Kimberly K. Smith

Traffic Noise and Inequality in the Twin Cities, Minnesota

ABSTRACT It is widely known that prolonged exposure to high levels of traffic noise has several health effects. While scholarship in environmental justice has explored the environmental equity hypothesis in a wide range of areas, whether the spatial distribution of traffic noise is equitable among different racial and socioeconomic groups has rarely been explored, especially in the United States. This article addresses this lacuna by examining this relationship in the Twin Cities Metro Region, Minnesota. Traffic data from the Minnesota Department of Transportation were used to model the propagation of traffic noise over the study area and aircraft noise contour lines were added to account for aircraft noise. Inequities associated with exposure to chronic traffic noise were investigated using selected demographic and socioeconomic variables from the U.S. Census 2000. Statistical analysis was based on a regression model that addressed spatial autocorrelation. Results indicate that there is an association between noise levels and household income, median household value, the percentage of non-white residents, and the percentage of the population less than 18 years of age.

A manifesto for theory in environmental studies and sciences

Environmental studies and sciences (ESS), an inherently practical field, nonetheless demands greater attention to its theoretical assumptions as a necessary step toward continued intellectual and pedagogical development and real-world relevance. This need for theory arises from the status of ESS as an integrative interdiscipline—one practitioners of ESS celebrate, yet with considerably greater challenges in achieving inclusivity and coherence than other interdisciplinary fields face. Three examples are briefly raised here: the definition of environment in ESS, how environmental actors are conceptualized, and the identity of ESS as a problem-oriented field. These three examples are initial priorities requiring better theorization, with many intellectual resources ESS can draw upon to address them. We close by reminding the reader that theories are ideas that take us places, not just idle speculation, and by advocating “theory across the (ESS) curriculum.” In addition to the three examples we cover, we invite the reader to join us in identifying and evaluating other current theoretical assumptions in ESS, in reframing ESS on more robust theoretical grounds, and in integrating this work into the curriculum.

Natural Subjects: Nature and Political Community

Environmental political theory poses new challenges to our received political concepts and values. Increasingly, we are reconceptualising nature as a subject rather than solely an object of politics. On one front, we are being challenged to think of natural entities as subjects of justice - as bearers of rights or interests that the political system should accommodate. On a second front, we are being challenged to see nature as a subject of power, constructed and ordered through scientific and political practice. These reconceptualisations have significant implications for our political practices and institutions.

Justice and Political Duties

We expect governments and citizens to resolve environmental problems in a fair or just way. But what do we mean by justice? This chapter explores different concepts of justice, as well as the social contract theory of political obligation. It then examines the duties of government, citizens, and corporations with respect to the environment, introducing concepts such as environmental human rights, ecological citizenship, and corporate social responsibility.

Do We Have Duties to Nonhumans

This chapter addresses the question, to whom do we owe justice? Or, in other words, who belongs to the moral community? Traditional moral theories usually limit the moral community to humans. Environmental ethicists, in contrast, argue that at least some nonhuman entities have moral status. This chapter reviews arguments concerning the moral status of animals, species, ecosystems, and nature itself. It includes discussion of intrinsic and instrumental value, as well as Elizabeth Anderson’s pluralist-expressivist value theory.

Property and Stewardship

Most laws aiming at protecting the environment limit private property rights to some extent. This chapter explores the meaning and value of private property rights, their relationship to political freedom, and reasons for limiting those rights. In addition, it discusses moral arguments for voluntarily recognizing community interests in private property and for exercising property rights in a way that is consistent with the ideal of stewardship.

Stewardship as a Vocation

How do your environmental values fit into your life? This chapter explores the idea of environmental stewardship as a vocation, a way to give meaning to our choice of career and lifestyle. It also explains how one’s workplace or school can affect one’s moral development and how one might influence the moral ecologies of these institutions so that they support ethical environmental actions. It concludes by considering how the political arena can be a place to practice stewardship by working to create a society that supports your environmental values.

Why Study Environmental Ethics

Ethics is a field in philosophy that focuses on explaining and defending judgments about right and wrong conduct. Ethicists use the method of ethical inquiry to examine value judgments critically, clarifying them and resolving conflicts among them. This chapter takes a brief tour of metaethics to orient us before delving into more specific questions about how to answer questions about environmental values. The chapter concludes with an introduction to environmental ethics, which addresses the need for and general outlines of an ethic that recognizes the value of nonhuman nature and our duties toward it.

Do We Have Duties to Future Generations

Environmenetal advocates typically argue that we have a duty to protect the environment for future generations. But moral philosophers have raised questions about whether we can have duties to future generations. This chapter discusses some of those questions, including the Nonidentity Problem. It also explores two important policy questions involving duties to future generations: setting the discount rate in climate policy and managing global population growth.

Reading the land: on the ethical foundations of environmental studies’ signature pedagogy

Many environmental studies and sciences (ESS) programs include courses that teach students how to interpret the landscape—to “read the land.” I argue that this practice fits Lee Shulman’s concept of a “signature pedagogy”: a pedagogy that is characteristic of a field or discipline and that implicitly shapes the character of future practice. One dimension of a signature pedagogy is its “implicit structure,” a set of beliefs about the attitudes, values, and dispositions it seeks to develop. Drawing on the work of Iris Murdoch and Lawrence Blum, I argue that teaching students how to read the land is aimed at developing their “moral perception”: their ability to appreciate the moral significance of the various elements of the landscape. This practice develops a certain kind of attentiveness to the landscape that ESS promotes, and should promote, as the mark of an environmentally knowledgeable and responsible person.