Environmental Literature | Social Justice | Sustainable Futures
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Blog Post – Alyssa Cleveland

January 21st, 2017 | Posted by Alyssa Cleveland in Uncategorized

Many people have become motivated to care about ecology (particularly air quality and water quality) because they have or know some who has asthma, cancer, or another illness that is environmentally triggered. Do you or someone you know have health concerns that shape your relationship with the environment?

It has always been intriguing to me the way that people choose to think and behave based on an issue’s closeness to them. An issue can be easily dismissed by people who do not feel an urgent or immediate conscience of said issue. Our perceptions of a situation are impacted by our own personal relationship to the problem at hand. While air and water quality are definitely environmental concerns, the urgency to change public attitudes and behaviors relating to these problems only comes when they are viewed as human health concerns. The fault in this phenomenon of thinking is the initial separation of the environment and humans. The Environment is perceived to be some far off, distant entity that we as individuals have no direct impact on; when in reality, the environment is everything from the air we breathe to the ecological systems that we disrupt with light pollution.

 

Protestors of Flint Water Crisis (http://www.blackbottomarchives.com/blackpapersocialjustice/2016/10/11/flint-still-doesnt-have-water)

By connecting human life to the environment, there is more of a responsibility felt on our parts to ensure healthy relations and behaviors. My relationship with the environment is undoubtedly shaped by the health of people in areas who are either affected by environmental oppression, or people in nations that have harsh ecological conditions which hinder development. Cox speaks of “sacrifice zones” which are essentially areas in which legislatures feel less responsibility to protect the environment due to the race or socioeconomic status of the people in said region. This discriminatory, illogical thinking strips people of the basic right to a clean, healthy living environment.

 

Work Cited

Cox, Robert, and Phaedra C. Pezullo. “Chapter 2 Contested Meanings of the Environment.” Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2016. Print.

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