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Communicative Practices and Communicative Demands in the Environmental Justice Movement

David Schlosberg

in Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism: The Challenge of Difference for Environmentalism

An exploration is made of how the environmental justice movement in the United States has taken on some of the communicative and participatory demands and practices of critical pluralism. The ... More

An exploration is made of how the environmental justice movement in the United States has taken on some of the communicative and participatory demands and practices of critical pluralism. The movement has been critical of the communicative methods of the mainstream – the top-down organizational structure and its one-way nature of communication, and the lack of attention to issues of public participation in policy-making – and issues of communication have been a central focus in the development and demands of environmental justice. Accepting the diversity and the situated experiences of individuals and cultures has fostered the use of, and demand for, a variety of innovative communicative processes. Internally, the movement has attempted to employ more open discursive processes, paying particular attention to communication within and across diverse groups. Externally, the movement has made demands with regard to issues of communication and more discursive and participatory policy-making on government agencies, particularly the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).Less

Environmental Protection

Thomas O. McGarity

in Freedom to Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival

This chapter focuses on four federal agencies that bear some responsibility for protecting the nation's natural resources and environment, namely the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps ... More

This chapter focuses on four federal agencies that bear some responsibility for protecting the nation's natural resources and environment, namely the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers in the Department of Defense, and the Office of Surface Mining and Minerals Management Service in the Department of Interior. Flush with resources and backed by strong public opinion, the environmental agencies initially generated a healthy flow of proactive implementing regulations that they vigorously enforced against some of the most powerful corporations in the country. Congress no longer appeared capable of enacting legislation to address emerging environmental problems. The last two significant environmental statutes were the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.Less

The Role of Federal Agencies in Radiation Protection

J. Samuel Walker

in Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century

The radiation controversies of the 1950s and 1960s had focused on the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) programs, and the AEC had played the most visible role among the various federal agencies ... More

The radiation controversies of the 1950s and 1960s had focused on the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) programs, and the AEC had played the most visible role among the various federal agencies involved in radiation safety. The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave the AEC a potentially strong rival. The new agency took over the duties of the Federal Radiation Council, and its functions included the protection of the population from environmental radioactivity. The scope of the EPA's regulatory mandate under Nixon's reorganization plan extended, potentially at least, to all sources of radiation. Despite the breadth of its mandate, radiation protection was not a priority issue for the EPA. The importance of radiation safety to the EPA and the ambiguity of its role under Reorganization Plan No. 3 soon led to contention with other agencies. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has disputed the EPA's claim that its responsibilities included medical uses of radiation. Differences also quickly arose between the EPA and the AEC over their respective roles in radiation protection.Less

Public Participation and Environmental Justice: Access to Federal Decision Making

Dorothy M. Daley and Tony G. Reames

in Failed Promises: Evaluating the Federal Government's Response to Environmental Justice

This chapter examines public participation in federal environmental decision-making from an environmental justice perspective. The authors begin with a broad overview of past research on public ... More

This chapter examines public participation in federal environmental decision-making from an environmental justice perspective. The authors begin with a broad overview of past research on public participation and environmental decision-making, and then discuss the opportunities and challenges that arise in the specific context of environmental justice. The chapter describes and analyzes the way that federal agencies have involved the public – particularly, low-income and minority individuals, and the groups that represent them – in environmental decision-making, which is an important part of government efforts to achieve procedural justice. The analysis compares efforts of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Transportation. Among the key findings are that there is significant variation in how public participatory processes are used to address environmental justice concerns across the three agencies examined, and that, while opportunities for public involvement have increased since the signing of Executive Order 12898, actual participation from low-income and minority communities has been uneven.Less

Federal Environmental Justice Policy: Lessons Learned

David M. Konisky

in Failed Promises: Evaluating the Federal Government's Response to Environmental Justice

The final chapter of the book reviews and synthesizes the key findings from the preceding chapters. The main general take-away conclusion from the book is that the federal government, and in ... More

