Baton Rouge

Discussion Questions (Due: Beginning of Class, Tuesday, August 28)

1) Burby described Baton Rouge initially as a “sleepy southern town” (Burby, 161). Baton Rouge began as most other cities began, clean, unpolluted, and most importantly, unaffected by the many common problems associated with industrialization. This small city in Louisiana became one of the nations leading petrochemical complexes and the devastation that came along with this transition was quite grand. The aftermath of all this industrialization fell onto the lives of ethnic minorities and the poor, and for the longest time it seemed like no one cared. It wasn’t until 1993 in an environmental justice hearing that citizens demanded “environmentally friendly ‘green’ businesses” (Burby, 176). Personally, from my understanding of the reading, Baton Rouge was not sustainable in anyway. Throughout the early half of the century people treated the place as if it had an infinite capacity to support heavy industrialization. As the reading states, “planners, government, and the legal system have done little to right these wrongs.” (Burby, 161). Essentially, no one cared about the environmental aspects of industrialization and simply carried forth with expansion, hence sustainability of the city is in my opinion, non-existent. On an ethical standpoint, this city wasn’t sustainable what so ever, the minorities, mostly the low-income black neighborhoods suffered greatly as a result of these factories that would dump waste in or near by. Additionally, residents began to move into marshlands, and even notice “smoggy conditions and complain of having to scrape particulate mater from their vehicles every morning” (Burby, 170) The town even had accidental scares, such as the 600 tons of missing chlorine after a hurricane, all, factors that would personally have me think of the city as unsustainable.

2) The difference between virtuous and vulgar sustainability is something of an opinion. This article goes into the principal of ethics when thinking about sustainability and where that leaves us; “Without developing the ethical dimension of sustainability, we will never even know what sustainability means..” (540) The argument about what is virtuous sustainability and what is vulgar is derived essentially from the terms we use to define sustainability - “Too many environmental scientists think sustainability is primarily about documenting and protecting ecosystem health, whereas too many engineers think sustainability is primarily about more efficiently meeting human needs.” (539) From my understanding, virtuous sustainability is that of those who include the principles of being ethical in their goals for sustainability. It is the people who think of sustainability in terms of “meeting human needs in a socially just manner without depriving ecosystems of their health” (539) that satisfy this side. Vulgar sustainability