All,

I just became aware of the death, by car accident, of environmental lawyer
Luke Cole, one of the founders of the environmental justice movement who
litigated several watershed cases, including the famous Kettleman City case
which first established failure to include disadvantaged, non-English
speaking communities in the notification and hearing process over the siting
of toxic waste facilities as a federal civil rights violation. Cole was a
founder of the Center for Race, Poverty, and the Environment, and along with
law professor Shiela Foster authored  From the Ground Up:  Environmental
Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (NYU Press 2001).
According to reports, at the time of his death, Mr. Cole was representing
the village of Kivalina, on the northwest coast of Alaska, in a lawsuit
filed in federal court in San Francisco claiming that firms including
ExxonMobil Corp., Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell were contributing to global
warming, which was destroying the village.

Apologies if this news has been previously announced, but I did not recall
seeing it on this listserv. Luke was killed in a car accident in Uganda on
June 6, while on sabbatical with his wife.

On report can be found here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/09/BAC0183545.DTL



*******************************************
Chaone Mallory, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
Villanova University
Villanova, PA 19085
610-519-3274

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Chair, Diversity Committee, Association for Feminist Ethics and Social
Theory
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Villanova Year of Sustainability
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