Environmental Justice

What is Environmental Justice?

You may have heard the term and wondered what people were talking about. This is a term which luckily was not claimed by the similarly named organization Earthjustice, who propose that a whole-hearted devotion to nature is the solution to our problems. Earthjustice, while combining rhetoric of justice (they claim to be earth's lawyers) with rhetoric of nature, are not in the field of "Environmental Justice."

Frankly, "Environmental Justice" could be worse; it could be in the same vein as Earthjustice. It is a beautiful set of words, Environmental Justice, and it did not become associated with the worst possible movement.

Environmental Justice is a scholarly movement that proposes an anthropocentric approach to environmental issues which simultaneously is aware of class and dispels the myth of nature. Final verdict: a valid outlook on things. The complex ecologies that make up this world cannot be ignored, but neither can the problems of humans that inter-relate with the environmental around them. Ultimately, Environmental Justice marries these two studies by giving up blind, uncritical loyalty to some mythic, nonexistent nature. Whatever.

However, I want the phrase "Environmental Justice" for The Society for the Civilization of Natural Landscapes. Environmental Justice should not be justice in the context of the environment... it should be justice for the environment. Earthquakes? Hurricanes? Bears? Fuck that shit. Nature doesn't need a good lawyer, it needs a ruthless prosecutor.

But how can Environmental Justice be achieved? Where do we start? I propose that this become a legal field; we punish, quarantine and rehabilitate nature in the same way that we do criminals. We hit it back, we rescind its mercifully limited rights, we box it away where it is not harmful and we do all within our power to remake it in a more productive, and better socialized image.

Through the even, methodical hand of the law, and the extension of true culpability onto the second most powerful force on earth, can we finally bring order to this insane world.

Ultimately, the only way we can do this is through the "pedagogy of hate," but more on that next week.

Until then, I would like you all to contemplate how one would go about punishing nature.

That's all for tonight, folks.
And remember to walk tall and proud in your lives of waste and leisure.
Emanuel