enjoy hunting them for years to come, that is the prerogative of Ducks Unlimited. Not all environmental groups share this motivation (some flat-out object to it), but the end result is that the bird populations are maintained at a sustainable rate. Ducks Unlimited is also an organization supported by—surprise, surprise—rich white folks. Many environmental organizations are. So is Planned Parenthood. The difference is that Planned Parenthood’s services happen to more obviously benefit women and families of color from the lower- and middle-classes.

I agree that marginalized groups deserve equal opportunities to serve as agents of change within their communities and that environmental advocacy groups ought to make those opportunities available. But the reality of the situation is that, if rich white folks are the ones making the donations to interest organizations, those organizations are probably more likely to serve the interests of rich white folks. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it’s reality.

DeLuca’s Manifesto

In his essay, Kevin DeLuca articulates my own frustrations with some of the accusations of racism and insensitivity often posed against the environmental movement. DeLuca argues that the environmental justice movement—more accurately called the human justice movement—concerns itself exclusively with human interests, whereas the environmental movement concerns itself with environmental interests. I agree that it’s not the environmental movement’s prerogative to tend to human interests where they conflict with environmental interests (which is often the case), but DeLuca’s criticisms of environmental groups like Sierra Club that have strived to respect human interests in response to accusations of racism is careless and narrow-minded. Firstly, if you mapped out the areas in the world where environmental degradation is most severe and preservation is most critical, you’d find yourself looking at a colonial map of Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and pretty much the entire continent of Africa. Environmental groups often walk a fine line between acting as nature’s caregivers and environmental imperialists. After all, these are the same regions in which human suffering is highest and people are forced to extract natural resources at unsustainable rates in order to survive. Enforcing strict environmental oversight on nations that can’t even feed their own people isn’t just insensitive, it’s unrealistic and utterly futile.

Programs like Debt-for-Nature swaps and INBio attempt to alleviate the disproportionate economic burdens on developing nations so that their citizens have the option of preserving the environment. Debt-for-Nature swaps purchase national debt and direct that debt toward local conservation efforts. INBio is a great NGO established in Costa Rica that is highly successful at resource conservation because it 1) accepts that developing nations often resort to extracting natural resources for economic growth and basic survival, 2) funnels tons of money into the country for biodiversity research and education, 3) partners with local conservation organizations, and 4) employs local citizens and thereby generates revenue in the community while creating incentives to protect the environment. These environmental conservation programs address and arguably assuage the human interests inherently vested in environmental issues.

This isn’t to say that protecting human interests in turn protects the environment. DeLuca (correctly) points out that environmental degradation is often exacerbated by proliferating human rights. A good example is the conflict between sustainable fisheries and certain cultural practices whose diets depend on fish. In Japan, for instance, there’s been a lot of controversy over restrictions on the Japanese Fishing Fleet. There’s actually a national holiday called Dolphin Day for which everyone gets the day off work to get on a boat and kill a dolphin. The holiday is based on a cultural myth (here I use the word “myth” deliberately because it’s false) that dolphins are single-handedly responsible for depleting a species of fish essential to Japanese diet. Remedying cultural practices like this one in Japan is very troublesome for environmentalists. We are ethically compelled to respect those activities central to a culture’s history and livelihood, even if we find them abhorrent. However, at what point are we ethically compelled to step in and defend the environment, a voiceless victim?

I do agree with DeLuca’s criticism of the environmental justice movement, that environmental interests, such as distribution and quality of environmental goods, are important only insofar as they affect human interests. But DeLuca frequently crosses the line between defending the environmental movement and negating human rights issues. For instance, on page 35, he writes, “The world is facing a catastrophe of historic and unique proportions, and it is not a crisis of social justice and human rights. Arguably the state of social justice and human rights is better now than at any other time in history. Regardless, social injustices and human rights violations are not new.” Rhetoric and logic like this is totally insular and may effectively undo all the hard work that environmental groups are doing to reconcile with the environmental justice movement. His point is that we as concerned citizens should therefore allocate our resources toward repairing the environment that we have systematically destroyed. I’ve heard this perspective before from my aforementioned ecology professor in Costa Rica, who contended, “There are plenty of human rights organizations out there who’re responsible for taking care of people; that’s not our job as ecologists. People are bottomless pits of need. They’ll never be satisfied.” Which is true, but it’s not the whole truth. The hard facts are that, yes, people got us into this mess, but environmentalists have no hope of preserving our most precious ecosystems or halting the effects of climate change if we cannot partner with those nations most prone to exacerbate and least able to access the resources necessary to alleviate the situation.

