Equity and Social Justice Unit 3 Test Flashcards
Environmental Justice
Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, colour, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.
Fair treatment
means that no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies.
Meaningful involvement means that:
(1) people have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that may affect their environment and/or health
(2) the public contribution can influence the regulatory agency’s decision
(3) their concerns will be considered in the decision-making process
(4) the decision-makers involve those potentially affected
The environment
would include your home, place of work, schools, and community parks. These are the places you spend your time, and they play a big role in you’re overall health, happiness and well-being.
The concept of environmental justice began as a movement in the 1980s due to the realization that
a disproportionate number of polluting industries, power plants, and waste disposal areas were located near low-income or minority communities.
The environmental justice movement
was set in place to ensure fair distribution of environmental burdens among all people regardless of their background
These burdens can include
any environmental pollutant, hazard or disadvantage that compromises the health of a
community or its residents.
For instance, one of the environmental justice issues and examples is inadequate access to healthy food.
Certain communities, particularly lower-income or minority communities, often lack supermarkets or other sources of healthy and affordable foods.
Even clean, accessible water is an ongoing issue.
Our Areas of Examination:
The Privatization of Water
Unsustainable Oil Development
GMO Crop Development
Climate Change
How are the Social Justice and Environmental Justice movements connected?
That’s because virtually all environmental injustice is shaped by the same patterns of racism and inequality that have existed in the United States since its founding and continue to influence every facet of our society, from education to housing to health care.
According to Rockstrom, why are we in a water crisis?
According to Rockstrom, we are in a water crisis because we are misusing water, polluting water, and as a result of climate change, changing the whole hydrological cycle.
Can countries be “water independent”?
Can countries be “water independent”?
Countries cannot be water-independent because we depend on the water from neighbouring countries. What happens is that water is held in soils and delivered from transpiration in forests and other ecosystems, when plants take up water from the soil and release vapour into the air with their leaves.
How much do we spend on water subsidies for agriculture?
We spend $700 billion on water subsidies for agriculture to fuel the overconsumption of water.
How is our system of sanitation a problem?
Our system of sanitation is a problem because of the system developed countries use for their sewage. The issue resides in the fact that we use safe, fresh water to carry excreta, urine, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Then, we need to have inefficient wastewater treatment plants that leak 30% of all the nutrients into downstream aquatic ecosystems which destroys them and causes dead zones.
Of the Seven Calls to Action, which TWO do you think would have the greatest impact and why??
Out of the Seven Calls to Action, the two that I think will have the greatest impact are:
1) Take urgent action this decade on issues such as restoring wetlands and depleted groundwater resources; recycling the water used in industry; moving to precision agriculture that uses water more efficiently; and having companies report on their “water footprint”.
2) Manage the global water cycle as a global common good, to be protected collectively and in our shared interests
I think these will have the greatest impact because they require companies to be upfront about their water usage and shift the thought process surrounding water to one that urges for its protection on a global scale - as we all need it.
The Importance of Oil
The use of fossil fuels, especially oil, have allowed us to rapidly increase our birth rate, food production, quality of life and longevity.
Petroleum hydrocarbons are in virtually everything – from car fuel, to plastics, to phones, to computers, to fertilizers for food crops, to our medicines, to our clothing.
Oil/Gas Consumption Since 1800 & CO2 Levels & Methane in the Global Atmosphere
Have gone up drastically since the 2000s
Global Life Expectancy & Human Population
Have gone up since the 1900s
One barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of
12.5 years of human labour.
That’s 25,000 hours of human work in each barrel.
Humans use
97,000,000 barrels A DAY.
97 million X 12.5 years = 1.2 billion years of labour EVERY DAY
The Canadian oil sands, also known as the tar sands, is the
largest industrial project on earth.
The oilsands brings over a
half million jobs to Canada, and is projected to bring in $1.2 trillion over the next 35 years.
Oil sands production emits
3 to 4 times more greenhouse gases than producing conventional crude oil. This makes it one of the world’s dirtiest forms of fuel.
The exploitation of the oil sands is the
primary reason Canada will fail to meet its own greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Canada’s climate performance is the
worst in the entire Western world.
In 46 years of development
only 0.15% of the environment disturbed is certified as “reclaimed.” In the end, there is no way to return the boreal forest to its natural state.
More than 600 million cubic feet of natural gas are used per day to extract and upgrade the oil from the tar sands. That’s enough to heat more than
3 million Canadian homes every day – almost every house in Western Canada.
Canadian federal taxpayers subsidize the oil industry
$3.3 billion a year.
71% of oil sands production is owned by foreign shareholders.
Norway has saved $644 billion in its petroleum production investment fund. Meanwhile, Alberta has only saved $16 billion. There is
no Canadian federal fund.
A higher than normal incidence of rare and deadly
cancers has been documented in First Nations communities downstream of the oil sands by doctors, the Alberta Health Department and First Nations since 2007.
Over 30 million birds
will be lost over the next 20 years due to tar sands development.
Under current oil sands expansion plans,
woodland caribou populations are expected to disappear.
Oil sands operators used approximately
170 million cubic metres of water yearly to extract bitumen.
95% of the water used in tar sands surface mining is so polluted it
as to be stored in toxic tailings ponds. That’s 206,000 litres of toxic waste discharged every day.
Canada is home to 2 of the top 3
largest tailings dams in the world. They’re used to hold back toxic sludge from the oil sands.
4 billion litres seeps out a year.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the
process of extracting natural gas from shale rock layers deep within the earth.
Fracking makes it possible to
produce natural gas extraction in shale sites that were once unreachable with conventional technologies.
It can take 8 million gallons of water to
‘frack’ a site.
It also takes about 40,000 gallons of ‘fracking fluid’
– containing lead, ethylene glycol, uranium, mercury and other chemicals.
This fluid is shot into the ground at extreme pressures, which fractures the shale under the ground
There are 500,000 fracking sites in the US.
Each one uses about 8 million gallons of water, and 40,000 gallons of toxic fracking fluid.
do a lil math…
This is 72 trillion gallons of tainted water, and 360 billion gallons of chemical dumped into the environment. (estimated)
Extensive research over the last 10 years has shown that those who live near fracking sites are at risk for a
variety of health issues.
This knowledge comes with the ethical question of who is bearing this burden and if they have any input in what is being done.