Upgrade to remove ads
Only $35.99/year

GEOG 30N Exam 3

Terms in this set (65)

Racism and Environmental Justice
-Something is still racist if it has a racist outcome whether or not it is intentional!
Ex: Hispanics live near chemical plants in LA showing unintentional racism since whites are in safer areas and are less vulnerable to health concerns from the plants and climate change
-Ibram Kendi wrote a book about how to be an anti-racist
-Political practices, cultural norms, and power structures that knowingly, or even unintentionally, affect groups of people disproportionately

Environmental Racism:
-Racism=Direct actions of people of a dominate group toward a subordinate group (cause physical, mental, and emotional harm)
-Environmental Racism=The way in which minority groups are burdened with an unfair amount of hazards (toxic waste facilities, garbage dumps, chemical plants)
-Harmful facilities are built in low-income areas where the community is exposed to contaminated drinking water, air pollution, toxic waste
-E-waste is dumped in developing countries like Asia and only 15% is actually recycled
-Minorities that are exposed develop numerous health problems due to their ongoing, unfair exposure (also lack political power to stop this happening)
-Income does not matter, but race does! Even blacks with high incomes live in exposed areas (they are ignored rather than helped and zip codes show which areas are more exposed than others)
-EPA does not help stop environmental racism!
PM 2.5 (worst pollutant)
-Particulate matter less then 2.5 microns
-Comes from burning fossil fuels
-Consists of combustion particles, organic compounds, and metals
-Lies within PM 10 which contains dust, pollen, mold and is smaller than a strand of hair
-PM 2.5 is small particles of soot that can penetrate deep into lungs and is hard to filter due its extremely small size

Health Effects of PM 2.5:
-Asthma
-Lung Cancer
-Respirator Diseases
-Cardiovascular Diseases
-Premature Birth
-Birth Defects
-Low Birth Weight
-Causes Premature Death
Ozone and Health
-Ozone comes from fossil fuels (cars, lawnmowers)
-Makes it more difficult to breathe deeply and vigorously
-Cause shortness of breath, and pain when taking a deep breath
-Cause coughing and sore or scratchy throat
-Inflame and damage the airways
-Aggravate lung diseases such as asthma, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis
-Increase the frequency of asthma attacks
-Make the lungs more susceptible to infection
-Continue to damage the lungs even when the symptoms have disappeared
-Cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
Air Pollution from Fracking
Causes of Pollution:
-Drilling Itself (release greenhouse gases)
-Trucks
-Potential Air Pollutants include: Methane, Benzene, toluene, xylene and ethyl benzene (BTEX), particulate matter and dust, ground level ozone, or smog, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and metals
*Air pollution comes from factories and fossil fuels
Impacts on Human Health from Fracking
-Fracking increases potential expose to toxic chemicals
-The closer you live to a fracking sight the greater the risk
-Difficult to understand health risk of long-term expose to low levels of contaminants
-> Hard to prove detrimental health effects in a court of law (environmental justice!)
Ex: A fracking site was built next to a school where kids were still developing and are very vulnerable to air pollution (environmental justice. The kids are more vulnerable to health issues because they are more exposed to air pollution at school every day)
Environmental Justice
The belief that all citizens, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic class, should equally share in the benefits of environmental amenities and the burdens of environmental health hazards.

Environmental Justice Movement:
-In 1982, Warren County had a PCB landfill full of toxic waste built in the middle of a predominately black county and residents protested to not have it built and people joined and fought against environmental injustice
-Over 500 people went to jail due to building that landfill creating a civil rights issue since blacks were treated unfairly
-Everyone has the right to live in an environment free from pollution, so a movement began to fight for environmental justice
Distributive Justice
-A form of environmental justice
Definition: How to distribute resources equally

Challenges of Distributive Justice:
-Unequal siting of landfills
-Unequal siting of polluting industries
-Unequal extraction of natural resources
-Disparate access to recreational space
-Disparate exposure to toxicants on the job
-Unequal arrangement of public infrastructure, such as highways, public transportation, garbage collection, etc.
Procedural Justice
-Form of environmental justice
Definition: How we decide to do things (government involvement)
Ex: Congress deciding to ban fracking

