The Influence Of Environmental Justice On EPA
Recommended: Essay on environmental justice
The Unnatural Causes: Place Matters video, explains how environmental factors impact the health and lifespan of an individual. Additionally, the video also gives some history on how disadvantaged neighborhoods were created through government policies that favored Caucasian families. Also, the video focuses on Richmond, a disadvantaged city in California, and the detrimental health of its community members. Lastly, the video focuses on an improved and former disadvantaged neighborhood called High Point located in Seattle, Washington.
The NAACP 's press release talks about the research report Coal Blooded, and how coal plants are being placed nearby low income and colored communities. This is causing an overwhelming amount of pollution in these communities, which in turn is hurting people 's health. The average income of people living in these areas is $18,400 and also 39% of these Americans are colored. Coal Blooded even talks about a plan to help change from high polluted energy sources for more eco-friendly sources. The closing of two power plants in Chicago helps support this plan.
After I listened to Majora Carter 's passionate speech, I learn that we must work together as a community to improve the quality of our surrounding environment. Poor neighborhood often located near industrial factories or sewage system which correlated to the high percentages of obesity and asthma in these ares. According to Majora Carter, poor people not only poor but also unhealthy. Coming from a minority low-income family, Carter knows how it feel to live in polluted areas and she was brave enough to stand up and ask her community to help her make a different. After vacant lands in Bronx areas turned into parks and walk-able neighborhoods, people stopped alliterate, crime rate dropped because the streets were alive with people.
There are many instances of the EPA overstepping their abilities, and causing ordinary citizens undue harm. Take the story of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Sackett, of Priest Lake, Idaho. “The Sackett family sought to build a house on its half-acre of land, yet after construction broke ground, the EPA interfered, claiming the family violated the Clean Water Act by placing fill materials into “wetlands.” Their property was designated as a wetland, yet their neighbors have built houses on either side of their lot and their lot already has established sewage lines. Their lot does not harbor a lake, pond or stream, yet the EPA is requiring them to obtain a building permit that would cost more than the value of their land” (Paul).
Our environment had been endangered of becoming unsafe, threatening, and even deadly. “The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green fields and dense forests are disappearing.” Johnson stresses that the health of people and environment is at risk because Americans have allowed for the destruction of nature to get out of hand, and causing both the Earth and human health at risk of becoming an ugly America, due to –as Johnson references- the “Ugly American” (“Great Society”).
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spilled three million gallons of toxic mining waste into the Animas River. Journalists and Scholars criticize and praise the EPA for its work with the environment. Journalists writing about the EPA are writing to the public to inform them of current events. They use common language and explain concepts that may not be general knowledge. Scholars that write about the EPA have spent years analyzing the pros and cons of the EPA.
To begin with, the environment that people live in are different from other environments. The reason why because they are polluted with chemicals and other things. For Example, ''Separate residential limits or districts for white and Negro residents. This shows that U.S minorities have been placed in a separate area for a long time, as noted in the article. In Addition , ''Government needs what no one wants, maybe a landfill or incinerator''.
The protection of environment is crucial to the wellbeing of this planet. The job of government is to protect and preserve the land on which its people live. However, there is a bill being considered that completely goes against this, one that calls for the eradication of the Environmental Protection Agency, a government program created to protect human and environmental wellbeing through their regulation of laws. I urge you to oppose bill H.R. 861 - the termination of the Environmental Protection Agency - because of the ways that the EPA protects air, water, and land.
Seldom and Hayduke are victims of increased exposure to environmental hazards such as toxic waste, pollution, landfills, and coal ash ponds, segregation of ethnic minority workers into dangerous jobs, and lack of access to parks or garbage removal (“Environmental Racism”). Many impoverished neighborhoods are forced to be located next to environmental hazards. For example, Louisiana is an impecunious state with "Cancer Alley” along the Mississippi River where 125 manufacturing plants release an abundance of hazardous waste resulting in cancer rates and respiratory illnesses higher than the national average (“Poverty”). Additionally, poverty-stricken people tend not to be well-educated and are less politically powerful to fight environmental injustices. Environmental racism originates from the notion of privilege, unequal and unfair rights or advantages of one group over another, such as the dominance of the wealthy industries and development companies over the rural people in the American Southwest in The Monkey Wrench Gang (“Environmental Racism”).
Environmental racism is something that affects all communities in horrible ways. Some people around the world have problems with racism everyday such as rich and poor communities. Other people around the world have racism problems such as black and white people. Environmental racism is something that all people around the world deal with everyday. To begin with, Environmental racism starts with the people in all communites.
During the Cold War era from 1945-1980, the environment took priority in American society. Awareness about the need to preserve the planet culminated in a nationwide Earth Day which proved the growing worry about the lack of sustainability found on Earth. Other environmental factors required immediate action to be taken before the detrimental effects of humans and their role in society would be too much for this world to handle. Although there are a variety of factors that raised awareness about the dangerous environment on earth, it was ultimately the implementation of the first Earth Day, tempting climate in the Sun Belt, and the environmental movement by Rachel Carson that brought the awareness to harsh environmental factors in the late
The concept of environmental justice was first introduced in South Africa at the Earthlife 1992 conference (Cock 2004, p.6). Defined as the ‘fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies’ (U.S Environment Protection Agency, 2012), environmental justice aims to shift the world towards environmentally friendly development and eradicate exploitation of natural resources and indigenous communities. Most importantly, it deals mainly with the environmental injustices of these relationships, and the ways and means of rectifying these wrongs and/or avoiding them in the future
HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW IN INDIA Environment indubitably plays a vital role in our daily lives. Environment is being threatened with increasing technological advancement & industrialization. Hence, over the last few decades there has been increased awareness as to environmental protection. As a result of this, environmental jurisprudence in India has also seen a sea change.
The reading assignments for this week has been very educative about the environment and making it a better place for living. In this written assignment, I will examine some of the ethical issues related to population growth and their effect to the environment. Also, I will propose solutions to these problems base on the reading material available for this Unit. But before I continue, I wish to introduce us to environmental ethics and its definition which I think it is very important for us to understand so as to know our role to play in this beautiful planet. Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its non-human contents
Our earth’s natural resources are rapidly dwindling and our environment is being increasingly degraded by human activities, it is evident that something needs to be done. We often feel that managing all this something that the government should
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