The final chapter of the book reviews and synthesizes the key findings from the preceding chapters. The main general take-away conclusion from the book is that the federal government, and in particular the EPA, has not effectively integrated environmental justice considerations into decision-making as part of its core regulatory programs and activities. More broadly, the environmental justice policy reforms put in place in the mid-1990s, especially Executive Order 12898, failed to deliver on their promise of changing federal environmental decision-making. The reasons for this conclusion pertain to challenges specific to permitting, rule-making, enforcement and the other areas studied in the book as well as to several factors that cut across these areas. Specifically, three factors are identified as having impeded general progress: failure of the EPA to develop clear policy guidance, inadequate coordination across EPA regions and states, and inconsistent agency leadership. Although the book concludes with a sobering assessment of the limits to date of federal environmental justice policy, the author concludes that there is some reason for optimism in light of recent policy efforts at the EPA under Plan EJ 2014.Less

Introduction

David M. Konisky

in Failed Promises: Evaluating the Federal Government's Response to Environmental Justice

The first chapter of the book introduces the subject of environmental justice, and then presents the main question analyzed throughout the rest of the book: did the federal environmental justice ... More

The first chapter of the book introduces the subject of environmental justice, and then presents the main question analyzed throughout the rest of the book: did the federal environmental justice policy reforms of the mid-1990s result in the EPA and other federal agencies making environmental justice a core component of their decision-making? Although these reforms, particularly the 1994 presidential Executive Order on environmental justice have been in place for twenty years, there has been very little systematic analysis of their efficacy. The chapter argues that it is an opportune time for such an analysis. The balance of the chapter then sets up the rest of the book by reviewing 1) the empirical literature that has developed over the past three decades to document the type and degree of race- and class-based disparities in environmental amenities; and 2) previous research that has been conducted to evaluate the impact of environmental justice policy. The chapter then outlines a conceptual framework of justice issues (distributive justice, procedural justice, and corrective justice) used in the book to evaluate the performance of the federal government, particularly the EPA, in integrating environmental justice considerations into its decision-making, and provides an overview of each of the subsequent chapters.Less

New Controversies, New Standards

J. Samuel Walker

in Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century

By the late 1970s, the hazards of low-level radiation became a highly noticeable and a severely debated issue. There is a public debate about the low-level radiation which was triggered by complaints ... More

By the late 1970s, the hazards of low-level radiation became a highly noticeable and a severely debated issue. There is a public debate about the low-level radiation which was triggered by complaints of “atomic soldiers” who had been exposed to radiation while witnessing nuclear weapons tests during 1950s and by a series of studies that lifted new apprehensions about the hazards of small dozes. In an atmosphere of continuing controversy and unavoidable uncertainty, both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission undertook major revisions of their regulations on radiation protection. Both incorporated new findings and approaches, but neither escaped criticism for policies that were in some minds overly lax and in others unduly stringent.Less

The Environmental Protection Agency: 1970–2010

James K. Conant and Peter J. Balint

in The Life Cycles of the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency: 1970 - 2035

The official birthdate of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is December 2, 1970. On that day the Senate confirmed William Ruckelshaus, President Nixon’s ... More

The official birthdate of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is December 2, 1970. On that day the Senate confirmed William Ruckelshaus, President Nixon’s nominee to be the administrator of the new agency, and the “EPA opened for business in a tiny suite of offices at 20th and L Streets in Northwest Washington, DC.” The new agency took over programs and offices related to environmental protection previously operating in the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Food and Drug Administration, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Federal Radiation Council. In this chapter, we examine and attempt to explain what happened to this major regulatory agency over the forty-year period from its birth in 1970 to 2010. In doing so, we test hypotheses that follow from the four categories of theoretical agency life cycle models introduced in Chapter 3. These models differ in their predictions for the trajectories of federal agencies. The biological model predicts that agencies will grow rapidly during their early life before reaching a relatively stable maturity. Over subsequent decades agencies may carry on indefinitely with declining vigor, or be absorbed into other agencies, or die, although scholars debate both the process and probability of agency mortality. The partisan political model predicts a more turbulent life history for agencies in which changing party control of Congress and the White House will buffet government organizations more or less routinely. According to this model, federal agencies will often be caught in the middle of partisan ideological battles over the importance and value of the social functions they were created to address. The incremental model suggests that the best predictor of how agencies will fare in the near future is how they have fared in the recent past. That is, agencies tend to be insulated from external political and economic fluctuations and therefore generally experience relatively minor changes over time to their budgets and operations. The issue-attention model predicts that agencies’ fortunes are tied to the vagaries of current events. Less

