Good morning listeners and thank you for tuning in today. This is your host, Anne.  Today what I want to talk about is environmental justice, which admittedly is a big topic for one short podcast so, before we start, I’m going to set out a framework for this conversation. First, we are going to talk about what environmental justice is and then we are going to hear some comments and questions from our listeners, so we can really talk about this on a personal level. To wrap everything up I want to address what we can do about it. So again, thank you so much for joining me, let’s get started.

As we hear about environmental issues and climate change it is important to take a multidisciplinary approach to understanding these things. Understanding what is happening scientifically is important. We should also consider how we have gotten to this point historically and what policies are exacerbating problems or seeking to remediate them. Environmental justice is primarily concerned with the social aspect. So, who is being affected by rising temperatures? Who is denied access to clean water and air? Who is paying for pollution? Well the answer is that disproportionately low income, minority, and over-burdened communities are dealing with these consequences. Climate and environmental justice advocates seek to reduce these disparities. It is about ensuring equality and making sure that everybody has access to clean air and water. It is about demanding responsible natural resource management, proper disposal of toxic waste, and adequate environmental remediation. So, it seeks to ensure everybody’s right to a healthy planet. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines Environmental justice 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.” I think this is a good definition that gets to the core of the issue, which is that no person or community should bear more of the consequences of poor environmental management and that the people have a right to have a say in how it is being managed when they’re the ones dealing with the repercussions. It can’t be decided by big corporations or people who aren’t directly affected by it.

So now that we have a primer on the topic I think it would be good to open up the conversation and see what people’s experience with climate and environmental justice is. I have some comments and questions that I will go ahead and read and discuss.

Our first question comes from a listener named Maya who asks, “When did environmental justice first enter the lexicon and who helped champion this cause?” This is a great question, and there is a lot to be said on the topic, so I’ll do my best to do right by this question but understand that there are a lot of important events and people that I won’t be able to highlight in the time I have and I highly encourage listeners out there to do further research. So, environmentalism became popular in the 60s and 70s alongside the civil rights movement. In 1962 Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring” which brought attention to detrimental environmental effects caused by the pesticide DDT. In 1968, the Memphis Sanitation Strike occurred which opposed the poor working conditions of many African Americans in the Memphis Department of Public Works. This strike was backed by Martin Luther King Jr. and called attention to the black men that were doing these essential jobs that kept our cities clean and running for very low wages and under very unsafe conditions.  In 1969 Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught on fire, not for the first time, in fact it happened at least a dozen times, but this time it sparked an outcry, people were very much against the lax environmental regulations that allowed this to happen. These events precluded the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act in 1972 which helped to establish more environmental regulations. In 1982 there was a sit-in against a PCB Landfill in Warren County, North Carolina, a rural community comprised of mostly low-income African Americans who didn’t want these legacy pollutants put in their backyard. In 1987 “Toxic Waste in the United States” was published by the UCC Commission on Racial Justice which addressed how hazardous sites were disproportionately in places with higher populations of people of color. In 1990 we saw the grassroots Indigenous Environmental Network formed to advocate for the land, natural resources, and health of indigenous people. In 1994 Bill Clinton signed an executive order to address “Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations”. I could go on, but I hope this historical background helps you contextualize climate and environmental justice activism today and helps you understand why this is an important issue. It’s important that I make sure to reiterate that a lot of the activists who have fought for climate and environmental justice have been black, have been Latino, have been indigenous people. The emphasis on climate and environmental justice has been an integral part of the environmental and civil rights movements alike and continues to be worked on today.

Our next question comes from Lee, “What are some examples of environmental injustice today?” I think it would not take very long to find many examples once we start looking, but something that got a lot of press the past decade was the Flint Water Crisis. So, I’m sure many of you listening are familiar, but basically what happened was that in an effort to cut costs the city of Flint, Michigan changed where they got their water, from Lake Huron to Flint River. This water was more corrosive and so a lot of the lead in the old pipes found its way into people’s mouths, along with other bad things like fecal coliforms. Lead causes all sorts of health problems and is particularly problematic for children who can be very susceptible to developing severe neurological conditions as result of lead exposure. People of the city were left without access to clean safe water, something many of us take for granted. But, unfortunately many children across our country have elevated levels of lead in their blood and heartbreakingly if a child is black they are more likely to have higher levels of lead than other children even when other variables like socioeconomic status are accounted for, according to a paper published earlier this year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.  That is what people call environmental racism. Another example of this would be how black Americans are at a much greater risk of premature death due to air pollution according to the American Lung Association. There are a lot of factors that have led us to this, including years of segregation forcing black Americans into areas with greater levels of pollution. People often talk about socio-economic status and home ownership which is important to mention, but even when these are corrected for we still see African Americans facing greater environmental injustice and health problems, and that systemic injustice and racism needs to be addressed in this conversation.

So those were some great questions and I hope the resulting conversation was informative. There are a lot of great people and organizations out there that are fighting for environmental and climate justice every day and I really would like to challenge you all to look into local organizations around that share this goal. Climate and environmental anxiety is real and sometimes talking about environmental issues and climate change and the social injsutices that surround them can be very difficult. Sometimes we become apathetic, thinking that the issues are too big to tackle so why bother? Or maybe you think, they won’t affect me in my lifetime so why bother? But, I want to encourage us all to take some responsibility to educate ourselves and try and do our part. This could mean driving less or supporting sustainable businesses or voting for people who care about the planet. It is not only about respecting nature and biodiversity, its also about taking care of the people we share the planet with and making sure we are keeping it safe and clean for everyone regardless of their identity.

Thank you so much for taking your time to listen to this podcast, it means a lot to me and I hope you learned something. This was written and produced by Anne Gerhart for Comparative Studies 1100 at The Ohio State University. I’d like to thank the EPA, their website helped me gather a lot of information for this podcast and I couldn’t have done it without them. I’d also like to thank my roommate Hadas for listening to me record this podcast and asking questions that inspired me. The song played was a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” that I found on the internet. Thanks again, have a great day.