Mark Cave (Student # 1055740) EVSP508: Environmental Ethics

Forum Week 7: Race, Class, Gender: Environmental Justice, Ecofeminism, & Indigenous Rights Yes, theres racial discrimination, but the socioeconomic discrimination is far more important
While I certainly view as plausible the arguments for simple economics not racism driving adverse environmental impacts from LULUs (locally undesirable land uses), I assert that for some undeterminable number of LULU sitings discrimination/racism is a driver, be it subconscious or purposeful (even if such purposefulness is hidden for legal deniability). Far more important is that intent simply doesnt matter. The fact still remains that siting of LULUs adversely impacts in horribly unconscionable ways all proximally residing people of low socioeconomic status. Adding insult to injury is the all-too-strong evidence of racial/ethnic discrimination in unevenly applied or inadequate redress and/or restitution from adjudicated environmental transgressions. That evidence is presented by Bullard (2011), in his citation of National Law Journal statistics like: y Penalties applied under hazardous waste laws at sites having the greatest white population were 500 percent higher than penalties at sites with the greatest minority population. Penalties averaged out at $335,566 at sites in white areas but just $55,318 in minority areas. y For minority sites, EP chooses containment, the capping or walling off of a hazardous waste dump site, 7 percent more frequently than the cleanup method preferred under the law: permanent treatment to eliminate the waste or rid it of its toxins. For white sites, EPA orders permanent treatment 22 oercent more often than containment. (p. 515) Despite that kind of evidence for either purposeful or difficult to believe and stupidly unintentional racial/ethnic discrimination, I still return to the assertion that the fact of such discrimination just doesnt matter in the context of the extent to which corporations, abetted in some way and to some extent by municipal and state governments and by regulatory agencies, engage in socioeconomic discrimination. Look at the wide scale discrimination (in this case, described in a subjective way, rather than in an objective, statistical way) against residents, mostly Caucasian, residing near mountaintop removal coal mining operations: There, and in later gatherings, we heard story after heartbreaking story from local residents for whom mountaintop removal mining is a source of abuse and misery. They told us of the disappearance of their ancestral lands, of their homes choked with dust and debris from nearby mining operations and of house foundations cracking from the constant explosions. We heard about streams contaminated with chemicals or buried completely and of once-gende streams that now flood destructively. We learned about wells dried up or made undrinkable because of heavy metals that have leached into the groundwater. In one case, well water contained so much methane that the homeowners had to keep windows open while showering or doing dishes to avoid an explosion. (Kramer, para. 4) On an exponentially larger scale, theres what can be arguably called class discrimination Koch Industries has placed over 4 million people at risk of a poison gas disaster and they have mounted one of the biggest lobbying campaigns to keep it that way. (Deans & Vickery, headline). I call this class warfare because it represents, in my mind, the pursuit of more and more riches by the super-rich Koch brothers and their crony business pals and politicians, with complete disregard for harms perpetrated upon all those people not amongst their kind, i.e. of the lower classes.

References Bullard, R. D. (2011) Overcoming racism in environmental decision making. In L. P. Pojman & P. Pojman (Eds.), Environmental ethics: Readings in theory and application (6th ed., pp. 513-529). Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Inc.

Kramer, K. T. (2010, Oct 04). Appalachias wounds. America, 203(8), 11-14. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/756980679?accountid=8289 Deans, J. & Vickery, W. (2011) Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at risk of a poison gas disaster. Retrieved from http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/toxics/toxic-chemical-threats/Toxic-Koch-Keeping-Americans-atRisk-of-a-Poison-Gas-Disaster/