Wrapping Up

In the final chapter of Environmental Justice, Shrader-Frechette culminates the ample arguments in favor of environmental justice advocacy made in this book by presenting a rally-cry of sorts for citizens and professionals to join the movement. She sums up the primary problem with our society that we’ve seen reflected in so many case studies, what she calls a “tilted playing field.” In essence, institutions with interests in profit (government, industry and even academia) hold all the power and tend to circumvent public and environmental interests. These circumstances are contradictory to the principles of democracy, which we, as citizens, are obligated to uphold. Shrader-Frechette insists that we must be agents of democracy and justice if we wish to uphold the principles of democracy and justice. This is the sort of rhetoric that I missed from this book.

The author also makes a very good point about citizen neutrality toward environmental justice. She writes that “it is not objective to be neutral in the face of systematic discrimination against minorities,” which is absolutely true, and that neutrality from citizens of developed nations is morally negligent, and I agree. Shrader-Frechette brings up the obvious example neutrality toward the Nazis, which led to the incomprehensible acts of the Holocaust. We, like the silent citizens of Europe at the time of the Holocaust, have grown up in a culture in which we’re encouraged not to care or question about how our life choices adversely affect the lives of others. Consumer culture is designed this way, right down to the colors of the packaging to the catchy song on the commercial, all these elements are designed to help us ignore the origins of our products so that we feel good and buy more. The average American meal travels 1500 miles from farm to plate, and most of the time we have no idea where any of it comes from or what the honest, hardworking, indigenous people of Where-Ever had to go through to get it to us. This is not democracy. It’s a sheet that’s been pulled over our eyes.

I’m not sure I agree with Shrader-Frechette that “most people want to remain neutral” about environmental justice; I think that most people are just ignorant or apathetic to the plight of other, less fortunate people. In fact, I’d venture that the two most common perspectives of most people who become aware of environmental injustices are the opposite of neutral: people either become outraged and explore the issue further until becoming advocates or “blame the victim” and insist that minorities and third world citizens just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

When I started this book, it was with spit and fire due to the first chapter’s admonishment of what the author called “misanthropic ecofascists.” Predictably, Shrader-Frechette does not discuss this issue again until the last chapter, and she does so weakly, which suggests to me that the topic was just a rhetorical tool used to get readers interested in what ends up being a pretty long book. In any case, she brings up William Frankena’s “criterion for discrimination,” that is, factors which, in an ethically questionable situation, may justify discrimination. Discrimination must, over the long term, lead to greater overall equality for everyone. She uses EarthFirst!’s actions to exemplify how one might justify violence against civilians for the sake of defending an otherwise indefensible entity (in this case, the environment). Shrader-Frechette concludes that “strong advocacy of a particular ethical and policy position, amounting to coercion or even violence, nevertheless is more justifiable theoretically to the degree that it is necessary to prevent some greater evil.” Frankly, I’m not sure that I agree. I’ve had this debate with a number of my friends who are members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and more and more I’m beginning to think of myself as a pacifist in principle. Violence begets violence, and blowing up a university science lab and maybe killing people for testing cancer vaccines on animals is probably one of the more unjustifiable things I can think of. I’m surprised that Shrader-Frechette went this route and I’d like to read more on the issue.

Overall, I enjoyed this book more than From the Ground Up and most other books I’ve read on the subject of environmental justice. Shrader-Frechette presents strong arguments backed up by careful ethical analysis of the problems at work in issues of environmental justice. She doesn’t rely on case studies to reveal the complicated market dynamics driving ethically questionable corporate decision-making. Throughout the book, she carefully dismantles opposing arguments to environmental justice, identifying ethically unsound areas and offering more sensible guidelines. This book definitely enhanced my understanding of environmental justice, particularly from the philosophical perspective. I look forward to reading Shrader-Frechette’s book, Taking Action, Saving Lives.

Environmental injustice abroad

I was very pleased with Shrader-Frechette’s discussion on environmental injustices abroad and moral obligations of developed nations responsible for those injustices. In this chapter, the author argues for equal protection of citizens in “underdeveloped nations” (for brevity’s sake, I’ll use her nomenclature, although I don’t condone it) by the developed nations responsible for exporting to them dangerous technologies (eg, pesticides) and thereby imposing significant health and safety risks on disadvantaged citizens. As in previous chapters, she makes implications for the moral requirements of an action by disproving moral objections to that action, in keeping with the PPFPE’s provision for “the burden of proof” on the discriminator. Shrader-Frechette challenges the isolationist perspective that attempts to justify “minding our own business” when it comes to environmental injustice abroad by addressing four of its arguments. Curiously, she concludes that neither the corporations holding private interests or nations with public welfare interests are effective in safeguarding citizens from environmental risks, and that efforts to do so must be spearheaded by a consumer revolution.

