A society that distributes environmental benefits and burdens equally is considered
to have environmental justice. However, in many societies, this is not the
case. Often times, a society places the environmental burdens on people in the
least advantaged positions. This type of distribution is considered
environmental racism. For example, in the U.S. if you are a minority, you are
more likely to live in a area with landfills and toxic waste dumps than if you
are white. The topics of environmental justice and racism are becoming more of
a concern as our population rises and the amount of waste we generate
increases. One of the biggest concerns is what are we going to do with all the
waste we create. Many landfills are filling up quickly and toxic waste sites
must be chosen carefully as we want to produce the least harm on our society. I
personally found the case we analyzed in class about the Goshute Native
Americans and nuclear waste storage very interesting. The Goshute tribe lives in poverty on a
barren wasteland in Utah and the federal government sees this area as the prime
location for temporary nuclear waste storage.
To the Goshute, who would be given a yearly grant for the storage of the
waste, this plan seemed like a great opportunity to rebuild their tribe. However, many other people, especially the
government and citizens of Utah, are opposed to this idea saying that the
Goshute do not fully understand the potential dangers of waste storage and that
it could have harmful effects on the population. I think these people are right. We should not try to push our waste onto people
with financial issues by promising grants.
These people are so desperate for money that they do not see the real
issues nuclear waste storage could cause.
Instead we should provide these people with financial relief in other
ways and clean up our own waste. If
cities have to be responsible for the cleanup and storage of their own waste,
they may have an incentive to reduce, reuse, recycle and make changes to the
production of products. If we continue
to rely on the dumping of waste onto other people, we will never change until
it is too late and the only dumping sites left are our own backyards!
