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Introduction
Environmental abuse is a pressing global issue that affects both the poor and the wealthy, and it is defined as the mistreatment of the natural environment by individuals, organizations, or governments. It can take many forms, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing, and the dumping of hazardous materials. The effects of environmental abuse are far-reaching and often devastating, particularly for those who are already marginalized and vulnerable. The poor are often the most affected by environmental abuse, as they are the least able to protect themselves from the harmful effects of pollution and other environmental hazards. The wealthy, on the other hand, are often able to insulate themselves from the worst effects of environmental abuse, but they are not immune to its impacts. Environmental abuse can have a profound influence on the economy, public health, and the environment itself, hence the urgent need to identify ways to mitigate these impacts and possibly prevent more damage from occurring.
Impact of Environmental Abuse on Wealthy People
The financial and status gap between the wealthy and the poor leads to several significant differences in the way that environmental abuse affects them. However, the difference between them lies not only in the area of consequences and their severity. It has been established that the wealthy are more responsible for greenhouse gas emissions than the less wealthy individuals. The main reason behind this unequal distribution is the rates of energy consumption. People with higher incomes or monetary status are prone to traveling, which serves as the primary source of heightened energy expenditure (Oswald et al., 2020). Energy expenditure directly leads to the rates of greenhouse gas emissions.
However, unlike the poor, wealthy individuals or groups are often able to insulate themselves from the worst impacts of environmental abuse. Despite the fact that environmental abuse can have a number of health impacts, the rates of these adversaries for the wealthy are significantly reduced compared to the poor (Galiatsatos et al., 2020; Giesey et al., 2021). The wealthy can afford to live in areas with cleaner air and water, and they have the resources to recover quickly from environmental disasters. Keidel et al. (2019) presented empirical evidence showing that economic status is a major mediating factor in lung function and air pollution. The findings suggest that having wealth enables an individual to live in ambient environments and access high-quality health care, thereby minimizing their risk of suffering from respiratory infections that can be associated with poor environmental quality.
The wealthy people’s ability to protect themselves from detrimental outcomes of environmental abuse does not entirely shield them from its impacts. Respiratory problems are a common health impact of environmental abuse. The rates of air and water pollution make it increasingly difficult to find fully untouched spaces to live. Furthermore, the costs of establishing these kinds of spaces become more expensive as well. This leads to wealthy people being exposed to the same environmental issues as the poor, but to a lesser extent.
Despite being caused by affluent people’s financial privilege, environmental abuse has a number of economic impacts on wealthy groups. Firstly, it can lead to increased costs for these groups, as they may need to spend more on environmental protection and clean-up of their living spaces. Secondly, it can result in job losses, independent of the workers’ income and status, as companies in polluting industries may be forced to close down. This can lead to a decrease in tax revenue for governments, which would increase tax rates for the wealthy, reducing their spending on luxury goods and services. Finally, environmental abuse can also cause social unrest, as people become frustrated with the wealthy for not doing enough to protect the environment.
The fact that wealthy groups have more freedom than the poor do when choosing where to live has important implications for their vulnerability to the effects of environmental degradation. For example, the rich can live in neighborhoods with great infrastructures, such as road networks and access to healthy foods. Unlike the poor stratum of the population, the opulent can eat healthy food and enjoy better immunity against many diseases (MacNell, 2018). However, even the wealthy are not immune from the impacts of environmental abuse. They may suffer from the same health effects as the poor, and their livelihoods can be threatened by environmental degradation.
Impact of Environmental Abuse on Poor People
The poorest people in the world are the most likely to suffer from the impacts of environmental abuse. Perls (2020) defines this type of environmental injustice as a persistent pattern in which actions that harm the environment disproportionately befall low-income communities and people of color. In the context of this analysis, environmental injustice occurs when environmental abuse produces a simultaneous alienating effect on the poor. It is difficult to talk about poverty and the environment without touching on the subject of race, more specifically, environmental racism.
