Customer Reviews

Environmental Justice: Creating Equity, Reclaiming Democracy (Environmental Ethics & Science Policy)

5 star:		(1)
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I read this book after seeing Shrader-Frechette's interview in the US Catholic, and I found the work to be an excellent introduction to the philosophical and historical issues surrounding the EJ movement.

After reading this title in an undergraduate philosophy class, and reading it carefully and thoroughly, I feel confident giving it a bad review. It was selected by the professor, who I assume is a fan, but I know I, and all my friends in class, extremely dislike this book. I'm a very strong student, an environmentalist, and whatever else you think I need to be a credible reviewer, but this book is very un-engaging. If you're a professor yourself, I urge you not to use it in class.
The arguments are at times internally inconsistent (the author feels comfortable negating opponents for using the same argument structures she later uses), hyperbolic (the author creates extensive yet repetitive lists of victims of various injustices, redundantly reclassifying the same individual in several ways to make the list longer), and on and on.
The nail in the coffin, from a student's point of view, is that it does so in an extremely boring manner. I feel bad that the first review is such a negative one, but from the eye of a undergrad, it's a really bad book. Hopefully a professional philosopher can be more constructive, but undergrad students (its a class for majors and non-majors, to fill a core requirement) are not an appropriate audience for this book.