The Environment, Fair Placement of Lulus, and Economic Growth

Equality is something that most people can agree on as an excellent goal for society, yet it rarely comes into play when the time comes to place something that modern society needs, but doesn’t want. Many questions come up on environmental justice such as what to do with LULUs. LULUs are any type of building or structure with high levels of pollution associated with it and we often don’t know where to place them that is fair, respectful, and utilitarian to bring out the most good in society. The questions that arise around LULUs and other forms of environmental pollution are the increased health problems associated, economic issues surrounding them like do we need more economic growth, is placing them in strictly poor racial minority areas moral, and who should pay for the clean up and standards when they need to be built. I argue in this paper that placing LULUs in strictly poor areas either here or abroad is morally unjust and measures need to be taken to prevent unwanted polluters to be built.

An article written by Bullard says that LULUs (locally undesirable land use) are buildings like incinerators, chemical factories, landfills, and concentrated animal feeding operations. He says that while these necessary structures are very important to modern society, most people don’t want them around because of the stench and pollution associated with them. We need them though, so where should they go? He says that we can consider it just to place them in poor areas because despite causing some unnecessary side effects like health, stench, and environmental degradation they do bring in some decent jobs. So it is ok to place them in some of the downtown, inner city areas where unemployment is high to give people jobs. I think most people agree that unemployment is universally bad, but the consequences that come from frequent economic growth can sometimes outweigh the good associated with it.

The frequent debate in social philosophy is between Kantian and Utilitarian ethics. Kantian means respecting others as ends rather than means and utilitarian means bring out the best possible situation from a choice even if it means using people as stepping stones as means to reach your goal. Another less discussed perspective is that of consequentialism, which means a choice prevents as much evil as possible. For example, cancer is higher in areas with more lead in the air that comes from LULUs. There are higher rates of encephaly in areas with LULUs. If LULUs are placed overseas with other countries then there are higher rates of human exploitation if jobs that come from LULUs are outsourced to countries with lower human rights laws. All of the LULUs cannot be outsourced, so that means the ones that are outsourced are just pollution factories being spread. So instead of one country being polluted, the whole planet gets to have more pollution and trash. We may be spreading the economic growth and progress to other countries, but at what cost? More will always need to be built until poor communities cannot support anymore and they will need to be moved into rich areas. The solution is to end unlimited economic growth because the Earth and the species that inhabit it cannot support this way of life.