AGRAVIADOR, Perine V December 02, 2019

Soc Sci 30 2018-08893

Hugging a Tree:
Does justice also extend to the environment?

According to the Australia Breakthrough National Center for Climate Restoration

(BNCCR), in as early as 2050, 90% of humanity would be displaced if our current problem with
climate catastrophe is not to be dealt with (Chaudhuri, 2019). With the increased levels of
greenhouse gas emissions, global climate emergency policies being ignored, and an exponential rise
of the human population, scientists estimate that the human race has a 31-year life sentence should
we not shed light on the screams of Mother Nature. Climate catastrophe is an existential risk to
human civilization: that is, an adverse outcome would either annihilate intelligent life or
permanently and drastically curtail its potential (Spratt and Dunlop, 2018). Such an event would
radically change the world as we know it. In as early as 2050, the global temperature would melt
polar caps that would release methane into the atmosphere, adding more greenhouse gas into the
already heated Earth that we have now. The temperature would increase in such a degree that it
would raise sea levels, damaging and submerging coastal areas around the globe, drowning millions
of people. Climate catastrophe is an issue that calls for utmost urgency; it is not only an
environmental concern but of a humanitarian one. However, as sad and as dire the situation might
be, no one seems to bat an eye.

The goal of this paper is two-fold: First, it aims to give a discussion about how justice
extends to the environment, arguing that to the extent that nonhumans desire and deserve justice
too, secondly and most importantly, how our global concern for environmental justice is intertwined
with our humanitarian clamor for social justice.

Before the extensive discussion of achieving this paper’s first goal, I would like to give you
a couple of characterizations for everyone reading this paper to be on the same page. The first is:
What necessarily is justice? What does it look like? Why is that ancient thinkers to contemporary
philosophers, from Plato’s work ​The Republic to Karl Marx’s ​Communist Manifesto to the
multitude of waves of the feminist movement, are obsessed with achieving it? People talk about
justice all the time without being specific about what they mean. For instance, activists talk a lot
about economic justice, while police and lawyers talk a lot about criminal justice. The reason why
people talk about justice all the time is that it’s one of the most fundamental social, ethical, and
moral principles we deal with every day. In its purest and most succinct conception, justice is often
concerned with ​punishment and with “stuff.” What I mean by this is that, when people talk about
justice, people often talk about the ​distribution of “stuff”-- material possessions, wealth, food,
services like sanitation and healthcare, ​rights and ​entitlements-​ - and how to properly hand them
out, or who deserves what. If there was an anomaly or any deliberate attempt to hinder the
distribution or the actualization of these “stuff,” then the person who caused the problem is morally
and legally sanctioned. For instance, a person who deliberately killed another person hindered the
actualization of the victim’s universal human right to life; therefore, the suspect is sentenced to life
imprisonment. If this is the case, how does justice, then, apply to the environment? This is where an
important claim of mine comes in. Notice how our conception of who deserves what or how we
distribute stuff (which are the most basic essences of justice) is very human-centric. What I mean by
this is that our conception of justice puts a hefty premium or privilege to humans than of any other
entity. The notion of ​ownership of things is very human. Look no further when John Locke argued
that it is a fundamental right for humans to have ​property​, or even look at the concept of ​autonomy
and especially look no further than our universal declaration of ​human ​rights. Why is it that we have
bestowed to ourselves security through rights, yet fail to bestow the same entitlement to
nonhumans? Why is it that we react in horror when hearing a case about the murder of a person, yet
fail to give the same sentiment when millions of animals are being slaughtered for food every day?
Why is it that we rigidly sanction people that destroy another person’s dignity, yet people who
destroy the environment and the homes of billions of other lifeforms for profit get away scot-free?
How are we so proudly in love with the pursuit of justice yet commit ​injustices along the way to
other entities around us? This should not be the case. I acknowledge that environmental policies
exist, yet the lack of serious implementations for these policies makes them good as garbage (pun
intended). If we are truly committed to the endeavor for justice, then it must be encompassing, with
no anthropomorphic bias. Contemporary Australian Philosopher Peter Singer calls this bias, in
context to nonhuman animals, ​speciesism​. Speciesism is giving preference to our species over
another, in the absence of morally relevant differences (Singer, 1975). We tend to prioritize our own
human needs than others because we feel as though we are the only morally relevant beings. Singer
argues that if it’s not okay to do it to a human, then it is equally not okay to do it to an animal.
There should be a place for nonhumans, especially the environment, when we talk about justice. For
instance, much like the working class, when we talk about justice in the context of ​socialism​, the
environment is also being exploited. It is alienated from the discussion of justice. If it is not okay to
do it to the working class, then it is equally not okay to do it to the environment. There should be
safety measures to ensure that there are entitlements and rights that secure the environment from not
being abused. For instance, apart from Peter Singer showing us the absurdity of the belief that the
only beings that can desire and deserve justice are humans, there is recently a growing trend of
advocacies that cater to the idea of ​rectifying the abhorrent exploitation and negligence of and to the
environment. Vocal concerns and protests for environmental awareness are critical since piquing the
interest of large groups of individuals through active lobbying is effective in solving the systemic
problem of global warming (more of this later). The social media-environmental campaign named
#TeamTrees and its goal of planting twenty million trees by the end of 2019 have been widely
successful, planting a little over sixteen million, inching a little bit closer to its goal by the minute.
Another example is the rise to fame of the young environmental activist Greta Thunberg. She has
encouraged 125 countries to participate in her Global Strike for Climate protest are but a few
examples of the world’s heavy attempts to do something about the environment, giving it a sense of
justice. What all these mean is simple. If the likes of Peter Singer, Greta Thunberg, and a plethora
of people show us the injustices we do to other entities, then we should re-evaluate our notion of
justice as not a mere discussion of what humans deserve but of what every life desires.

