ABSTRACT

The environmental justice is a modern application of the principles of distributive justice in the environmentally conscious world of the twenty-first century. In its narrower, anthropocentric form it recognizes the rights of humans, but only humans, to environmentally sound living conditions and challenges environmental racism: exposing certain peoples to unequal and discriminatory levels of environmental hazards. In its broader, biospheric form, however, environmental justice encompasses concerns for the rights of non-human animals and the natural environment. However, Environmentalism was only the Rights Revolutions of the second part of the twentieth century that expanded the concept of rights beyond the species line and the human vs. nature distinction. This distinction, author believe, highlights the rift between environmentalism in young people's literature before and after the rise of the environmental justice script. Although different stands, or wisps, of environmentalism in young people's fiction can be traced as far back as the nineteenth century, the environmental justice script radically changed the picture.