Conclusion: from Blue Vinyl to environmental justice at home?
Films like Blue Vinyl and Libby, Montana demonstrate the drive for a better home, a shelter and a place where environmental justice is the norm, and environmental racism is minimized. This would be a place where
“no population, especially the elderly and children, are forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the negative human health and environmental impacts of pollution or other environmental hazard.”
What is missing from these films, however, is a larger story connected to the underfunding of the whole Superfund site cleanup program. On a human level, both Mossville and Libby are tragedies, maybe even crimes, but given the numerous Superfund site contenders, and the underfunding of the whole program, perhaps under triage, sites such as the Hanford, Washington Nuclear Reservation or the Picher, Oklahoma lead mining eco-disaster documented in PBS’s The Creek Runs Red (2007) may in fact be more dangerous and warrant a higher priority.
Ultimately, however, Blue Vinyl and Libby, Montana underpin well the search for a better home, one we all can take, but one that also makes transparent the injustices hidden that may lie behind vinyl production and home construction. By choosing to maintain a clear rhetorical position that is infused with an engaging personal narrative, Blue Vinyl more effectively advances efforts for an environmentally sound home than does Libby, Montana, yet the goal for both films’ journeys is a better home for us all, one based on the idea that “human rights, an ecologically sound environment, sustainability development and peace are interdependent and indivisible,” one that is “secure, healthy, and ecologically sound,” and one that is
“free from any form of discrimination in regard to actions and decisions that affect the environment” (Cifuentes and Frumkin 1-2).
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