In honor of Earth Day, I’m going to set forth here a version of a little talk I gave at my school’s Environmental Awareness Day a week ago. Loath am I to see any discussion of environmentalism go by without making an effort to string together the larger picture, the intersections between climate change and other systems of oppression, so that making of connections is what I've tried to do here. To de-silo the climate issue, so to speak. Earth Day can be a pretty tame occasion, it seems, but we can't afford a tame conversation about the climate crisis anymore.
My comments are informed by Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything and by the notes I took at a workshop on environmental justice at a recent local conference.
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I say often that apathy is a deathwish, but, as with so many other things, all apathy is not created equal. Some people’s indifference is more deadly than others’. As a wealthy and privileged community, it is my town’s option and responsibility to take the most active role our privilege allows us in combating climate change. Central to the idea of fighting the climate crisis is a movement around environmental justice, which is sometimes different from the standard environmental movement--though it shouldn’t be.
The key tenet of environmental justice is that it acknowledges that the environment is nature but is also our living conditions, health, and the groups that we belong to. It acknowledges the intersections between climate issues and other social justice issues, particularly race, and also class. Environmental justice involves tackling unfair policies, facing the reality that regulatory structures are only meant to keep some of us safe.
One of the many ironic injustices of climate change is that although it sounds like a democratic force--untamed forces of nature and such like that--it’s not in fact democratic at all: it will reinforce and worsen existing disparities and inequality. Certainly, it’s inevitable for everyone, but massive climate disruption is already happening for some people. The ones who did the least to cause climate change--those who burned the least fossil fuels to get where they are and who continue to consume the least--are living in communities on the frontlines of climate change, a la Kiribati, Bangladesh, sub-Saharan Africa. This crisis is one they barely contribute to, but they will be paying for it long before we in towns like mine do, and paying with their lives.
Here in Massachusetts, there is environmental racism and injustice right at home too. A lot of environmental issues can seem distant and removed to us, because we aren’t faced with them every day--we aren’t, for instance, a low-lying island being slowly inundated by rising sea levels, nor are we California or São Paolo, weathering historic and devastating droughts. My town isn’t next to a toxic mine or a hazardous waste site--that sort of pollution has been shifted to disadvantaged communities, displacing the crisis without dispelling it.
Unequal distribution of environmentally harmful living situations is a manifestation of environmental racism. Massachusetts is very un-progressive with this: our levels of wealth inequality are as bad as Mississippi, and the communities of low income and people of color are the ones likelier to experience environmental contamination, danger, and toxicity. This is part of what’s been happening in Flint, Michigan, incidentally. Is it a coincidence that it was Flint, a community of largely poor people of color, that saw its water contaminated with lead and saw that contamination ignored by the government? No. It’s environmental racism.
Michigan isn’t a rare or isolated offender, however: Massachusetts has severely unequal distribution of environmental hazards. In fact, we rank last overall in the country for disparity in who lives near hazardous sites. The air pollution racial disparity is worst in New England than the rest of the country too, and the Merrimack valley in Massachusetts has the highest mercury levels in New England.
We don’t, of course, want everyone polluted equally--that’s not the solution. We want no one polluted. This is why the climate movement needs to be broader than just “recycle more and change your lightbulbs.” We have to think about the other systems of oppression that environmental problems feed into.
To change these paradigms requires a mindset shift. In the current framework of environmental, industrial, and waste-management policy, some people are deemed disposable, and some places are deemed “sacrifice zones,” in order to maintain a system that exploits and harms some people and privileges others. My town, of course, will never be a sacrifice zone--here, our lives are deemed valuable. But that advantage comes with the obligation that we use it mindfully. We have a lot of power, if we want it--to stop pipelines through people’s backyards, to stop mines near their houses, to fight the fossil fuel exploitation of land of indigenous people.
One cynical reason that we have power to change the game is that carbon emissions and negative impacts on the environment increase along with wealth--those of us with the disposable income are liable to drive more, travel more, consume more luxuries, etc. So the actions we take to mitigate our contributions to climate change--because those contributions can be pretty big--could have significant impact. We can start with simple things--be aware of what we’re consuming, what we’re buying, the choices we’re making about food and water and transportation and electricity and throwing stuff away.
Then there’s other kinds of involvement: joining environmental organizations--there are plenty in the Boston area--and signing petitions, joining efforts to divest from fossil fuels and put a price on carbon, lobbying your legislators, and going to events. Just show up. Just be there. This is critical: be there for the people who are fighting, even if you don’t feel like it’s affecting you much yet.
On the small, current, and concrete level, showing up is important for expressing genuine solidarity with people fighting a fight that hasn’t yet reached our doorsteps, lending the power of numbers to their struggle. But on a broader and further-reaching level, we must realize that if we don’t work in solidarity with people on the frontlines now, we will eventually become the front lines. That’s our future, as well as their present . That’s our reckoning that will come, someday.
This is what climate change promises us. And we have a short window of time to make a lot of change--which we can do--but we’re going to need all hands on deck. No one left out or left in a sacrifice zone. As they say at climate rallies and such: To change everything, we need everyone.
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