In This Section: The Green Wave
ECO-APARTHEID: A situation in which white and affluent communities reap the tremendous benefits of clean and green economic development, while communities of color fall further behind. In a state of eco-apartheid, benefits of the new economic activity that the green wave generates will bypass the very communities most in need of new investment, new jobs and better environmental stewardship.
ECO-EQUITY: The opposite of Eco-Apartheid. In a state of Eco-equity, poor communities and communities of color (people who were locked out of the old, pollution-based economy) are locked in to the new, clean and green economy.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: California law defines environmental justice as "the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." [Calif. Gov. Code § 65040.12(c)] Environmental justice advocates recognize that because of race and class discrimination, communities of color and low-income neighborhoods are the most likely to be harmed by toxic chemicals and negative land uses, and the least likely to benefit from efforts to improve the environment.
GREEN: Green is a term used to imply that a service, product, or technology is environmentally friendly (i.e. sustainable).
GREEN ECONOMY: A rapidly growing billion-dollar sector that includes renewable energy sources, organic produce and products, green buildings, alternative fuel vehicles, and more.
GREEN-COLLAR JOB: A paid position providing environmentally-friendly products or services; term suggests high standards regarding fair wages, equal opportunity and healthy working conditions; employer may be a private business, government, non-profit or cooperative. For example: organic farmer, sustainable forestry worker, recycling technician or solar panel manufacturer.
GREEN WAVE: Refers to the exploding economic activity in the "environmentally sustainable" sector (i.e. the Green Economy)
GULAG ECONOMY: Our current pollution, "prison-industrial complex" and incarceration based economic system. In a gulag or mass incarceration-based economy, corporations profit by destroying the environment and by incarcerating people who end up as cheap labor behind bars.
POLITICS OF SOLUTION: An orientation that offers a powerful new politics of hope, achievement and optimism. Term suggests visionary urban policies that emphasize multi-issue, solution-oriented change in urban communities.
RESTORATIVE ECONOMICS: An ecologically sound economic development approach, promoting business practices that heal the natural environment, rather than despoiling it. Restorative economics refers to the commitment on the part of a growing number of business leaders to produce wealth, not by environmental plunder, but by respecting and working in partnership with nature.
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: A cost-effective criminal justice approach that is based on reconciliation, restoration, healing and rehabilitation. Restorative justice refers to a movement promoting humane, transformative and cost-effective alternatives to our current punitive, failed and costly system of mass incarceration.
RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: The United States presently has a "retributive" (retribution-based or "revenge" based) system of justice whose watchword is:"Justice has been done when the wrong-doer has been sufficiently punished."
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