The Power of Words in a Dying World
The relationship between literature and environmental justice
When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962, her work was one of the first in the genre of environmental literature and began the movement for the preservation of the environment. Specifically, the book addresses the use of harsh chemicals in the environment, and how everyone is affected by the toxic and often deadly effects. The revelations she provides lead to the banning of the pesticide DDT, and helped established the Environmental Protection Agency. However, this is not the last time human intervention causes pollution and the diminishing of living conditions for humans and animals alike.
Over the course of the next decades, more natural disasters occur due to human action, from the Love Canal to the Chernobyl Disaster, even leading to today with the water pollution of Flint, Michigan. To address the issues of the effects of pollution within each scenario, new writers reach out to readers through their written works. With the introduction of movies and television, the audience and perspectives introduced to the genre have been expanded, and left an impact upon some people to change their lives. This has allowed the genre of Environmental Literature to evolve and include the social and economic aspects of environmental injustice, allowing it to become a modern field of works that still strongly addresses the issues many people face today.
The Environmental Justice movement, with deep ties to the Civil Rights movement, seeks to promote fairness and equal protection and representation for all peoples in regards to environmental health and safety. It concerns itself with law enforcement and implementation of environmental regulations and the development of new policies with particular sensitivity to low-income and ethnically diverse populations. According to A Brief History of Environmental Justice published by Talia Buford, one of the main underlying issues is that landfills and chemical plants are located close to poor and racially unprotected communities. The event that first sparked the movement for environmental justice takes place in 1982, when a landfill full of contaminated soil was built in Warren County, North Carolina. More than 500 people protested its construction, but the battle was lost and many people were arrested. From that first protest, the movement began, and by the 1990’s, organizations that first fought for the natural world became allies to Civil Rights movements, thus establishing the movement for environmental justice.
From the origins of environmental justice and the pattern of placing landfills, chemical plants, and other places where toxic contamination occurs, it is clear to see how writers take the details of these living conditions into great account when addressing the issues surrounding environmental injustice. Yet the real secret to how they reach their audience lies in their power of descriptive language and modern perspective. Rachel Carson first exemplifies this in how she wrote Silent Spring. Originally printed in The New Yorker, she uses near poetic techniques to grab the attention of her readers and emotional appeal to stress the realization of the damage: “This sudden silencing of the song of birds, this obliteration of the color and beauty and interest they lend to our world have come about swiftly, insidiously, and unnoticed by those whose communities are as yet unaffected” (Carson 103).
Carson’s book details one of the main issues surrounding environmental justice: the lack of representation or protection for poor people, as well as a lack of knowledge or consideration from communities who don’t realize they may be affected by pollution. This idea of ‘something that is out of sight and out of mind’ or ‘if it doesn’t hurt me, then it doesn’t involve me,’ can be considered either willful ignorance or public naivety, as many feign a lack of awareness of the damage or the danger until it is too late. Two of the strongest cases that exemplify this are the Love Canal in Niagara Falls and the Chernobyl disaster. The town close to the canal was located next to toxic chemical waste dumped by Hooker Chemical Corporation. When the fumes began to come through the soil and water, the people became horrifically sick. Lois Gibbs was a typical American housewife who learned about the chemical dump from reading the newspaper. She realized the dangers when her child became sick. When she spoke with her neighbors about if their children became sick, she soon realized that the whole community was being affected by the chemicals, leading her to establish Love Canal Parents Movement in 1978. This lead to protests and an eventual evacuation of the town, as well as quarantine of the area. Gibbs went on to become an activist and founder of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ.org) in 1981.
The unfolding of events surrounding environmental disasters such as the Love Canal evokes, for many poets and writers, images of loss of innocence and violent sexual motifs depicting loss of purity in a place that was once beautiful and serene, or if you will, the staining of a once beautiful purity through filthy means manifested from the actions of lustful men. The poets Jane Hamilton and Janice Mirikitani use particularly vivid imagery of the dichotomy of youthful naivety versus willful exploitation in response to polluters’ greed. With the line, “They wound the heart, burn, pierce, bludgeon the breast of Love Canal,” Mirikitani states the very violent crux of the problem in Love Canal (Mirikitani). However, shockingly in the very next line, she uses mixed imagery of sexual arousal and death to describe the long-term effects. In contrast, Hamilton personifies the pollution itself as a horny adolescent. “Medical waste and the spawned babies of industrial parks are starting to talk back. It’s not the terrible two’s — it’s adolescent urges with wet dreams and blood” (Hamilton). The tone is almost meant to pacify in referring to pollution as our neglected child. The imagery of the poem in the final stanza turns to a place of poverty with more urban imagery of crack cocaine and pool halls. These are buzz words for poverty, which brings the issue back to the disproportionate effect of environmental disasters on the poor.