The first argument that Shrader-Frechette breaks down is the “Social progress argument.” This position holds that a universal principle for environmental justice (the PPFPE) would compromise economic and social progress, both of which are paramount to equal treatment. This is often the primary argument in favor of free trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA. I agree with Shrader-Frechette that the social progress argument is inconsistent with the principles of justice and our Bill of Rights, the foundation of our nation’s government and ideology. She also points out the obvious but surprisingly little-known fact that “often the prosperity alleged to follow from ignoring health, environmental or human rights concerns never materializes (in the undeveloped nation).” This is an important aspect of her argument and reminiscent of the previous chapter’s topic. If the communities of developing nations don’t advance economically as a result of undertaking environmental burdens, it follows that the action is unjust. This ties in with the “bloody loaf argument,” which holds that nations subject to environmental risks are generally better off than they were without the risks. If the nation gains nothing but environmental and health hazards, that’s hardly a fair compromise for free trade.

One of the most compelling arguments is the consent argument, which is self-explanatory. Shrader-Frechette has discussed ethical issues of free informed consent in environmental decision-making processes at length in previous chapters. I think the topic of free informed consent is most incendiary and ethically cumbersome within the context of multinational transfers of environmental hazards. Here, free informed consent depends on 1) whether citizens were adequately informed about the risks and 2) whether the government can give free informed consent on behalf of the citizens who will be exposed to risks. Shrader-Frechette concludes that “for half the world’s population, free informed consent may not be possible” because workers are not always free to object or adequately educated about the risks involved in their work. Both of which are ultimately the fault of the government charged with their protection.

The topic of banned pesticide exports to foreign, underdeveloped nations has been an issue of concern for me for a long time. This is a topic on which I’ve done ample research, and, after reading this chapter, probably one that I’ll pursue for one of my papers in this class. My interest in pesticides began when I first heard about the Dole/Dow lawsuit on behalf of Nicaraguan banana plantation workers. In this case, Dole Fruit Co. and Dow Chemical Co. (aka the Axis of Environmental Evil) were sued after thousands of Latin American farm workers were diagnosed sterile (that is, incapable of conceiving children) due to chronic exposure to a pesticide called DBCP during the 1970s. DBCP has been banned almost worldwide but, naturally, American companies like Dow Chemical still produce the toxic pesticide and ship it for use overseas. I remember thinking, God, that’s monstrous, I’m never buying Dole fruit again, those bastards! I still don’t buy Dole fruit as a personal protest against their reign of terror on the environment and public health, but I’ve since learned enough about market demand, free trade agreements and environmental justice to realize that mere consumer choices are sadly inept at addressing our nation’s dirty work in countries like Nicaragua.

There’s a really great documentary called Blue Vinyl about the lifespan of PVC and its extremely toxic effects. The director/narrator confronts her parents at the beginning because they’ve replaced the wood siding of her childhood home with vinyl siding, which she learns releases dioxin when it’s manufactured and when it’s disposed of, inflicting a whole laundry list of health problems (including cancer) on the communities in which PVC plants are located. She carries a slab of this blue vinyl around with her while she rides on a speedboat in a Louisiana swamp where dioxin has contaminated the fish and takes the blue vinyl with her to an interview with the face of PVC. At the end of the film, she convinces her parents to replace the vinyl siding with eco-friendly adobe, but they’re at a loss for what to do with the vinyl. They obviously can’t throw it away, that would negate the whole purpose for replacing it. Anyway, she ultimately develops a consumer advocacy group driven to stop PVC products from making it to our homes.
I guess where I’m going with this is that I don’t know if a consumer revolution will rectify environmental injustice. Hell, I’m not even sure a consumer revolution is possible. I used to think that, if everyone in the world just STOPPED buying PVC products, companies would cease to produce PVC. In a perfect world, sure. But that’s just not how marketing in a consumer society operates. Even if PVC companies didn’t have all the money and resources they need to buy every marketing guru in the world, it’s completely unrealistic to expect that every consumer in the world will suddenly possess the knowledge, the willpower and the moral character to stop buying PVC products.

Chapter 6

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.