Faces of Environmental Racism: Confronting Issues of Global Justice

(Paperback, Second Edition)

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Description

Racial minorities in the US are disproportionatly exposed to toxic wastes and other enviromental hazards, and clean-up efforts in their communities are slower and less thorough than efforts elsewhere. Internationally, wealthy countries of the north increasingly ship hazardous wastes to poorer countries of the south, resulting in such tragedies as the disaster at Bhopal. Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, this study exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate technique and whether there are alternative routes to sustainable development in the south.

Reviews

This wide-ranging collection of essays . . . is vivid and rigorous. -- Bernard Boxill, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
A compelling collection . . . [on] a global issue that demands our immediate attention. -- Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz; author of Blues Legend and Black Feminism
Within the context of civil rights, the book clearly illustrates the role of environmental health and justice. * Choice Reviews *
This volume portrays extremely well the diversity of perpetrators and victims of environmental injustice around the world. The book makes a strong contribution to the literature, and it is one of the few volumes to recognize environmental justice as a pressing domestic and international issue concurrently. * Environment *
In its second edition Faces of Environmental Racism remains an accessible and penetrating introduction to the issue of environmental racism in North America and as perpetrated in Africa by multi-national corporations based in industrialised western nations. * Environmental Values *
Westra and Wenz have provided an invaluable and long overdue anthology in which all essays . . . provide insights not available elsewhere. Faces is accessible, yet challenging, and should be required reading in environmental ethics and policy courses, and would be a valuable supplement in social, political, and ethnic studies courses as well. . . . [and] provides a compelling cultural mirror of environmental injustice from which we cannot turn away. -- Shai Collins-Chobanian, University of Arizona, West * Environmental Ethics *

Author Bio

Laura Westra is professor emerita of philosophy at the University of Windsor and the author or editor of numerous books, including An Environmental Proposal for Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), Faces of Environmental Racism (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), Perspectives on Ecological Integrity (Kluwer), The Greeks and the Environment (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) and Technology and Values (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). Bill Lawson is professor of philosophy at Michigan State University.