" . . . [W]e do not think that the concept of 'environmental justice' makes much sense.  In our view, 'environmental ethics' makes sense since it refers merely to those ethical considerations that arise in the analysis of environmental problems, in the same way that, say, the term 'medical ethics' would describe the ethical issues arising in medicine. But the term 'environmental justice' has no such clear meaning and is probably a confusing misnomer.  It tends to be used to mean two different things, both of which are misleading.

"The first is a reference to the fact that poorer people tend to suffer more from environmental pollution, or from measures to reduce it, than do rich people . . . . For example, the people living near smelly factories tend to be poorer than others.  But it happens that rich people tend to enjoy more of all sorts of 'goods' and less of 'bads' than do poorer people.  It is consequently inevitable that they will also tend to have fewer 'bads', such as pollution. Indeed, there is no conceptual difference between, say, the 'bad' of living near a smelly factory and the 'good' of living in an environment free of smells.  The rich also tend to have better food, bigger cars and houses, better health care, smarter clothes, and so on. But one does not talk about 'food justice', or 'clothes justice', and so on. We may well have views concerning what is a 'just' distribution of incomes, or welfare, or whatever, between people. This will then determine how we think that environmental goods and 'bads', like other goods, should be distributed among people. But this will not require any special theory of 'environmental justice.'

"The second common usage of the term 'environmental justice' is a reference to justice between human beings, on the one hand, and 'nature'--animals or trees or mountains and so on--on the other hand. But the conception of justice to which we subscribe refers to relationships between people. After over two thousand years of scrutiny of the concept of justice, philosophers have made some progress in clarifying the main serious theories of 'just' relationships between human beings. For example, useful distinctions have been made between those theories of justice that are in terms of mutually advantageous contracts that people may make, or have inherited, and theories based on notions of 'fairness' or 'impartiality.' But we find it difficult to conceive of a serious theory of justice in terms of a contract between human beings and animals, or in terms of how 'unfair' it is on mountains if too many people are allowed to ski down them. Of course, it may well be that theories of justice should be interpreted more widely to encompass the relationship between humans and other species or cherished natural features. But, meanwhile, we prefer to leave such relationships to that part of morality that lie outside the domain of 'justice.' " (Beckerman and Pasek, 5-6)

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