Impoverished neighborhoods plagued by environmental injustice are also the victims of environmental racism. Tadese (2021) conceptualizes environmental racism as 1) the unequal enforcement of environmental laws and 2) policies or practices that concentrate on environmental abuse in colored, low-income communities. Coffey et al. (2020) reveal in a Shriver Center on Poverty Law report that three-quarters of Superfund hazardous waste sites in the United States of America are less than a mile from public housing. These statistics suggest that poor people are more likely to live in areas where there is little regulation of environmental hazards, and they are more likely to work in jobs that expose them to dangers such as lead and asbestos.
The concept of injustice becomes more prominent when one contrasts the demographics of vulnerable communities against the overall US population. Minority racial groups contribute less than 40% of the US population. Despite that, The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (2020) determined that these groups account for 50% of those living within a one-mile radius of the Superfund sites. Consistent with the EPA’s findings, White (2018) analyzed nine cities and counties with many hazardous facilities and showed that predominantly poor African Americans or Latinx neighbored them. Recent analysis also indicts pesticide manufacturing and farm use as environmental crimes against poor, minority racial groups (Donley et al., 2022). Indeed, racial minorities living in poverty seem to be systemically targeted by environmental injustice.
When people abuse the environment, poor individuals bear serious health consequences. The most egregious part of this action-consequence matrix is that the least likely abusers, such as children, bear the worst toll. Studies have linked environmental injustice to mental health issues (Malin, 2020), cancer (Castellón, 2021), and adverse maternal health outcomes (Franklin et al., 2019; Sears et al., 2018). Air pollution can cause respiratory infections, and the harm can be magnified because a child’s organs and mind are still developing. Moreover, researchers believe that the adverse health impacts of air pollution can outlast childhood and even produce transgenerational effects (Mathiarasan & Hüls, 2021). While studying asthma and environmental injustice among Missouri children, Harris (2019) found statistically significant clustering of the disease in neighborhoods dominated by non-white, poor residents. Consequently, these individuals were simultaneously exposed to greater environmental risk. Environmental injustice is also an underlying factor for asthma across different ages (Cook et al., 2021). Poor people often live in the most polluted neighborhoods, inhaling air contaminated with particulate matter and other toxins that predispose them to respiratory infections.
Another health impact of environmental abuse on poor people is a lack of access to safe and clean water. In many parts of the world, poor people do not have access to clean drinking water, and they are forced to use contaminated water for cooking and bathing. In the US, the water apartheid in Detroit and Flint has shown how serious environmental injustice can get, predisposing the affected communities to numerous waterborne diseases, such as cholera and typhoid (Bae & Lynch, 2022). Poor people are also often forced to live in areas that are prone to floods and droughts, and they lack the resources to cope with these extreme weather events. As a result, they are at increased risk of malnutrition, dehydration, and disease.
Environmental abuse has a number of impacts on economic access for poor people. Firstly, it can lead to the loss of livelihoods, as happened in the case of the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984. Over 3,000 people were killed, and many more were left disabled without any means of support (Kok et al., 2019). Secondly, environmental abuse can cause the displacement of people, as has happened in many cases of environmental degradation, such as the construction of dams. This can lead to loss of access to land and other resources, as well as social and economic exclusion. Thirdly, environmental abuse can lead to increased costs of living, as happened in the case of the Flint water crisis in the United States. In this case, the cost of water rose sharply, and many people were unable to afford it. This had a knock-on effect on other costs, such as food and fuel. Environmental abuse, therefore, has a number of impacts on economic access for poor people, which can lead to further poverty and exclusion.
Environmental abuse can have a number of negative impacts on education. Poor air quality, for example, can lead to health problems that make it difficult for children to concentrate in school or even to attend school at all. Water pollution can also lead to health problems and make it difficult for children to access clean water for drinking or bathing, which can impact their hygiene and overall well-being. Furthermore, environmental degradation can lead to the displacement of communities, which can disrupt children’s education. Finally, environmental crises can lead to increased stress and anxiety, which can affect children’s ability to learn.
