BBecker- Environmental Justice

I realize that I am an active force in making the environment around me.  I impact the environmetn with my decisions and, as a result, wish to pursue a career protecting the place in which I live.  My attitude towards the environment has been cultivated by family outings and classes taken here at Drake.  While in these courses, I have heard about the issues of environmental justice on a very broad basis and came into this class with the understanding that people are taken advantage of by businesses.  After reading the introduction and preface to this book, I realized that my general understanding barely scratched the surface.

Environmental justice, or injustice, has been prevalent for much longer than I would ever have assumed.  What is worse, it has been ignored or avoided on a large part by much of the nation.  Not only did politics and law take time to come but it has remained low on the totem pole of media coverage and general public concern.  Only in recent history has anything been done to actively pursue environmental justice on any kind of a national scale.  Most of the activism that has arisen comes from communities that had previously been taken advantage of by a company.  While there are laws in place to try and prevent environmental injustice, the enforcement by government, and adherence by companies has remained extremely loose.

I was previously unaware of the particular circumstances provided by the case studies of how grossly unbalanced the system was.  Yes a company may have to provide a community with knowledge, and yes the community has some avenue of contention which they can follow to fight a site placement project, but I did not realize that the odds were so slanted in favor of business.  It seems very undemocratic or legal for communities of of underprivilaged people to be taken adavantage of so easily.  The laws in place don’t do anything to protect them.

Another thing I hadn’t taken into account is the importance of a communities relation.  It seems self evident that communities, like the one in which I grew up, are very close knit and communicate effectively with each other.  What isn’t so apparent is the fact that this closeness is exactly what keeps businesses from taking advantage of a community.  Communities of mixed race or ethnicity seem to have less connection and so do not communicate as freely about issues within themselves.  This lack of connectivity gives businesses just the opening they are looking for to exploit low property costs.

I feel that the best way to address such issues and concerns is to make people see how affected each individual is by the environment around them, both human and natural.  If indeed connected communities is the best way  to reduce the instances of injustice then we need to figure out the best ways to promote cohesiveness within the underprivileged.  With increased conjunctive effort, the people themselves may be able to succeed where the system has failed.