Blog Post 3 — The Side Against The EJ Movement
The environmental justice movement is a new movement that was created in the 80s that has been on the rise and it coincides with pollution, along with other green movements that have been advocated in recent years. My main focus is to find out whether this term “environmental justice” is actually true and these minorities, which consists mostly of Native Americans, African Americans, and Latinos. The question I am researching is are minorities being unequally affected by these environmental factors that they can’t control, such as access to food or water, living in polluted areas, or if their community is used as a toxic waste dumping ground? I have already talked about one side of the argument, pointing to the fact that it is indeed true and very real, but in this blog post I must talk about the other side of the argument, the one that does not believe the question I proposed is true.
Roger Clegg’s article titled Charges of Environmental Racism is Unfounded, he argues about how environmental justice is not real, due to a number of different reasons. One of the focal points of his argument is that there is not enough evidence to prove that environmental racism is in fact real. He backs this up by stating that there are communities that are classified as being a minority, even though most of their population is white, due to the fact that if that area has a higher percentage of non-whites than the national average, they would be classified as a minority. He also talks about how minorities are far more likely to smoke, which can cause underlying issues that correspond to lung diseases that have been blamed by pollution. He later on states that movement is a distraction, as it adds nothing else to the argument of pollution, besides exaggerating how it can be detrimental to your health. All in all, Roger Clegg’s argument is that basically environmental racism does not exist at all, and the movement is a way for minorities to try and pull out the victim card.
Another article I read, written by a group called FreedomWorks, also disagrees with the question and actually agrees with the first question, which is that environmental racism/justice does not exist. Not only that, but their focal point is actually that this movement ruins the economic growth of these communities. He backs this claim by stating that there is no evidence that these facilities put out more greenhouse gasses that can affect the communities , so the movement would drive out these factories that these poverty-filled communities need for jobs. With that being said, if they lose those factory jobs, it could possibly ruin economic growth in that community, if they really do work at those facilities.
The focal point of both of the articles’ arguments were used to prove that environmental justice is in fact not real, and that these studies that were done to prove that it was real, had many methodical problems that lead to those studies being discounted for. They argue that this term was coined because it would help these political groups on the left, such as the civil rights and environmentalists, tremendously because they would be able to join forces together to gain a lot more power. The conclusion that they both came to and agreed upon is the fact that the environmental justice movement should not exist or be a movement at all, and that environmental racism is just a theory that extreme environmentalists want ordinary people to believe in.
