Environmental justice, for those of you who may not be familiar with the term, goes something like this: no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
Interpretation
Environmental justice emphasizes equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across communities.
In this quote, Majora Carter articulates the principle of environmental justice, which asserts that all communities should have equal access to environmental benefits and should not disproportionately face environmental hazards. The notion stresses the importance of fairness in environmental policies and the need to rectify disparities that exist based on race, class, or location.
In practice
In a speech about climate change, you might say, 'As Majora Carter said, no community should face more burdens than another when it comes to environmental issues.'
Smart infrastructure can provide cost-saving ways for municipalities to handle both infrastructure and social needs. And we want to shift the systems that open the doors for people who were formerly tax burdens to become part of the tax base.
Poor people of all colors are getting poorer and our communities are getting more toxic. There is a misconception that to grow our economy we will have to do business as usual, because cleaning up the environment, mitigating climate change is just too costly. Well, I say the business of poverty is just too expensive a bill for humanity to pay any longer.
Environmental justice [means that] no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.
One thing I noticed working in the Bronx is that leaders come in the craziest places. They don't always show up at community board meetings. Sometimes it's just the guys on the corner that the boys on the block respect.
I personally think that gentrification happens long before you start seeing white people in formerly people-of-color neighborhoods. It starts happening when we start telling the young, hard-working, quote-unquote 'smart' kids that they need to measure success by how far they get away from our communities.
We need to work together to embrace and repair our land, repair our power systems, and repair ourselves. It's time to stop building the shopping malls, the prisons, the stadiums, and other tributes to all of our collective failures.
I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing.
The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.
When one looks at Nature through the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it takes on a deeper significance than when one stands outside. More of Nature is thus expressed - it becomes part of a greater whole.
The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.
Those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don't have time to deny it - they're busy dealing with it.
Now the swinging bridge Is quieted with creepers ... Like our tendrilled life.
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