Dozens of people had to sit outside, while hundreds more packed into the EMU Ballroom on Friday to listen to former Green Party vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke call on national leaders to end environmental racism.
Her speech kicked off the Seventh Annual Economic and Environmental Justice Conference, “The Environment Sees No Color.”
Turnout remained steady throughout the weekend as people participated in workshops, panels and social events to examine the issue of environmental racism, which is often defined as the dumping of pollutants in areas where minorities and low-income people live.
LaDuke spoke of the consequences that can result from pollution, regardless of where it is placed.
“There are about 72,000 chemicals out there, and we have no idea how they may impact our bodies,” she said.
A health problem that can arise from environmental pollution is birth defects, which can be caused when pregnant women ingest chemicals that travel to their unborn babies, LaDuke said.
However, certain areas in the world have greater pollution problems than others, so several events on Saturday addressed the impacts of environmental racism felt by other countries.
Ipat Luna, a panelist and teaching fellow at University of California, Berkeley, discussed what she believes is a growing crisis in the Philippines. She said the United States uses the country as its dumping ground for everything from waste products to cars that don’t meet American smog standards.
This pollution, Luna said, is the reason behind an epidemic of sicknesses in the country, such as children being born with birth defects and girls beginning to menstruate at ages as young as seven years old.
“The U.S. strip mines our mountains, and what makes it okay is that we’re a nameless bunch of people who they don’t have to have a relationship with,” she said.
Because the Philippines does not have enough political clout to combat what Luna described as the environmental racism from the United States, she said there is little chance the problem will be resolved soon.
“It’s on and on as we move into the Information Age, and there’s never going to be a catch-up game for any of the developing countries,” she said.
In a panel discussion Saturday afternoon, Mary O’Brien, a member of the Eugene toxics board, addressed the seriousness of risk assessment, a method to determine how much of a certain chemical or product can be used without harming the environment.
O’Brien criticized the practice of risk assessment, saying it is not dependable because there is no way to know all the potential dangers of certain substances, especially when they are combined with other chemicals.
“Risk assessment is filled with assumptions and estimates, and they’re dressed up to look like accurate numbers,” she said.
Although LaDuke said she is fearful for the future of the environment, she also said there are more solutions than problems.
“We’re putting up our first wind generator on my reservation, and they could use a lot more generators in California,” she said.
LaDuke, a mother of three, said the government could learn how to treat the environment from the rules her children live by.
“You’ve gotta clean up your mess before you make a new one,” she said. “If you don’t know how to clean up your mess, you shouldn’t be able to make a new one.”