Analyze

Operations of transnational companies are affecting marginalized communities across the globe. As Kaswan had highlighted through examples of Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in India, as well as pollution associated with oil companies in Latin America, the implications of distributive environmental justice in such contexts are apparent yet difficult to address. Across international boundaries law enforcement becomes increasingly difficult, which is at the heart of the problem of my research topic. 

“The “right” scale will depend upon the nature of the harm being analyzed and purpose for which information is being gathered.” (Kaswan, p 29)

“Numerous studies, at a multiplicity of scales, analyze the distribution of a wide variety of land uses, as well as risk: what exposures, with what consequences, do people experience?” (Kaswan, p 33). 

This text builds on concepts of equality, bases for deviating from the core idea of equality, and the multiple contexts that define and shape distributive justice. Kaswan additionally advances the distributive environmental justice by outlining the different contexts, including historical land use patterns, government regulations, infrastructure, and enforcement and the implications that each of these dimensions have on contributing to distributive injustice. 

The main narrative of this text builds on foundational ideas on equality and extrapolates it further to establish how distributive environmental justice, its ideas and articulations, as well as its operationalization, has taken shape throughout the years. To outline these points, Kaswan outlines different cases of environmental disaster, and subsequent government responses, to showcase how government institutions have both upheld and endeavored to address distributive environmental inequality in the past decades.

The Weldon Spring Interpretive Center was a discursive jamboree for those of us curious about how anthropocenics are narrated. This particular display at the center stood out to me becuase of its resemblance to other interpretive center or science museum displays representing the "life cycle" of an organism or of cycles of ecosystem conditions (e.g. forest succession). One of the first displays visitors see upon entering the center, the display's format and captions read to me as a clear attempt to control the discourse about nuclear contamination and remediation in the area. The image--or its creator--wants to do the work of suggesting that the clean up process has brought the place "back to how it was," cycling back to a good beginning. The text used in this display is exclusively neutral or positive. The arrows moving from each circle to the next purports to display how "this area has served many purposes over the years." It states "these exhibits are designed to educate you on the history, science, and efforts of many to bring the Weldon Spring site full circle." In this cycle, Weldon Spring is not a hazardouse waste site or contaminated site but rather "a site for remedial action." Thus we are to see the space as a "home to many people," then "a TNT and DNT plant," then "a uranium feed and matierals plant," then "a site for remedial action," "an extensive cleanup effort," "a successful solution," and, finally, "a place to enjoy and learn." In this emphasis on a "return" to good conditions, the displacement of residents, health issues plant workers and others' faced, and the uncertainties or messiness of what adequate clean up is are omitted. In this image, and in much of the interpretive center, the discourse around nuclear materials, its effects and cleanup, is neatened, simplified, into a narrative that de-emphasizes the actual health impacts of these processes and of the political wherewithall that was required to make that remediation happen.

The notion of cycling back to something is a particularly intriguing move

This article.video explains how a bunch of grade school children decided to learn how to prepare for emergency storm situations.  The FEMA for kids organization came to First Avenue School in Newark, NJ and put on a presentation how to plan and organize when a disaster stricks.  The FEMA organization explained how to keep your pets safe what you need to have availiable for your pet, food, blanket's etc.  They also reviewed first aid kits and what to place in the kits, bandages, antibotics, bandaids. etc.