Environmental Discrimination
Environmental discrimination poses several questions:
Are minority communities and individuals burdened with more than their share of environmental risks in this country, while enjoying fewer of the benefits of environmental regulation than others? Is environmental justice policy no different from education, criminal and civil justice, and a host of other socioeconomic institutions in this country in being tainted by the broad brush of race and class discrimination? If not, what besides race and class discrimination could possibly explain these differences in environmental burdens and benefits? What explains the apparent lack of concern for the uneven impact of environmental policies and activities in most of the original federal environmental legislation?'
Environmental Justice advocates make the argument that minority populations often undertake environmentally hazardous activities because they have few economic alternatives and/or are not fully aware of the risks involved. A combination of this lack of awareness coupled with their relative lack of political and economic power makes poor minority communities a frequent target for environmentally hazardous activities.
Those who question the validity of the impact of environmental racism argue that environmental issues historically have been less important for minority groups faced with pressing socioeconomic issues such as education, drug abuse, crime, and unemployment. Under-representation in private and governmental groups concerned with the environment is an extension of their placing environmental injustices low on their list of priorities.
Environmental discrimination is an issue that Environmental Justice seeks to solve. Racism and discrimination against minorities has been based around the belief of racial superiority, and mistreating others based on their differences. A type of racism being used to discriminate is using racial advantages and privileges. These privileges combined with previous racial prejudices are just one of the potential causes of waste and pollution accumulating in areas with high concentrations of minorities. This can be seen by the numerous minority communities, such as Warren County (North Carolina), which have many landfills, incinerators, and other potentially toxic facilities near communities. The existing racial prejudices, along with policies that take advantage of racial privileges, lead to environmental discrimination.
Environmental discrimination has historically occurred at several different kinds of sites, including waste disposal, manufacturing, and energy production. Transportation infrastructures, including highways, ports, and airports, have also been charged with creating environmental injustices. Among the earliest documentation of environmental racism was a study of the distribution of toxic waste sites. Since then, waste dumps and waste incinerators have been the target of Environmental Justice lawsuits and protests. Energy production has also been a significant source of environmental discrimination, with minority communities, poor communities, and rural communities arguably most affected both by energy extraction—coal mining (including mountaintop removal), uranium mining and enrichment, oil drilling and refinining, unconventional oil and gas--and by electricity production in coal- and gas-fired power plants and nuclear reactors. Alternative energy sources, including solar, wind, bio-mass, natural gas, and "clean coal", promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the disproportionate burdens that global climate change will place on poor communities in the U.S. and the global South. However, they may bring with them new environmental risks and possibilities for environmental discrimination.
One way to grasp the enormity of the issue of environmental injustice is through the studying of 'Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facilities', or TSDFs. Before the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in America there were no checks and balances on companies and their toxic waste they produce. This legislation however, passed in 1976, made sure that there was a way for the EPA to keep TSDF’s in line with environmentally friendly standards. Now the EPA can inspect these waste facilities and their management of waste, as well as inspect the records of the company. Based on information from the EPA’s website, inspectors look at the “use and management of containers, tank systems, surface impoundments, waste piles, land treatment, landfills, incinerators, drip pads, miscellaneous other units, corrective action for solid waste management units,” as well as making sure that the companies are “complying with air emission standards for process vents, equipment leaks, tanks, surface impoundments, and containers, in addition to requirements for containing buildings”. Inspectors look at all this in order to assure that these TSDFs stay in accordance with the rules and to make sure environmental injustices do not occur.
An example of a study done on TSDFs and their location in regards to how close they are to minority groups was done in metropolitan Los Angeles, California by Manuel Pastor Jr. in his piece titled “Racial/Ethnic Inequality in Environmental-Hazard Exposure in Metropolitan Los Angeles”. In his investigation of TSDFs in the area he found that an overwhelming majority of TSDFs were found in areas with a dense population of minorities.
Pastor’s evidence shows that there are mixed reports on whether or not the TSDFs arrived before or after the African American communities they are near. What is not deniable however is that the percentage of minorities being affected by TSDFs is rising, despite the legislation. He also claims that he group of minorities being affected the most was no longer African Americans but had shifted to Latinos, “it might suggest that Latinos were replacing African-Americans in these areas of newly introduced toxic sites”. When it comes to Latinos in the area it was clear that they were being taken advantage of by TSDFs.
A problem of viewpoint that is often brought up is to the effect of "If I'm not a minority, why do I care about this?". This can be answered with the observation that environmental inequality is bad for the environment, which in turn, is bad for everyone. James Boyce sums it up well in his 2007 report for PERI, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he says that,
By respecting nature’s limits and investing in nature’s wealth, we can protect and enhance the environment’s ability to sustain human well-being. But how humans interact with nature is intimately tied to how we interact with each other. Those who are relatively powerful and wealthy typically gain disproportionate benefits from the economic activities that degrade the environment, while those who are relatively powerless and poor typically bear disproportionate costs. All else equal, wider political and economic inequalities tend to result in higher levels of environmental harm. For this reason, efforts to safeguard the natural environment must go hand-in-hand with efforts to achieve more equitable distributions of power and wealth in human societies. Globalization – the growing integration of markets and governance worldwide – today poses new challenges and new opportunities for both of these goals.
Read more about this topic: Environmental Justice