Life in a Vacuum
Out of all the sound and fury of current events, one thing you probably will not come across is a coherent vision of where we should be going as a society. The Democratic Party has split between business-as-usual political creatures and democratic socialists whose proposals have as much chance of becoming law in today’s political climate as Marx’s old yarn that under communism people would be able to work in the factory in the morning, farm in the afternoon, and write literary criticism over dinner. The best the Republican Party can come up with is a dystopic version of the 1950s.
Recently, I took a break from the brass-tacks work of a law clerk to think about these big picture questions: What kind of society do we want? What is “justice” in today’s world? I concluded that very few people in the public discourse are thinking about the former, leading to a default “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger” à la Plato’s Thrasymachus in the latter. Power abhors a vacuum, and it only makes sense that a lack of vision favors power. If we lack a coherent vision for what kind of society we want to have, the policy changes we advocate for today are nothing but empty promises.
Leading me to this conclusion was an article in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs by political scientist Michael J. Mazarr that discusses some of these questions. In discussing what makes given societies successful, Mazarr concludes that the most important factor is a society’s “essential dynamism and vitality.” Drawing an interesting historical analogy, Mazarr quotes historian Kenneth Bartlett:
The Renaissance ended because the set of attitudes and beliefs and self-confidence, that energizing myth [that] was the motive power of the Renaissance mind, simply ceased to function…The failure of will, the failure to confront the crises that the Italians knew that they were in, the decision … to accept what is known and safe and stable.
In the environmental law context, what good does winning an individual case for a sympathetic client do if we as a legal community don’t have a concrete value-driven mission?
Environmental justice (EJ) provides the kind of vision and will that we need to overcome this kind of stagnation. The great strength of EJ is its inclusion of scientific reality, social justice needs, and democratic values.
What is Environmental Justice?
Environmental justice (EJ) approaches public policy and economic development through a commitment to ensuring fair outcomes in environmental decision-making. EJ practitioners seek to avoid future and correct past injustices suffered by the economically vulnerable and racial minorities, who are often not involved in discussions about everything from the placement of heavy industry sites to climate change policy.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency traces the inception of EJ to the Civil Rights Movement, noting that events like the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike—where African American workers protested poor environmental and working conditions—linked race, income inequality, and environmental degradation.
At its core, EJ is about equality, mutual respect, and ensuring that no one group bears the cost of development. But despite its bearing on public policy, EJ’s principal proponents have not been judges or legislators.
One influential EJ text is Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si (On Care for Our Common Home). Francis combines theology, social justice thought, economics, and science to argue that ecological injustice is inextricably tied to economic, racial, and gender exploitation. The encyclical’s overarching analogy is that what we have done exploiting the earth we have also done to the poor and marginalized, as well as future generations, as these groups are the ones who bear the cost of unsustainable practices.
At its core, Laudato Si’s version of EJ focuses on the thoughtlessness of existing laws and patterns of economic development:
We have come to see ourselves as her [the Earth’s] lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor … We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen. 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters … Nothing in this world is indifferent to us.
I like this passage because it summarizes a through-line in Francis’s philosophy: everything in this world is inherently interconnected, both on physical and moral levels. As Francis notes,
[W]e can no longer view reality in a purely utilitarian way, in which efficiency and productivity are entirely geared to our individual benefit. Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us.
Laudato Si builds on the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (FPCELS), where community leaders from various racial minorities met to develop a “comprehensive platform for a national and international movement of all people.”
The resulting document, the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, focused on the connections between unsustainable development, racism, classism, and ecology. The first two principles emphasize interconnection, mutual respect, and equal treatment:
Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction … [and] … demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples.
EJ activism in the 1960s through the mid-1990s did lead to changes in the law but not at the statutory level. For example, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898 in 1994. E.O. 12898 asks federal agencies to “identify and address the disproportionately high and adverse health or environmental effects of actions on minority and low-income populations.”
Similarly, President Biden’s 2021 E.O. 14008 established several White House offices and federal development tools related to EJ, including the Justice40 Initiative, “which aims to provide 40 percent of the overall benefits of Federal investments relating to climate change … to disadvantaged communities who are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.”
How EJ Fills the Vacuum
EJ fills the social and identity vacuum facing America today by focusing on relatively low-hanging fruit that aligns with values outlined in our Founding documents. Freedom from pollution is not something that aligns narrowly with either one political perspective but instead reflects a general question of fundamental rights.
An emphasis on EJ as a galvanizing vision for who we are and what we want can be tailored to liberals and conservatives. For example, EJ’s racial, economic, and intergenerational facets could appeal to progressive Democrats. These takes get to the bread-and-butter of contemporary progressive activism: race, income inequality, and climate.
The biggest challenges for progressives interested in EJ are (1) that it becomes a crusade of “white saviors” and (2) that they effectively make the case that EJ issues are connected to health, concrete issues facing the average American. If EJ activism is led by white people with a paternalistic goal of “helping” African Americans, progressives will have simply changed the specifics of one regime of oppression for another, creating a neo-“White Man’s Burden” and ignoring the core values that the sources I discussed above centered on. By focusing on EJ as a “Black Problem” that “enlightened white people” can fix, progressives would risk talking down to minorities and missing the forest for the trees: everyone on this planet is threatened by climate change and water or air pollution.
EJ could be made palatable for Republicans through an appeal to modern conservatism’s emphasis on self-reliance and efficiency. By linking the values of a Founding document like the Declaration of Independence to EJ ventures, EJ-conscious conservatives could make the case that the “rags-to-riches, self-made person” story is impossible if would-be entrepreneurs die young from pollution and climate change.
Whatever the respective strengths and weaknesses of liberal versus conservative EJ, both versions arguably leave us better off than we are now. If nothing else, even a deficient EJ framework fills the current vision vacuum with a forward-focused program.
Conclusion
While it would be naïve to believe that EJ can single-handedly transform our society, it is by no means unreasonable to think that the core values that EJ espouses could help us address current social, economic, and environmental challenges.
By going “back to basics” and emphasizing every American’s equality before the law, the interconnections between environmental and social exploitation, and hard-to-oppose issues like clean air and water, EJ could fill the vacuum I outlined in the first section.
By Thad Kotarski, Fair Shake Legal Intern
