Environmental Justice
Environmental Justice is guided by the notion that everyone is entitled to an environment that allows them to live a safe and healthy life unimpeded by harmful, even deadly, forces of irresponsible big businesses and racist bureaucracies that allow landfills, toxic chemical plants, and other life-threatening by-products of a consumerist society to be located in and around people’s (often minorities’) homes and communities.
Most often, the majority of people impacted by harmful environmental practices are from lower class communities that have a high percentage of minority members. Environmental racism and other injustices result from local and state governments trying to bring new industry into a community or trying to boost a state's economy. This has been an especially dangerous issue in Louisiana, Alabama, and on Native American reservations.
Environmental Justice not only looks at the legal and social implications of an unjust society’s (un)environmental practices. It also offers an opportunity for reflection on how man-made technologies and their harmful by-products are affecting our lives at a frighteningly immediate level. Toxic landfills and chemical plants are the result of advances in technology meant to help society. Unfortunately, these technologies often benefit one segment of society while leaving a smaller, disenfranchised population with a serious problem. The question one must ask, then, is, ”what price do we pay for technological progress?” and, perhaps more importantly, “who is footing the bill?” (see also cultural materialism)