The Wrong Complexion for Protection: Response to Toxic Contamination

Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright

in The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities

This chapter examines the government's response to toxic contamination in African American communities and the health consequences for the residents of those communities. It begins with an overview ... More

This chapter examines the government's response to toxic contamination in African American communities and the health consequences for the residents of those communities. It begins with an overview of the federal Superfund program, created in 1980 when Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), which allowed the federal government to respond to releases or potential releases of hazardous wastes that might harm people or the environment. It then considers the legacy of unequal protection in the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement of its Superfund laws, increasing the risk for African Americans and other communities of color. It also presents case studies that highlight environmental racism and slow government response to disasters that threaten the health and welfare of African Americans in the Deep South.Less

Movements in Transition: Environmentalists, Farmworkers, and the Regulatory State, 1970–1976

Adam Tompkins

in Ghostworkers and Greens: The Cooperative Campaigns of Farmworkers and Environmentalists for Pesticide Reform

This chapter focuses on the pesticide reform efforts of farmworkers, led by the United Farm Workers (UFW), in cooperation with the mainstream environmental movement in the years immediately following ... More

This chapter focuses on the pesticide reform efforts of farmworkers, led by the United Farm Workers (UFW), in cooperation with the mainstream environmental movement in the years immediately following the DDT ban. It shows how environmental groups such as the Sierra Club expanded their lobbying efforts in Congress for the passage of a stronger regulatory law on pesticides. It also considers the Environmental Defense Fund’s attempts to get the Environmental Protection Agency to cancel all uses of aldrin and dieldrin. Finally, it discusses the UFW’s union battles with the Teamsters between 1972 and 1976 that affected its focus on agricultural chemicals, even as it continued to collaborate with some environmental groups on related issues.Less

Why Climate-Change Skeptics Are Wrong

Kristin Shrader-Frechette

in What Will Work: Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to ... More

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.Less

‘Killing yourself is no way to make a living’: environmental justice in the United States

Karen Bell

in Achieving environmental justice: A cross-national analysis

No discussion of how to achieve environmental justice would be complete without reference to the United States, the birthplace of the concept and what has become known as the ‘environmental justice ... More

No discussion of how to achieve environmental justice would be complete without reference to the United States, the birthplace of the concept and what has become known as the ‘environmental justice movement’. This chapter critically assesses the state of environmental justice in the United States, drawing on the relevant literature as well as the authors own observations and a number of semi-structured interviews carried out between 2008 and 2012. The US is typologised here as the most capitalist of the seven case-study countries examined in this book, primarily because it has no recent experience of extensive public ownership of the means of production. The chapter outlines how the country is weak on substantive, distributive, procedural intergenerational, inter-species and international aspects of environmental justice. The main issues are excessive use of resources and production of waste; high levels of environmental inequities, based on pronounced social inequalities; and inadequate procedural justice frameworks and policies, which have often focused more on managing and controlling communities than on empowering them.Less

Hazardous Waste

Ken Silver, Gary A. Davis, and Denny Dobbin

in Occupational and Environmental Health

This chapter defines and describes hazardous wastes and their adverse health effects. Historical evolution of the management and public understanding of waste issues is traced. Other parts of the ... More

This chapter defines and describes hazardous wastes and their adverse health effects. Historical evolution of the management and public understanding of waste issues is traced. Other parts of the chapter describe hazardous waste management, including disposal landfills, land farming, incineration, and toxics use reduction. Various regulatory measures are described as well as nonregulatory measures for prevention and control of adverse health effects from hazardous wastes. Approaches to evaluating human health effects at hazardous waste sites are described, emphasizing special challenges and opportunities in environmental epidemiology. Social aspects of community involvement are noted. Steps of the Superfund clean-up process are delineated. Governmental contingency plans for coordination in emergency response situations are reviewed. In addition, a section describes pollution prevention and toxics use reduction.Less

“Toxicology Is a Political Science”

Sara Shostak

in Exposed Science: Genes, the Environment, and the Politics of Population Health

Chapter 1 provides a map of key environmental health research and regulatory institutions, including the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Toxicology Program ... More

