Who’s Who in Green: Robert Bullard

Dr. Robert H. Bullard is one of the nation’s leading authorities regarding environmental justice. In fact, he’s been called ‘the father of environmental justice’ by Grist.org, and and has written or edited several books on the issue, including Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality; Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color; and Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots.

More than that, Bullard is an activist who has tirelessly worked to draw attention to the practice of building polluting factories and dumping hazardous waste in communities of color. Bullard says he was “drafted” into environmental justice while working in Houston as an environmental sociologist in the 1970s, where he identified the practice of placing garbage dumps in black neighborhoods as a “systematic pattern of injustice”.

Bullard staunchly believes that standing up for the environmental rights of one particular group is not justice. Bullard uncovered the utter unfairness of disproportionately targeting the neighborhoods of people of color, regardless of annual income, for landfills, toxic waste sites, industrial runoff and other environmental hazards and made it his life’s work to put a stop to the practice.

Listen to this interview with fellow Who’s Who in Green Simran Sethi, from the Sundance Channel, as Bullard explains what the Environmental Justice movement entails.

This video of Dr. Bullard’s February 2008 presentation at UC Santa Barbara goes even more into depth about environmental justice and the connection between human rights and the politics of pollution.

As Bullard told CNN in 2007, the green issue is a matter of black and white.

“When you look at the neighborhoods that are where you have a lot of different waste facilities… the people who live closest are oftentimes the most vulnerable people who have the fewest resources to escape neighborhoods because of residential segregation, housing discrimination, and limited incomes.”

“Just because you’re poor, just because you live physically on the wrong ’side of the track’ doesn’t mean that you should be dumped on.”

Bullard is currently professor at Georgia’s Clark Atlanta University and the director of that university’s Environmental Justice Resource Center. He continues to campaign for the fundamental right of all humans to breathe clean air and live free of damaging pollution.

Robert Bullard’s Green Score: 74,522

Photo credit: The Sundance Channel

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