Sustainability: Social Justice

This timely book outlines the debates on environmental and ecological citizenship that have emerged out of the concern with environmental justice since the 1990s.
The book demonstrates how awareness of environmental hazards, injustices and new forms of risk is only effective when it generates strategies for political change. It examines how environmental movements have become increasingly involved in governance processes at the national, regional and intergovernmental levels, in contexts such as the EU, UN and LA21 initiatives.

Although the environmental movement and the environmental justice movement would seem to be natural allies, their relationship over the years has often been characterized by conflict and division. The environmental justice movement has charged the mainstream environmental movement with racism and elitism and has criticized its activist agenda on the grounds that it values wilderness over people.

Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a sweeping story of transformation that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers’ resistance.