Who we presume to be the heroes in this story, and who we presume to be merely obstacles in the way
So Politico ran this big article recently about tensions within the environmental movement, and I had tweeted some criticisms of it earlier, but wanted to discuss some of them here because it gets to a lot of important stuff about the way we think about climate change and the environmental movement and how that’s evolving, I’d say for the better. Much of this builds on themes explored here often about why the climate justice lens is a necessary one through which to view climate change, for both moral and practical reasons. But more broadly than that even, it’s about the assumptions we make about global problems and who solves them.
I do want to preface this by saying that I don’t mean this to be some kind of takedown of this particular article, because there is actually a lot of good stuff in there and some awesome people quoted. That said, I think it gets important parts of the narrative wrong. And it gets things wrong in ways that are extremely common and detrimental to progress on climate change. So it’s a good entry point into some of these larger debates.
The overarching narrative we are presented with is that the responsibility and capability to make progress on climate change lies in the hands of big environmental groups, which have an ambitious agenda, are ascendant in US politics, and have successfully pushed Joe Biden to become a surprise hero on climate change. The problem, the article poses, is a perhaps surprising obstacle to progress—the environmental justice movement, or as the article puts it, “Black, Latino and Indigenous critics.”
I would argue that pretty much the opposite is true, and this framing reflects a lot of old and thankfully dying stereotypes about who leads and who should lead on climate and the environment. It mistakes wealth and pedigree for power and leadership. It strikes an artificial divide between wanting to address “nuts-and-bolts” community impacts of climate change and wanting to solve the planetary problem. And it reaffirms a narrow perception of exactly whose problem climate change is to solve.
That said, much of the article is actually quite critical of big green NGOs, nonprofits in the mainstream environmental movement, which is called out for its historic ties to white supremacy, and its modern day white and male-centric leadership. The article rightly points out the way the environmental movement has ignored or been openly hostile to people of color, and the cultures of abuse within big greens like The Nature Conservancy. It also does a nice job of documenting the growing influence of environmental justice and modern attempts for the mainstream movement to reckon with its problems.
“For the last four years you’ve had a bogeyman and that bogeyman has placed a spotlight on the egregious things that were happening,” reasoned Mustafa Santiago Ali, a former career EPA official and environmental justice activist who now works at the mainstream National Wildlife Federation. “You have a new generation that is refusing — and rightly so — for the old paradigms to continue to operate. And as this new generation continues to gain power, you will see these organizations pushed even more to make this change happen.”
Pretty good right? The problem is the sentiment that enviros could really make a difference, could meaningfully reduce emissions and curb climate change, if only it could “satisfy” these outside critics. These “disaffected” non-white activists who are preventing climate heroes like Mary Nichols from getting the job done. Those who were “uninspired” by cap and trade, costing us a critical win.
As you may be gathering from my aggressive use of quotation marks, the big problem here is this depiction of people who are demanding environmental justice as an outside impediment, a stubborn obstacle, instead of a necessary and central plank of climate leadership.
For example, I agree in a broad sense (as do many others) that the lack of grassroots support behind cap and trade contributed to its failure. But it’s not because the grassroots failed to see the importance of the issue, or because large NGOs failed at “mobilizing and connecting with portions of the population that would directly benefit,” as one advocate said. It’s that leadership on the issue was hollow. Green groups had for years been casting the problem of climate change in a narrowly defined, antiseptic way that was out of touch with how most people would ever interact with it. As a result, climate change came across as an elite special interest instead of an authoritative movement grounded in human needs.
Specifically, the early movement had largely portrayed climate as an issue of protecting natural resources by way of engineering fixes and market adjustments. This is something of an oversimplification, and to be clear, I actually think we have a lot to thank mainstream environmental groups for over the years. But historic environmental leadership’s narrow framing and base of support have held back progress on climate.
You could make the case that the real reason climate action has been so slow is that, up until recently, climate impacts were not as tangible and unmistakable, so the public was just not sold on it yet. That’s probably true to an extent, although you can chalk up some of that to a failure at movement building. But even if big greens are not to blame for the lack of progress in the past, I definitely don’t buy the argument that they are the main drivers of the advances we are seeing now. And honestly, the Politico article is the first time I can recall hearing someone even make that claim:
Big Green groups have pushed Biden, whom most would never confuse with a crunchy activist, into crafting the most aggressive environmental platform in the nation’s history that calls for spending $2 trillion.
Really? I mean, if you quite literally look at the process that led to the $2 trillion dollar plan, the Unity Task Force on Climate Change, appointed by Bernie Sanders and Biden post-primary, included Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement (pretty big now, but definitely not a big green), Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who is most associated with Sunrise but is broadly supportive of the climate justice movement, and environmental justice leader Catherine Coleman Flowers. Then a couple Obama admin people and negotiators from the moderate wing of the party. But literally nobody from the big green groups. It was Jay Inslee’s run, but mostly the left flank of the party that pushed Biden’s hand on climate during the primary, and many have pointed out that the environmental justice movement has had Biden’s ear from early on. “It’s the first time in [the environmental justice] world that the candidate has reached out so early,” Cecilia Martinez of the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy told Scientific American back in August.
But beyond the makeup of his literal advisors, does anybody really think that, say, the Environmental Defense Fund has been the main driver of the climate change conversation in the past five years or so?