Challenges of Procedural Justice:
-Unequal protection in cleaning up environmental hazards
-Unequal enforcement in environmental quality control
-Disparate risks in safe food consumption standards
-Disparate impact of cumulative assessment of environmental quality control (a city may meet air quality standards, but certain neighborhoods within the city may exceed air quality standards)
Agency (or a lack there of)
Agency: Ability to do things (need access)

Challenges/Lack of agency:
-Disparate (not allowing) access to information on exposure to toxicants
-Disparate access to regulatory agencies during review on rules, and regulations
-Disparate access to the scientific community on research priorities, and design
-Unequal study subject participation in clinical trials
-Disparate access to government
Lack of Political Voice
-Gerrymandering: Manipulate legislative districts to to favor one political party over another (one political group tries to sway the votes in their favor or hurt the opposing party)
Ex: Republicans having more seats in the house, but still losing the vote.

-Political Campaign Denotations
-Limiting Early Voting
-Voter ID laws (voter fraud is extremely rare!)
Environmental injustice as a problem of uneven power in the market
Externality: The spill over of a cost or benefit, as where industrial activity at a plant leads to pollution off-site that must be paid for by someone else.
-"Anyone is owner of their own body and health; however, poor people sell their health cheaply when working for a wage in mines or plantations. The poor sell cheap, not out of choice but out of lack of power"

Ex: SO2 (sulfur dioxide) and PM 2.5 in the air affects humans, but benefits the electric companies. Factory workers burn coal to make money and produce electricity for humans, but those living near the plant suffer health effects
Environmental Injustice and Global Trade
Core: Import raw materials and export services and manufactured goods; diversified economies; higher per capita income (U.S., Canada, Australia, and Western Europe)
-High profit consumption goods distributed to semi and periphery zones

Periphery: Export raw materials to core and semi-periphery; specialized economies, lower per capita income (Majority of Africa, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Philippines, Indonesia, Mongolia)
-Cheap labor and raw materials distributed to semi and core zones
-Benefits for local industries and has environmental degradation and low paying jobs (enabling policies)
Major destruction is in the peripheral zone

Semi-Periphery:
-Relate to the core as a peripheral country
-Relate to the periphery as a core country
-In the middle and receives from other two zones
Ex: Mexico, Brazil, southern South America, most of Europe
Environmental injustice as a problem of capitalist expansion
Commodity Price = Cost of Raw Materials (must be appropriated, extracted, and processed cheaply) + Cost of Capital Inputs (tractor and equipment) + Cost of Labor + Profit (purpose of capitalist entrepreneurship)
Raw materials, capital inputs, and cost of labor cause emissions and environmental damage
Climate Justice
Def: Preventing the serious consequences of climate change in a fair and equitable way (includes everyone regardless of race to implement fair policies)
-Global environmental justice in relation to climate change
-People who are least responsible for climate change are most vulnerable (rich people cause most emission but do not suffer consequences)
Ex: Richest 10% are responsible for almost half of total lifestyle consumption emissions while poorest 50% are only responsible for 10% of emissions
-Poor countries are more vulnerable to climate change than wealthy countries that emit more (climate injustice)

Wealth vs Poverty:
-Wealthy import global delicacies, can afford to travel, have multiple homes, can invest in factories that expose others to pollution
-Poor have subsistence farming, cannot afford travel, have one home/hut, have a small environmental footprint (are the most vulnerable to climate change)
Herd Immunity
A form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through vaccination or previous infections, thereby reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity.
Ex: In a herd without vaccinations, infectious diseases spread among everyone. With a herd of people who are vaccinated, they vaccinated ones will not be infected making it harder for the disease to spread among the group
Only works when almost everyone is vaccinated! If not enough people are, disease can still spread, so aim for 90-95% vaccinated
Other sets by this creator