Chapter 6- solid thoughts and summary

Being entirely frustrated with the EJPs and the NEPs I decided to read a section of the book that does not focus on these annoying abbreviations that I cannot process well while reading. This was Chapter 6- final thoughts. What particularly caught my interest was a section called Just Sustainability: Reality or Rhetoric? It initially discussed Warner’s research on San Francisco which discussed the incredible lengths the city was planning on going to in order to become sustainable. In his book, Warner discussed plans and more plans and writings and research, but never wrote of a particular project. Later, Portney wrote of San Francisco but saw it from the opposite perspective. Despite a great deal of talk about what was going to be done and what had been done in the distant past, San Francisco wasn’t actually doing anything. As a matter of fact, the city had been green-washing its plans.

For this reason Agyeman discusses why he likes doing case studies on smaller local projects. This was interesting as if you look at the case studies discussed in chapter 4 you can see they aren’t large scale projects. The ones that may be of larger scope are not discussed as much in detail.

This discussion however was entirely different from the National vs Local one had previously in the chapter. This focused on 3 steps:

1. Discovering the support of an issue
2. Coming together to discuss the issue
3. Seeing if people were still supportive after the issue became a political issue

With these three steps all Agyeman was able to do was see that Environmental Sustainable Justice cannot be all things to all people. On the national and local levels, it has entirely different meanings. It is all contingent on the factors of the particular movement.

Application wise, this perspective is really valuable that things can be better deciphered on the local perspective. Further dissemination is possible by beginning on this level as well. I am curious as to how it is possible to begin spreading out after beginning small without having tremendous boundaries to overcome. If there are huge boundaries how do you go about achieving your goals? One of the most difficult things in any project is expanding- what is the best technique when it involves something as sensitive as the topic of sustainable justice? These are all just some questions I had while reading this concluding chapter. I usually have a different perspective than other people so it’d be interesting to hear what you think. Chapter 6 was a good one also because there were summarizations of everything. This really keeps your mind on track.