On Taking Action and Saving Lives
| Author | Avner de Shalit |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-9302.2010.00212.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S R E V I E W : 2 0 1 0 VO L 8 , 3 6 8 – 3 7 4
doi: 10.1111/j.1478-9302.2010.00212.x
On Taking Action and Saving Livespsr_212368..374
Avner de Shalit
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Shrader-Frechette, K. (2007) Taking Action, Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
In her previous book on environmental justice, the American philosopher and scientist,
Kristin Shrader-Frechette (2002), argued that while environmental injustice was caused by
firms and governments, it was up to the citizens to stand up and resist it. In her most
recent book, Taking Action, Saving Lives, Shrader-Frechette follows the same line of
argument. It is one of the most powerful academic books I have read and heard of. It is
philosophically sound and coherent, but if this was all I said about it, I am not sure
Shrader-Frechette would regard it as a compliment. She wants more than that. She hopes
her book will inspire the readers to act. ‘Philosophically sound and coherent’ is just not
enough. I shall come back to this point below, but first let us review the way the book
opens. The story captures the entire book’s message.
The book opens with a story from Hammond, Indiana. Emily Pearson was diagnosed
with brain cancer when she was three years old. She died four years later. When I read
this section I recalled a visit to this town in 1974. As an Israeli teenager I was shocked:
grey skies and hundreds of chimneys. I had never seen such a sight before. I was relatively
young, but it was clear to me that the residents of Hammond were mostly working-class
people, many of whom were black. Its neighbouring city, East Chicago, was poor as well.
I have a very strong memory from this visit. Several months before this visit – I had been
sixteen years old then – Israel had been attacked by Egypt and Syria – what is now called
the October War of 1973. Israel was taken by surprise. The number of casualties was
unprecedented. Thus I volunteered, with my classmates, to work in Jerusalem’s hospital.
We carried the wounded soldiers on stretchers from the helicopters, which had brought
them from the battlefield, to the emergency rooms. It goes without saying that for a
teenager this was a traumatic experience. I remember clearly that standing in Hammond,
Indiana, looking at the polluted skies and the many chimneys, somehow the pictures from
the war returned, and I suddenly felt terribly uneasy. My reaction was to think of
something else. I did not like remembering the traumatic scenes I had seen several months
before during the war. But all I could think of was Picasso’s Guernica.1 In those days, in
the early 1970s, people were not fully aware of environmental matters and pollution. But
now I realise that I felt there were many victims around, and that something was clearly
not right.
Let us return to Emily. She was not just unlucky. Other children in the neighbourhood
were diagnosed with rare types of cancer. The chances of these cancers occurring
© 2010 The Author. Journal compilation © 2010 Political Studies Association
O N TA K I N G AC T I O N A N D S AV I N G L I V E S
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simultaneously in the same small town were 16 billion to one. Were these and other
deaths inevitable? Shrader-Frechette argues that following a report by the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) there had been an agreement between the government and a
local industry, responsible for much poisonous pollution, to reduce its emissions, yet
nobody ever cared enough to enforce the agreement. Moreover, using rather inferior
scientific analysis the polluters were not made to stop these emissions, and were not forced
to compensate the victims’ families.
Shrader-Frechette describes the ‘scientific’ evidence, and proposes what should have been
done in order to find out whether the industry was indeed responsible for the deaths and
cancers. One wonders, why did the local scientists not say anything? Why did they not
warn local residents? They had the evidence. Everybody ‘knew’ there was a problem. In
fact, the popular name for this area which hosted chemical industries was ‘Cancer Alley’.
US industry is responsible for eight pounds of toxic chemicals per person per year, but the
overall Indiana average is three times higher, not to mention the particular ‘chemical
corridor’ in northern Indiana. So why did the scientists not do enough? The answer might
take you aback. Shrader-Frechette quotes a local activist who had been told by the
scientists that they did not dare to say anything because their research was financed by
some of the area’s polluting industries, or because they hoped the industries would
employ their students once they graduated. This is how the book opens, and it is typical
of the way Shrader-Frechette writes: she is an...
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