Environmental Justice: More Hard Work Yet to Be Done

The environmental justice movement began in 1982, when residents of Shocco Township, a low-income, African-American community located in Warren County, North Carolina, protested the state’s plan to locate a hazardous waste disposal site in their neighborhood (Bullard 1994). This peaceful demonstration soon triggered a grassroots national movement, as civil rights leaders, politicians, churches, environmental groups, and scholars began advocating for environmental justice around the country. Scientists and scholars also began publishing articles on the relationship between race/ethnicity, income, and environmental health; and governments began adopting environmental justice regulations and policies (Shrader-Frechette 2002).

Although the distribution of environmental hazards and risks clearly raises significant ethical issues with implications for human health, bioethics journals and textbooks include little discussion of environmental justice issues (Lee 2017). In their target article, “The Bioethics of Environmental Injustice: Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Implications of Unhealthy Environments,” Keisha Ray and Jane Fallis Cooper (2023) argue that bioethicists should advocate for environmental justice in their scholarship, teaching, and professional practices and that there should be a legal right to a healthy environment. Ray and Cooper support these conclusions by demonstrating that bioethical principles imply a duty to promote environmental justice and that empirical evidence shows that differential exposures to environmental hazards and risks can lead to inequitable health outcomes, especially for people of color and other socioeconomically disadvantaged groups.

I agree with Ray and Cooper that bioethicists should pay more attention to environmental justice issues (see Resnik 2012; Resnik et al. 2018). Indeed, our profession lags behind many other professions with respect to this topic, since political, legal, and scientific/scholarly support for environmental justice policies has been growing steadily since the beginning of the 21^st century (Environmental Protection Agency 2023a). The environmental justice movement has also expanded beyond the US to other countries. Despite an emerging consensus on the importance of environmental justice, significant disagreements often arise in transforming this political ideal into a concrete reality because conflicting values and interests are often at stake.

Nowhere are these disagreements more pronounced than in controversies concerning climate change policies. Scientific evidence indicates that: 1) global surface temperatures have risen by about 1.0°C since the industrial revolution; 2) anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a significant cause of this change; 3) temperatures are expected to rise an additional 1.5°C by 2100 unless these emissions decrease drastically; and 4) global temperature increases are associated with increases in tropical storms, flooding, heat waves, droughts, and allergic and vector-borne diseases (National Aeronautics and Space Administration 2023). Moreover, climate change is likely to disproportionately impact vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, including poor people, racial or ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, chronically ill people, and children (Schlosberg and Collins 2014; Environmental Protection Agency 2023b).

While climate change raises profound questions of environmental justice, determining which policies best promote justice is not an easy task because conflicting values and interests are at stake (Resnik 2022). Consider, for example, proposals to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and encourage the development and use of alternative sources of energy (such as solar, wind, and nuclear power) by imposing high taxes on fossil fuels. While these proposals are often touted as promoting environmental justice, they may have the opposite effect in many instances because increases in energy costs tend to disproportionately impact low-income people (Kolstad 2014). Since energy is essential for economic activity, agriculture, transportation, education, and health care, high taxes on fossil fuels may negatively affect the wellbeing and society’s most disadvantaged members, which would be a grave injustice. Also, jobs losses in the fossil fuel industry are likely to disproportionately workers at the lower end of the income scale, such as coal miners (Resnik 2022).

Many advocates for climate change mitigation policies now recognize that their proposals could exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities if not implemented judiciously and they argue that there needs to be a “just transition” from reliance on fossil fuels toward the use of alternative energy sources (Climate Justice Alliance 2021). A “just transition” might include polices that provide poor people with economic assistance to counteract the effects of rising energy costs and offer education and training to people who lose jobs in the fossil fuel industry so they can get back on their feet. However, achieving a “just transition” may be easier said than done, due to political opposition to policies like these and the unintended, adverse consequences of policies that are adopted.

For another illustration of how climate change policies can create complex environmental justice issues, consider proposals to promote the use of electric vehicles. California has passed legislation to require passenger vehicles, trucks, or SUVs sold in the state to produce zero carbon emissions in the next decade. Under this legislation, only vehicles powered by electricity of fuel cells can be sold in California as of 2035 (State of California 2023). To produce electric vehicles, manufacturers need access to minerals used in batteries, especially lithium. However, lithium mining can have adverse environmental impacts. On July 16, 2023, a US federal appeals court approved the construction of a large lithium mine on federal lands over the objections of Paiute Native American tribes and environmental groups. The Paiute tribes oppose the mine because it will be constructed on land that they view as sacred and because it will create environmental and public health hazards and risks (Siegler 2023). In other Brazil and other countries, indigenous people have opposed the construction of lithium mines for similar reasons (Reventós 2023). Disputes about lithium mining illustrate vividly some of the complexities involved in decision-making and policy related to environmental justice, because production of electric vehicles may promote global environmental justice at the expense of local environmental justice.

Climate change is not the only environmental justice topic involving conflicting values and interests. Others include energy production, regulation of pollutants and toxic chemicals, waste disposal, urban development, water rights, occupational health and safety, the use of pesticides and genetically modified organisms in agriculture and public health, and environmental health research with human subjects (Resnik 2012). Environmental justice also raises important theoretical questions, such how to define environmental justice; the connection between environmental justice and traditional theories of justice (e.g., egalitarianism, utilitarianism, and libertarianism); the relationship between local, national, and global environmental justice; and how to resolve conflicts related to environmental justice in democratic and pluralistic societies (Shrader-Frechette 2002; Resnik et al. 2018).

Clearly, there is no shortage of environmental justice topics that could benefit from additional bioethical analysis and reflection. Bioethicists can help advance the cause of environmental justice is by helping to frame, interpret, and resolve disagreements about environmental justice issues. While Ray and Cooper are to be commended for raising awareness about environmental justice issues among bioethicists, there is still much hard work yet to be done.