Environmental Justice in the News

Every week, students in ENVS 467/567 (Power, Privilege, and the Environment) discuss news pieces that touch on some aspect of social and environmental justice. Here are some of the articles and podcasts that we’ve been discussing (blurbs written by students in Spring 2021 ENVS 467/567 class):

In a time when prison abolition and prisoner justice movements are gaining hopeful traction, this article (High Country News) is a reminder of the realities that prisoners face. Washington state is one of the Western states that uses prison labor during emergency states, such as COVID-19 and intense summer wildfires. Incarcerated people are paid pennies a day to face the worst of natural disasters. In addition, the lasting impacts on them are highly traumatic. This article also explores how U.S. municipalities exploit this labor since it is incredibly cheap and calls for careful reflection on how the U.S. treats workers, wages, and incarcerated people. It becomes clear that real, meaningful, and heavy institutional change is needed to create a society in which all people are happy and healthy.

An article written by Anna Smith in High Country News titled “The ‘Slow-Motion Genocide” of The Chinook Indian Nation communicates the struggle felt by tribes in the United States who have not been granted federal recognition. One of these such tribes, located in the Pacific Northwest is the Chinook Indian Nation. The Chinook have been striving to gain federal recognition for the last 120 years and never have been able to do so successfully. Apart from this lack of recognition enabling the problematic U.S. history of colonialism and eradication of Native Americans, it is also dangerous to the health and wellbeing of tribal members. Unrecognized tribes are not awarded the health benefits and access to resources, and especially in the pandemic, this is proving to be fatal to the Chinook people as well as their culture. Spatial inequalities as well as environmental and social injustices increase the risk of existing for the Chinook.

Do you ever wish that Amazon or Google, any the many other mega corporations across the globe would offer up part of their billions to support climate justice efforts? In Eugene, Oregon efforts in that direction have sprung into action to call upon corporations to start paying up. By introducing a carbon fee program, the city of Eugene has begun not only pressuring natural gas corporations to take financial responsibility but to begin the conversation of alternative means of energy within the city. This article (High Country News) asks: who should really be funding the environmental movement, how can corporations take responsibility, and how should cities use these additional funds to support their community members?

Few are familiar with the origins of the term “environmental racism.” When the state of North Carolina approved the disposal of 40,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated with cancer-causing PCBs in the small black farming community of Warren County, African-American activist Ben Chavis proudly led a community protest. It is no surprise that when he was pulled over and arrested by a state trooper that same year of 1982— the stated reason being “driving too slow”— Chavis declared “this is racism. This is environmental racism.” For the past 40 years Chavis’s words have come to characterize the deliberate actions of governments, corporations, and policymakers that endanger communities of color such as the placement of toxic air pollutants and disposal of hazardous waste. In this striking article (Washington Post) Darryl Fears and Brady Dennis establish the origins of environmental racism and highlight key activists and their contributions throughout the environmental justice movement. Fears’ and Dennis’ findings spark engaging discussion of the white supremacist origins of mainstream environmental groups, the influence of politics on environmental action, and uncertainty that underlies President Biden’s emergent environmental goals.

The New York Times article – “There’s a Booming Business in America’s Forests. Some Aren’t Happy About It.” – discusses activities of the wood pellet industry and how it affects surrounding communities. Wood pellets – marketed as a renewable, sustainable fuel – in fact release more carbon into the atmosphere than traditionally “dirty” fuels like gas and coal, per unit of electricity. The use of biomass for energy production is somewhat controversial, and the EPA currently has no plans to classify wood pellets as a source of renewable energy. The pellet industry relies on commitments from individual land owners to replant trees, and doesn’t account for carbon losses due to felled trees. Additionally, pellet mills emit “volatile organic compounds” and other hazardous pollutants, which disproportionately affect the disadvantaged communities that the mills are sited within

Land use policy and practice are rife with discriminatory processes. The Quileute tribe has their fair-share of inequalities, especially when it comes to not being able to get grants from the government to move from the land that is falling into the ocean. It is even more of a slap in the face that this article (High Country News) refers to them as “ground-zero” for climate change justice, while also mentioning that they are at the forefront of climate change prevention tactics. Many of these reservations that took no consideration for native lands and historical significance, are in terrible locations as brought up prominently for the Quileute nation.

On a recent episode of How to Save the Planet, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and journalist Alex Blumberg called The Fight to Stop Oil Pipelines: “For Water. For Treaties. For Climate.”. The podcast presents an in-depth explanation on the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline. There are unlikely alliances between people defending sacred land while developing community. According to Jamie Hen from 350.org this was the perfect fight to spark the climate movement. The marriage between the global climate crisis and the fight the protection of sacred lands makes this story such so intriguing in the timeline of environmental justice.