The Matter of Environmental Justice
The movement of environmental justice is the initiative to protect the areas that are affected, endangered, or threatened to be affected by environmental abuse. It is prominent across the world, with many countries having activists of this movement since it allows them to make an impact on decisions made regarding the environment and public health. Over the years, activists around the globe have managed to achieve great results in the battle for a better environment, despite the fact that this activity is frequently associated with danger (Tempter et al., 2018). In the US, significant work has been done to improve the lives of indigenous people. Efforts are being made to reduce levels of lead in children’s blood, clean contaminated areas, and create extensive access to drinking water. In addition, the movement aims to implement policies of environmental justice among tribes and indigenous people (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2021). Outside of the US, a serious impact is being made as well. In particular, countries such as Spain, China, and Brazil are increasingly moving towards sustainable waste management (Tempter et al., 2018). The environmental justice movement proves, therefore, to be efficient on many environmental protection levels.
How to Ameliorate the Adverse Effects of Environmental Abuse
The important steps in solving a problem include acknowledgment, understanding, and conception of the will to find a solution. Donley et al. (2022) identified three underlying factors of environmental injustice: policy double standards, and inadequate protection of the most vulnerable. For example, exposure of workers to toxins and the export of environmentally hazardous substances to developing countries. The authors observed that the ongoing environmental abuse is perpetuated through specific policy and regulatory practices.
The best way to mitigate environmental consequences that are already plaguing a disproportionate number of poor people around the world is to stop causing more damage. This will not happen if wealthy countries and powerful corporations continue to outsource the most egregious environmentally polluting processes to less stringent regulatory environments. Such practices signify contempt for the poor, who are mostly the working class, whose labor continues to make obscene wealth for the owners of the production means under the capitalist system.
A practical starting point is to fill the policy and regulatory loopholes that sanction the abuse of the most vulnerable in society for the benefit of the wealthy minority. Certain scholars have favored the abolition of capitalism, accusing its philosophy of endless wealth accumulation of being the root cause of environmental degradation (Akbulut et al., 2019). Although Méndez (2018) refutes this association and exalts capitalism, the regulatory pillars of capitalism seem hollow, allowing the extraction of wealth at the least cost possible to the extractor. Malin (2020) recommended a more honest and inclusive process that allows the affected communities to have a voice and shape policies that impose environmentally harmful facilities on their neighborhoods. Indeed, the most torturous aspect of this environmental injustice debate is that victims are often invisible until they have begun recording serious health consequences.
There are also fewer radical ways to save the poor from the agony of environmental degradation. One solution is to increase public awareness of the issue. This can be done through education and outreach programs that inform people about the importance of preserving the environment. Another solution is to improve environmental regulations and enforcement. This would ensure that companies and individuals who are harming the environment are held accountable for their actions. Finally, it is important to invest in renewable energy sources and green technologies. This would help to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and other harmful energy sources. By taking these steps, it would be possible to protect the environment and ensure a sustainable future for all.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the impacts of environmental abuse are not evenly distributed. Poor people and wealthy people often suffer the most severe consequences, even though they may be the least culpable for pollution and environmental degradation. Meanwhile, the rich continue to accumulate more wealth from the miseries of the poor. One of the major contributing factors to this growing divide is environmental abuse. As the analysis has revealed, however, the rich may be able to afford to pay the short-term costs of environmental abuse, but the poor will be the ones who suffer the most in the long run. They will be the ones who deal with the health problems caused by pollution, and they will be the ones who have to relocate when their homes are destroyed by natural disasters. Furthermore, they will be the ones who struggle to survive in a world that is increasingly inhospitable to life. Therefore, it is time for the rich to start taking responsibility for the environmental abuse that is taking place; paying their fair share is a great starting point.
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