Root causes of Environmental Inequality

Question 1

What is the environment?

Answer 1

basically environment is everything; where we live, where we work, play, go to school, as well as the physical and natural world.

Question 2

Research and empirical evidence demonstrates that the impacts of environmental effects are?

Answer 2

Research and empirical evidence demonstrates that the impacts of environmental effects are distributed unequally
(the main factors being Race and Class)

Question 3

Environmental Inequality led to what movement?

Answer 3

Led to “environmental justice” movement

Question 4

What are the highlighted points of the Environmental Justice Definition?

Answer 4

• fair treatment and meaningful involvement
• regardless of color, national origin, or income
• no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of negative environmental consequences

Question 5

Environmental problems are based on?

Answer 5

Environmental problems are fundamentally based in how human society is organized

Question 6

The exploitation of the ______ and ______ are linked.

Answer 6

The exploitation of the envt and exploitation of human populations are linked.

Question 7

What are 2 key SOCIAL DYNAMICS that systematically create environmental inequality are?

Answer 7

1) functioning of the market economy

2) institutionalized racism

Question 8

The “Treadmill of Production” based on Schnaiberg’s argument entails?

Answer 8

• social origin of environmental degradation and inequality is the functioning of capitalism
• treadmill of production creates ecological problems through mechanism of production and consumption
• ever growing need for capital investment to generate goods for sale in the marketplace

Question 9

An expanding economy drives two dynamics, what are they?

Answer 9

1) creation of economic wealth

2) creation of negative byproducts of the production process

Question 10

International EJ or “Toxic Terrorism”

Answer 10

Toxic residues exported from developed countries to developing countries OR to our own people (garbage, mercury, pesticides, e-waste, etc)

Question 11

“Popular Epidemiology”

Answer 11

a way of democratizing the scientific practices associated with documentation, analysis, and reporting of public health outcomes
-activists and community work w/ science to co produce knowledge

Question 12

How do we address Enviromental inequality?

Answer 12

1) Implementation of democratic science (popular epidemiology)
2) Precautionary Principle
3) National & International Policy Changes

Question 13

Precautionary Principle

Answer 13

• shifts the burden of proof to the producers to show an absence of harm
• if there is ample reason to believe harm is associated w/ a particular substance(s), communities can argue for its temporary elimination from production and use