Figueroa's "Evaluating Environmental Justice Claims"


  • This analysis seems to take on a very utilitarian point of view in defining the "balance of benefits and burdens" of the environmental justice. 
  • "It is the boomerang effect of a harmful practice on its supposed beneficiaries that often leads them to halt the practice."
    • This is such a fantastic line. This seems to be the case with a lot of ethical injustice regarding politics, or, more aptly, money. No significant change will ever occur until the ones promote the behavior face backlash or personal loss from the behavior.
  • The EJP is quite depressing, really. There is simply nothing the less affluent people can do but be at the will of the people have the money or influence to change such injustices that are in-congruently affecting them negatively.  
  • Even in such events where a "movement" is formed, that movement still needs the backing of affluent people, and in the case that no affluent person can be personally and positively affected by the issue that the movement seeks to alleviate, there will, most likely, not be such a movement. In an ironic essence, any movement is still, generally speaking, backed by someone who seeks to benefit themselves. This is why we should become socialists! Socialism ho!
    • "the “organizing fiction” of “the idea of ‘public interest'  . . . conceals the class-specific effects of the air pollution initiative”" 
      • A perfect representation of my point. 
  • The economic idea of "forgone costs" needs to be an idea that is better known by more people. Issues that revolve around utilitarian-esk scrutiny can only be properly analyzed when the such analysis takes into account the forgone costs of making a decision versus the others. It seems like such a simple idea that not many people seem to intuitively understand. 
  • As long as money remains the primary reason for humans to do anything, knowingly or not, criticizing the use of money to alleviate the problems that the rich face seems futile. I agree with everything that Figueroa is saying; however, I don't think this criticism does anything other than point out an obvious issue that people, in most cases, won't care (or can't) fix. Again, socialism, ho!
  • The use of compensation in cases of environmental justice is simply just taking advantage of the poor even more than the injustice itself is causing. The transactions of such compensations are not beneficial to the disenfranchised simply by existing. If it weren't beneficial for the affluent to support an environmental injustice, such injustices wouldn't exist. Compensations just acknowledges the injustices and band-aids it with a compensations that ultimately won't benefit who it seeks to benefit in the first place. It's just a recursive line of benefit for the rich and detriment to the poor... a sad reality of capitalism... socialism, ho! 
    • And with that said, there can be, to me, no stigma that criticizes the individuals that do take compensations for such injustices because the instant benefit of the compensation may solve more issues to them than it will for the community. If an adult gives a child too much sugar because the child was being annoying, you don't blame the child. If the rich pay the disenfranchised to keep their mouth shut about an injustice, you don't blame the poor—you blame the rich for putting the poor in a situation that asks them to hurt themselves for the supposed benefit of others. 
  • This entire chapter is just criticizing capitalism in a guise. The words "environmental injustice" can replaced with just about another other injustice and such an issue would exists as outlines. All the generalized issues that cause such injustices are virtually unsolvable in the current government that we have agreed to work best for America (and seemingly other countries, given the chapter's mention of such).
  • When I speak about the furthering of artificial intelligence development against the majority, I often have a disdain against an appeal to past value or "tradition." I believe this to be a very, very toxic way to think about progress. Progress should not be stopped just to keep thing the way they are as that would fundamentally go against the idea of improvement. There are arguments to be made against whether or not a new idea should squander an old trend, but claiming change to be the primary issue with anything, environmental justice included (or rather the aspects of environmental identity), is poor reasoning by nature.

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