Group Mason Kirkpatrick Background As the final instalment of our investigation into the capitalocene we looked at air toxin concentration in the Portland area through the lens of environmental justice. More specifically looking at air toxin concentration as it relates to income levels throughout neighborhoods in Portland. Environmental justice, in general, is the concept of assessing how certain environmental factors threaten groups of people, most specifically the poor. Environmental justice acts as a force by which to rectify the injustices that primarily target the poor and people of color. By combining our investigations of the capitalocene with environmental justice we could possibly derive a relationship between economic standing and air toxin risk. Procedure First we read and discussed the PATS summary which details the air pollutants in the greater portland area. We then read the environmental justice analysis to see how it corresponds with the PATS summary when it comes to air toxins. Next, we uploaded the ACS census data into ArcGis as well as the DEQ PATS data so we could have all of the information needed displayed on one map. We then uploaded both the PATS polygonal and point shapefiles and decided that we want to look at households who made less than 50,000 dollars a year vs. households who make more than 50,000 dollars a year and their relationship to air toxin concentration. We created a two new fields, being income > 50,000 and income < 50,000 respectively. We then displayed them on our map with the heat map of all air toxins over it so that we could see where the toxins were concentrated relative to the income of that area. Results From our map there seem to be no direct relationships between the income level being greater or less than 50,000 a year and proximity to air toxin concentrations. Outside of the urban area, where there is a higher concentration over high income households, there is a much lesser concentration of air toxins. This is less likely to be tied to environmental justice than it is to the fact that these wealthy neighborhoods are further outside the city were the air toxins are. In the heart of the city there is more diversity when it comes to income but each of these income groups are in areas of high concentrated air toxins. Discussion
When it comes to the capitalocene this lab raises a few questions. The first being, how can environmental justice be enacted if there is no conclusive evidence, from our research, to show that low income areas are at a high level of risk? This may be due to our heat map displaying air toxin concentration for all of the toxins put together. Low income areas may be at a high risk for other sub-categories of air toxins, like wood burning, than high income and that represents the kind of specificity that those who work in environmental justice may have to look into. The second question being, on what kind of scale does environmental justice work best? In the case of Portland were there is not a concrete relationship between income level and proximity to air toxins there seems to be little to do when it comes to environmental justice. It is also unreasonable to use Portland as an analogous representation for other urban areas. Other cities might have a stronger relationship between these factors than Portland does. So it becomes apparent that one size fits all type legislation would not be most effective for environmental justice. It seems that environmental justice is best enacted on a local and specific scale in order to produce the desired results.
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AuthorMason Kirkpatrick. Class of 2021 Archives
November 2018
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