US and global Environmental Justice (CfP March 15, 2017) Is There a Future for Environmental & Climate Justice in the Era of Trump? The US presidential election in September 2016 is still puzzling civil society and the academic world. Criticism ranges from appreciation to dismissal and
challenge. The political and societal constellation that led to both the nomination of Trump and his counterpart Clinton as well as the result of the electoral
(and popular) vote became subject to dividing debates about the US democracy and the future of the West. As for Environmental Justice, the announcements of the
transition team haven't been very promising. In a previous news, it has been argued that Trump has been the better choice than Clinton for reasons of confronting
the neoliberal agenda that has been shared by both Clinton and Trump. In this article, considerations have been made with respect to a reform (or revolution)
in the Democrat Party by Bernie Sanders and his platform (see here). But time is going on and the Trump transition team has already made far reaching decisions like the appointment of the climate skeptic Myron Ebell as head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which caused a successful online petition by the academic community. Mainstream media have already started collecting reasons why Trump's EPA nomination could spell a disaster for the environment. A less emotional cover has been provided by a video on CNN (see below) and by articles in The New York Times and The Guardian. However, an academic discussion and exchange of arguments on the "Trump effect" so to say with regards to Environmental Justice is still lacking. At this point, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Environmental Justice, Sylvia Hood Washington, is now calling for manuscript submissions that explore why those who are most at risk will be members of communities who are already socially, economically, environmentally, and culturally marginalized. The journal asks what can be expected for the already marginalized communities who are most susceptible to the effects of environmental damage in face of the next administration's announcement to take the United States out of the Paris climate treaty and eliminate the Obama Clean Power Plan for greenhouse gases by increasing our reliance on oil, gas, and "clean coal." If the EPA is gutted by the Trump administration and stripped of its purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress, what will be the consequences? Submission Deadline: March 15, 2017 To submit your paper online please click here. |  Image: © assetseller |
