The concept of “environmental justice” is an interesting one; before reading “Toxic Soup Redux,” I didn’t have a clear understanding of what the term meant or where and how it applied. Afterwards, though, I definitely recognize that such environmental racism exists and that it is appalling. This aspect of discrimination is something that needs to be brought to the forefront of the environmental conversation. Environmental justice doesn’t just apply to the US: it is globally applicable. In my Politics of the Developing World class, we watched a documentary about gas flaring in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The people of the Niger Delta were forced to live with toxic gases being burned by foreign oil companies, and no matter how much they protested, demonstrated, and organized, they were continually ignored, and all because they lack wealth and influence. I would even argue that environmental racism is indeed worse in the developing world, where many of the environmental regulations we have here are either nonexistent or disregarded entirely. The environmental justice movement therefore must be worldwide: it’s the only way we’ll be able to combat not only environmental racism, but the behemoth of environmental degradation itself.