After all is said and done, the next question then becomes: So what? Why is it of grave
importance to show or to prove how justice could be applied, not only to humans but also to the
environment? What is the value behind telling people that something as ontologically and morally
different as the environment has a place when we talk about our notion of justice? These questions
will be answered with my second argument, which will discuss how our global concern for
environmental justice is intertwined with our humanitarian clamor for ​social justice. Understand
that environmental issues don’t operate in a vacuum nor their own separate boxes. These are
ultimately triggered and branch off to different dimensions of a state-- political, economic, and
social. For instance, environmental concerns may arise because of the lack of proper waste disposal
of people. Some may arise from lackluster economic and political policies that fail to facilitate and
limit large companies from their carbon emissions. Or most probably, environmental issues occur
because of class. Once this happens, ecological problems become systemic and structural problems
that affect every individual in the globe. But first, we ask the question, what is environmental justice
anyway? Environmental justice, at first, might seem as though it only talks about protecting the
environment. This is a misconception. The notion of the preservation of justice and how we should
enact legal grounds for its protection is ecological justice (Baxter, 2005; Wenz 1988).
Environmental justice, on the other hand, discusses how minorities or small communities shouldn’t
be forced to deal with more pollution because they belong to a certain race, ethnicity, or income
bracket (Scholsberg, 2007). The critical difference is that the former is more scientific, while the
latter is socio-economic; both are political to a certain degree. Environmental justice operates in the
context that wealthier and more developed communities tend to have green spaces, advanced
technologies that lessen their carbon emissions, grocery stores with nutritious organic food, and,
most importantly, money to afford. Say, for instance, the states of California, Los Angeles, and New
York; countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, Finland, and other Nordic countries. In a
nutshell, wealthier communities have the resources to access healthier and greener lifestyles. They
have the economical choice of choosing, for instance, not to buy a product that has dangerous and
significant repercussions to the environment. The main issue here is that while developed
communities and countries enjoy the luxury of clean air and purified water, less developed and
more ethnically diverse ones tend to have industrial sites, heavy-duty diesel polluted ports and
hazardous waste. These slowly saturate and pollute the air and water. Even if they had, for instance,
grocery stores that provide organic food and bulk packages, they opt to buy single-use plastic
packages, non-organic food because they are inexpensive though harmful to the environment. We
see this happen in Poca, West Virginia, and Cleveland, Ohio, also in countries like the Philippines,
large parts of China, and India. It is the less developed and more diverse communities that
experience the worst effects of climate catastrophe. These could be shown up in three levels (Jones,
2010):
 1. Factories that produce plastics are concentrated in areas alongside more impoverished
communities. The production of plastics releases fumes and toxic chemicals into the air,
making the people of these areas vulnerable to diseases.
2. Less developed communities, unlike relatively wealthier ones, have the majority of their
population in the low to mid-class. This means that people of these communities don’t have
the economic liberty to purchase or afford products that are designed to be greener. People
often resort to buying cheaper products. These more affordable products are often the most
dangerous to the environment.
3. The disposal of plastics is unregulated in less developed countries because there is a lack of
implementation when it comes to proper waste disposal. Also note that, in cities of the
United States, developed states like California and Los Angeles tend to dump and transport
their waste to relatively rural areas like Warren County, North Carolina.

