BBecker- Environmental Justice

My one question and the defining theme of the time spent doing this reading is, “What is PPFPE?”  It is a concept to which Schrader-Frechette refers repeadtedly and seems to base her entire theory the second chapter, and it seems like the entire book.  This conception involves participative and distributive justice and many obstructions that make it hard for those two ideas to be fully realized within our democractic society.  Schrader-Frechette devotes an entire chapter to something that isn’t laid out in any sort of specific definition for readers to understand or even look up.  On google search PPFPE just comes out with an excerpt from the book so I assume this is some concept that she has developed and implemented in her own studies.  What is most frustrating about this book so far is that she continually references this PPFPE concept.  Since it is not clearly defined none of the other salient points make any sense.  I realize that I might have restated my frustrations a few times, but that is how difficult I found this reading to be.

Other than the PPFPE, the introduction had some interesting ideas as well.  The opening paragraph about Earth First! I found quite intriquing and so I looked into the organization.   Their website had some interesting literature and I highly encourage you to visit their website for a good laugh as well as an nice insite into a more extreme order of “environmental justice.” One section from this website includes how to make your own EF! group and this following section is an excerpt from it.

To start an Earth First! group in your area, consider the following elements: Contacts: Even though it is up to every individual EF!er to come up with campaigns and strategies and carry them out, a successful group still needs a “contact” to:

• Educate yourself on the ways you can attract attention to environmental concerns and dissuade people and corporations from destroying the Earth.

• Learn the law. While getting arrested will often bring increased media attention, weigh all the options. Freedom is an important asset. Avoiding jail is sometimes a better strategy.

• Become aware of the risks to which you will be exposed. Activists are often arrested during legal actions by police ignorant of the law.

• Establish a web site for your local area so that anyone may get in touch with you and learn what you’re doing to help.

• Gather people to help instigate actions and spread the word on what needs to be done to protect the Earth.*(http://www.earthfirst.org/about.htm )

As I was reading this website it made me think of some other examples of rather extreme motions that Drake students have taken here in Des Moines.  In my Grassroots Globalism class Professor David Skidmore required that students participate in some sort of NGO as a volunteer section of the class.  Five or six of his students decided to join the campaign against old growth wood being sold in local chain hardware stores.  During a protest four of the students joined together at the neck with bike locks and were all arrested after jaws of life were used to separate them. It will be interesting to see if that opening paragraph was just a shock factor to draw in a reader or will be referred to later in the book.

One thing I did like about the introduction was that Shrader-Frechette opened up the discussion from more than just her side of the argument.  She allowed the reader to know that there are many different factors that affect how environmental justice and how it works within our system.  She does list and address some very good questions about where environmental injustice comes from and who is responsible for it.  What I did not expect was her conclusion that everyone should be held responsible for the actions taken by government and corporation.  “We the people ultimately are responsible for environmental injustice.  We have allowed corporate and government abuses to disenfranchise the weakest among us.” (p. 7) While at first read it seems like a first glance ( a common gut reaction I feel) it does point out a very important point.  Cohesive communities are the most important factor in fighting environmental justice issues as we learned in From the Ground Up.  Since we as a society have not worked harder to ensure the basic human rights for underpriviledged  communities present in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, since we have allowed laws with loopholes for corporations to exploit, and since we have not batteded an eye at the lack of legal action by enforcement institutions, we the people are indeed “ultimately responsible.”