Chapter 1 provides a map of key environmental health research and regulatory institutions, including the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It also considers the goals and perspectives of the chemical industry and of environmental health and justice activists.Focusing, then, on the contentious politics of the environmental health arena, it explores how the practices of environmental health scientists have been shaped by the forces and struggles in the field in which they operateLess

Negotiating Science, Politicizing Science

Alissa Cordner

in Toxic Safety: "Flame Retardants, Chemical Controversies, and Environmental Health"

Chapter 5 shows that science-based decisions, ranging from the development of new chemical products by chemical manufacturers to chemical assessments at EPA, involve social acts of negotiation ... More

Chapter 5 shows that science-based decisions, ranging from the development of new chemical products by chemical manufacturers to chemical assessments at EPA, involve social acts of negotiation between participants, multiple interpretations of scientific evidence, and political and economic concerns and constraints.Less

Downstream Dilemma: Water Pollution

Daniel McCool

in River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America's Rivers

This chapter examines how water pollution diminished the value of American rivers and destroyed their essence as a natural resource. For more than 200 years, rivers in America were used as a ... More

This chapter examines how water pollution diminished the value of American rivers and destroyed their essence as a natural resource. For more than 200 years, rivers in America were used as a convenient dumpsite for sewage, toxic waste, and agricultural runoff. This occurred despite the fact that two-thirds of the country's drinking water comes from rivers. The effort to pass meaningful and enforceable national water quality standards was a long, incremental struggle that finally bore fruit in 1972, when the Clean Water Act, to be administered by the newly created Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was passed into law. Two years later, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. This chapter considers the experiences of three cities—Atlanta, Washington DC, and Seattle—that each has committed grievous sins against a local watercourse, but has made dramatic efforts to correct past mistakes. In particular, it looks at each city's river restoration initiatives.Less

Depth in Knowledge

Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King

in Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and The Unitary Executive

This chapter considers depth in knowledge, focusing on rules-based protections for knowledge-based authority in the executive branch. Rules provide firmer footing for depth than norms do, but even ... More

This chapter considers depth in knowledge, focusing on rules-based protections for knowledge-based authority in the executive branch. Rules provide firmer footing for depth than norms do, but even rules strain under presidents bent on political control. With the so-called war on science ramping up again in the Trump administration, questions about whether and to what extent rules protect government research and expertise from the unitary executive have been pushed front and center. Here we consider four cases in which knowledge-based authority was besieged, focusing on the National Weather Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the executive branch’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.Less

The Budding Movement for Pesticide Reform, 1962–1972

Adam Tompkins

in Ghostworkers and Greens: The Cooperative Campaigns of Farmworkers and Environmentalists for Pesticide Reform

This chapter examines the budding movement for pesticide reform during the period 1962–1972. It begins with a discussion of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which introduced the public to the ... More

This chapter examines the budding movement for pesticide reform during the period 1962–1972. It begins with a discussion of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which introduced the public to the adverse effects of pesticides by addressing the unexplainable sicknesses and death that plagued people and livestock living in a fictional town. It then considers how concerned scientists disseminated information about the ill effects of pesticides directly and indirectly to the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and environmental organizations. It also discusses the growing concern of both environmentalists and farmworker groups about pesticides, particularly DDT, as well as their development of fairly different strategies in their attempts to make change. The chapter argues that the differences in strategies limited but did not preclude opportunities for collaboration between farmworkers and the environmental movement, especially in mounting legal challenges. Their efforts paid off when in June 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an order to ban nearly all uses of DDT in the six months following.Less

Public Interest Lost

in The People's Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public: Special Interests, Government, and Threats to Health, Safety, and the Environment

The fundamental principle—that government has a vital role to play in protecting people from harm—could lead to endless arguments in the arena of traditional social welfare programs over exactly when ... More

The fundamental principle—that government has a vital role to play in protecting people from harm—could lead to endless arguments in the arena of traditional social welfare programs over exactly when individual people cannot help themselves. But in the arena of protecting health, safety, and the environment, it is a serviceable, working proposition: when the threats are polluted urban air, dangerous drugs, and unsafe workplaces, individuals need government because control over the threat lies with someone else. This chapter introduces the five most important federal “protector agencies” created to shoulder these responsibilities—the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.Less