I’d say it has far more to do with the way Standing Rock water protectors forced the world to take notice of the violence of fossil fuel infrastructure for months on end—and won. Or environmental justice networks that built power at the state level. Or the youth protestors who repeatedly got arrested in DC, and emotionally confronted out of touch Democrats who were compromising away their future. Or the architects of the Green New Deal who decided it was time to stop pretending climate change is isolated from issues like public health, housing, and labor. I would credit it to the millions of people who took to the streets in the 2019 Climate Strikes, led by multi-racial climate justice and youth organizers.
From everything I’ve seen, it’s the EJ community, along with youth, Indigenous activists and others well outside the scope of the traditional movement who have been instrumental in finally getting us to this point, where big greens have otherwise failed. I’m not saying big NGOs haven’t been in these rooms at all—this work demands a big ecosystem of actors, and they bring a specific kind of muscle. Some of these groups are also changing; a lot of environmental justice heroes now have jobs at the big greens, after all. It’s not always a clear divide. But the progress these groups are contributing to now is because they are being challenged to adapt to the moment, not in spite of it.
One more point I wanted to make is about the common depiction of the environmental justice movement as a kind of special interest group, one that ignores big picture needs in order to meet “their communities’” concerns. A more favorable, but still paternalistic way to put it is that these are people who need our help and we have a moral obligation to address “their concerns.” While it is the case that environmental justice groups fight for the needs of people who are often left behind due to economic inequality and structural racism, that doesn’t fully capture why this is such an important movement.
For one, communities of color, lower and middle-income families, working families, and advocates for social justice represent one of our deepest sources of power in the climate fight. This characterization also overlooks the importance of collective liberation or shared interest in justice work. It’s the idea that if you are not free, I am not free, and if we can win justice for the most oppressed, that leads to a just world for all. Nowhere is this more true than in climate change, in which all of our fates are connected. In that sense, the power of climate justice is not simply bringing issues like race and poverty into climate debate, it’s imbuing the climate movement with humanity and empathy.
In other words, the environmental justice community is not a box to check or a critic to appease, it is central to the fight in several ways. Which gets back to the larger problem with this article and the long held attitudes it reflects—the question of who we continue to presume to be our heroes in this story, and why. And who we presume to be merely obstacles in the way.
Links
- Fossil fuels caused 8.7 million deaths in 2018—one in five.
- The Trump years launched the biggest protest movement in US history, and it’s not over.
- Monitoring weather at the edge of the world.
- Driving was down in MA last year, but deaths by car were about the same, because people just drove a lot faster.
- Chuck Schumer is starting to sweat.
- California is bastion of progressive ideals that doesn’t live up to them. “San Francisco is about 48 percent white, but that falls to 15 percent for children enrolled in its public schools… What we see at times is people with a Bernie Sanders sign and a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign in their window, but they’re opposing an affordable housing project or an apartment complex down the street.”
- I know I said this issue wasn’t a takedown, but if you DO want to read a takedown, check out this article on alpha thread bro Seth Abramson.
Watching
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, season 4. This show, like all shows on Netflix, was abruptly cancelled after a few seasons. It wasn’t perfect and usually was way over the top, but I loved it and there was nothing else like it on TV, even just the way it was shot all over saturated and almost like a fisheye lens. The rare case of a dark comedy/drama that is actually dark. I thought the final season was very good, even the musical numbers, and there’s a final boss called The Void that sucks everything up and can never be satisfied which I think is a subtweet at the streaming TV industry. The final episode is actually terrible I’m sorry to say but don’t let that deter you. RIP Sabrina, thanks for the chills.
Podcasts
I recently finished Vann Newkirk’s Floodlines, a podcast mini-series which is wow now almost a year old but you know what a lot is going on. It covers a lot of territory, like the false information about looting and Superdome violence, why the levees broke, FEMA’s response, with some overlap with A Paradise Built in Hell. The production is beautiful, but I especially loved Newkirk’s interviews, which bring out all of these touching moments of honesty and humanity from the people who participated.
Comics
The Cursed Hermit, by Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes. In this sequel to the Case of the Missing Men, we now follow one of the most memorable supporting characters, Pauline, who investigates a new mystery at a remote private finishing school. Like the first installment, it’s creepy, heartwarming, funny, and Forbes brings life to the characters, especially Pauline, with his stark, dramatic facial expressions.
Poetry as resistance
Hey if you enjoyed CP55: Poetry as resistance, you’ll remember that poet and friend of the palace Tamiko Beyer was preparing a radical alternative to a book launch for her latest collection. And guess what? That launch is now happening.
You can read about it here, and support the fundraiser that will allow Tamiko to gift two new books of poetry to organizers and activists working on climate, racial, and economic justice issues. Do it!
It’s been very cold outside and the pets have been trying to get as close to a radiator as possible which means a lot of jockeying for position between these two pet beds that squish up against the radiator by my desk. Both beds are equally exposed to the radiator but Jacoby our little min pin hates the cat and hates it when the cat is in either bed, so he’s always starting fights and then nobody gets the bed. I keep trying to tell him like Youngbloodz said don’t start no shit won’t be no shit, but he cannot absorb this advice.
Eventually I tried to put a piece of cardboard between the two beds, to build a wall, if you will, but everyone hated that and they both immediately abandoned the beds. Anyway they are working out their differences and there’s probably some kind of lesson here, I guess that nobody likes a wall even if it means you get to be close to the radiator.
I hope you are finding your radiator and living in peace with the cat in your life, and if that’s not possible maybe finding a new radiator or a heating pad or a nice blanket.
Tate