race gender class and environmentalism

Chapter 6
Race, Gender, Class and Environmentalism

Throughout history there has been many stipulations concerning our environment and how we as a population has reacted to its cause for such drastic and demanding changes over time. There has also been many areas that is said to be over populated because of the high birth rate across the United States and the world in such third world countries as Asia, Haiti and Nigeria. Stats has taught us that the united states make up of 6% of the world’s population, and consume 50% of it’s global resources. Social justice as well as logic suggest that US population should consume less. Let’s not forget that when the US started building a democracy after discovering the new world, there was the Native American population that roamed free in the wilderness across the US and tried to prevent the discovery of such a land. But unsuccessfully accomplished that task because of the Europeans quest for greed for profit that was obtained by more ownership of land to produce crops, building, expansion ect. With the help of free labor by African slaves that where brought just for that purpose alone more than three hundred years before they were freed due to a battle between North America and South America in which ended in the declaration of independence that was signed in 1865.
Environmental Injustice: 1800s and the early 1900s
Because of the domination of people of color men and woman has shared the same environmental experience. Over a course of years there was many African Americans that was enslaved and subjected to many harsh conditions of labor and in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s many migrated from different parts of the US to mine, and as factory workers ect. The link between poverty and women environmental degradation was well established.
In the late 1800’s through 1900’s there was much demand for industrial workers in the US mostly appealing to the lower class. These low end jobs ranged from pottery to factory work, in which many of these jobs where very hazardous and by any means providing unsafe environmental conditions. Although the United States was suffering its own great depression in the early part of the 1930’s there was still corporations earning a hefty economic income by receiving cheap labor which caused for little wages and long hours at a faster pace to ensure maximum productivity. A great deal of these plants where built within the poorest communities spreading pollution with toxins that caused an overlapping number of workers and their families to become gravely ill. Many of these illnesses included pneumonia, kidney and liver diseases that sometimes more often ended in death. With a steady over growing population leading into the late 1960’s and early 1970’s there was a cause for much demand by environmental activist in which all in part was highly educated at least 97% where educated groups that formed many organizations among local unions to put an end to these sorts of unsafe and chemical hazardous working conditions. With the help of one leader and primary environmentalist named Carson who started the birth of the modern environmental movement, argued that people had the right to a safe environment. Reform environmental organizations benefitted from the mobilization and membership skyrocketed in leading organizations like the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society in the 1960’s. As a result many corporations where inclined to comply with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines, they reported environmental violations, filed complaints and forced companies to comply with the regulations. The environmental protection is fully compatible with an improving economy may help to bring a RGC coalition is to develop in a way that can unite RGC America’s social groups in common purpose, it will need to combine its efforts to protect the environment with a firmer and more explicit commitment to the simultaneous achievement of a greater degree of economic and social justice.