Additionally, rural areas and developing nations, though they are home to indigenous
communities, are full of commercially valuable resources like oil and coal. Urban and developed
countries often extract these resources resulting in displacement and pollution. After the extraction,
rural communities don’t gain profit from any of these pollutive activities, and instead left with
contaminated environments and destroyed homes. These are the specific injustices environmental
justice tackle. It talks about reimagining a system where those who are at a disadvantage because of
their race and economic status are made more miserable because they are unable to profit from the
resources that the world depends on. They are also made sick by the environmental contamination
that comes with extracting those resources. However, it is a complete and utter shame that people,
governments, and nations seem to turn a blind eye to the environmental issues we come across each
day. John Rawls, a 20th-century American political philosopher, argued that ​justice-as-fairness.
Any inequalities that exist in a social system should favor the least well-off because this levels the
playing field of society (Rawls, 1985). He says that for justice to be achieved, it must enhance the
quality of life of all individuals in the society, prioritizing the people who are sadly at the bottom of
the socio-economic strata. What environmental justice seeks to achieve is to eliminate these social
and ecological injustices. It shouldn’t be the case that wealthier communities are safe in their little
bubble of economic privilege while dumping their waste to less developed countries and
simultaneously extracting their resources. Less developed countries suffer the intense burden of
global warming. It leads to illness, ​displacement ​and alienation from their homes, and at worst:
death. Is this fair? What this all means is that social inequalities are intimately tied to the
environment. It seems as though we put a high premium to the discussions of abolishing racism,
sexism, unfair labor practices, and whatnot, but turning a blind eye to environmental issues just
because, in hindsight, it is nonhumanitarian. If we genuinely want to achieve justice, then it is time
for us to stop viewing it as ​two-dimensional.​ This paper made me realize that it’s only through
having a holistic perception of our notion of justice, and acknowledging that the struggle of the
working class, the ethnic minorities, women, peace fighters, and environmental activists are all
interconnected can we have a genuine response in ​ending injustice.
References:

● Baxter, Brian (2005). ​A Theory of Ecological Justice. ​Retrieved from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289156455_A_theory_of_ecological_justice

● Chaudhuri, R. A. (2019, June 04). ​Humans will perish in 31 years, warns latest climate
change study.​ Retrieved from: ​https://bit.ly/37QignC

● Jones, Van (2010). ​Environmental Justice. ​Retrieved from: ​https://bit.ly/2R7awri

​ etrieved from:
● Rawls, John (1985). ​Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical. R
https://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/jbell/rawls1.pdf

● Schlosberg, David (2007). ​Defining Environmental Justice. ​Retrieved from:

https://bit.ly/37ONiMB

● Singer, Peter (1975). ​Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.
Retrieved from: ​http://public.callutheran.edu/~chenxi/phil345_111.pdf

● Spratt & Dunlop (2018, August). ​What lies beneath: The understatement of existential
climate risk.​ Retrieved from:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_a0d7c18a1bf64e698a9c8c8f18a42889.pdf

● Wenz, Peter S. (1988). ​Environmental Justice. ​Retrieved from: ​https://bit.ly/2szJGOF