Meanwhile on the other side of the globe just eight years later, the worst nuclear disaster in the history of the world occurred. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then part of the USSR) suffered a nuclear explosion due to poor engineering and a faulty reactor malfunctioning. The explosion caused widespread panic in the people as they scrambled to comprehend what had just happened, yet the greatest danger lay in the nuclear contamination of the area surrounding the plant. Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl documents the events surrounding the disaster as it was occurring before everyone’s eyes, and the dire consequences of how the country was used during the Cold War.
Communism, as the world learned after the fall of the Soviet Union, led to extreme environmental degradation in many areas. “Every April 26, we get together, the guys who were there. We remember how it was. You were a soldier at war, you were necessary. We forgot the bad parts and remember that. We remember that they couldn’t make it without us. Our system, it’s a military system, essentially, and it works great in emergencies” (Alexievich). Through this written account of the oral retellings of the accident, history is recorded and retold by those who have witnessed the disaster to the next generation, revealing how the scars of environmental warfare can impact people even after thirty years. The serious social and economic impact caused by both of these disasters have left a deep impression on the history of both sides of the globe.
From what can be observed from these two occurrences, the willful ignorance of corporate greed is often the most difficult obstacle to overcome. Decades after these events, very few people today may speak about or mention either of these disasters, and fewer today may learn about them in their lifetime. Yet even today, companies are still exploiting the land and poor communities by dumping harsh substances in the environment. A poignant current example of this is the drinking water pollution in Flint, Michigan. In 2014, the drinking water supply from Detroit was switched to the Flint River to save money. However, the water was contaminated with lead, Legionnaires’ disease, and coliform bacteria, causing lead contamination in children, and 12 deaths and 87 illnesses by the disease. In their rage toward the state, the people began to protest for the government and the EPA to launch an investigation into the outbreak. Like the Love Canal, this city is a poor community with low income and unequal racial representation. As of 2017, the census borough designated it as the poorest and most dangerous city of its size of the entire country.
Years later, people are still living without access to clean and safe water, and are relying on bottled water being shipped to their homes on a near-daily basis. Tarfia Faizullah’s poem I Told The Water describes the essentiality and vitality of the resource, and how it is often overlooked due to its’ clearness. “I told the water You only exist because of thirst / But beside your sour membrane we lie facedown in dirt” (Faizullah). The wave-like rhythm of the written lines and personification of the water give the words and the poem itself life, showing how it is supposed to be one that gives instead of takes. However, due to human exploitation and poor choices, that role has become the opposite, and people are facing the dire consequences. Faizullah’s own family history in Bangladesh and the struggle for water was a large factor to how she developed sympathy for the people during this incident. Sympathy, in fact, is part of what helps writers and poets reach out to people unaffected by disasters such as these, therefore forming the bridge between the unprotected and the unaware.
Yet the biggest obstacle faced by environmental writers and movements is trying to sway the government to act. Since the 80’s, many laws and proposals were made to support the environment and try to change the situations, but very few new policies have been made official. Even today, President Trump is threatening the EPA by cutting their financial support by 30 percent. Behind this, there is also deep corruption of government organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency. Their efforts and accomplishments are largely unknown or not well remembered, begging the question as to what they really do. From observing the circumstances and details surrounding environmental injustice, a frequent cycle of ignorance, lack of consideration or knowledge, realization, and efforts appears to frequently be revealed as the underlying process behind them. Though there have been many losses during protests and movements to avert the crises before it occurs, some gains have been made for the better. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring shows how words can help people realize the truth before their eyes, and how it takes great effort to change minds and save both human and animal, plant, or bird lives. As long as we have writers who continue bringing the problems of environmental justice to public readers, there will still be the movement for justice and improving living conditions.
Works Cited:
Alexievich, Svetlana. “Voices from Chernobyl.” The Paris Review, 13 Oct. 2017, www.theparisreview.org/letters-essays/5447/voices-from-chernobyl-svetlana-alexievich.
Buford, Talia. ProPublica. “A Brief History of Environmental Justice”. YouTube. August 4th, 2017. 3:35 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30xLg2HHg8Q&feature=youtu.be
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, 1962, front cover.
“Chernobyl Accident 1986.” Chernobyl | Chernobyl Accident | Chernobyl Disaster — World Nuclear Association, www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx.
Faizullah, Tarfia. “I Told the Water.” http://www.tfaizullah.com/#!/poems/.
Hamilton, Jane E. “Love Canal.” Representative Poetry Online, 2013, rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/love-canal.
Hijazi, Jennifer. “A Poem for Flint, Four Years after the Water Crisis Began.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 2 Apr. 2018, www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/a-poem-for-flint-four-years-after-the-water-crisis-began.
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“Love Canal.” Center for Health, Environment & Justice, 31 Mar. 2016, chej.org/about-us/story/love-canal/.
Mirikitani, Janice. “Love Canal.” Sharing the Earth: An International Environmental Justice Reader. Eds. Elizabeth Ammons and Modhumita Roy. University of Georgia Press, 2015. 96–98.
Skelton, Renee, and Vernice Miller. “The Environmental Justice Movement.” NRDC, 1 Nov. 2017, www.nrdc.org/stories/environmental-justice-movement.
