Equity is the Solution to Climate Crisis

We often discuss a wide array of solutions to fix our existential climate problem except for the most important one: eliminating racism

Croix Ellison | Research Fellow

Through inequality, what we’ve always called Climate Change has graduated and evolved, rapidly, into a Climate Crisis. This means that effectively combating climate crisis rests in fully redressing centuries of inequality bred through the market forces that spawned racism, slavery, segregation, environmental injustice and the costly systemic targeting of marginalized Black, Brown and Indigenous populations around the world.

We ignored the warning signs and manifestations of injustice all around us for centuries. That injustice became an unmitigated environmental disaster fed by industrial greed and unchecked consumption: or what we know as capitalism. Yet, too many features of capitalism are based on exploitation, discrimination, suppression and either displacement or, sometimes, genocide. Now we are all faced with an environmental window closing faster beyond our most terrifying projections. 

There have been many ideas pushed forward on how we solve a climate crisis. Many advocates these days are calling for “degrowth” - seemingly borrowed from social justice activists who coined the phrase “defund the police.” Their thought is that a bold restructuring of the way economies normally function will force us all to consume less and to rely even much less on the fossil fuels that drive needless over-consumption habits. Others will point regularly to a wide array of solutions, from transitioning to a total clean energy society to planting more trees worldwide and preserving biodiversity wherever we can. 

Sure, these are all very compelling and necessary solutions. But they are often presented without mentioning the elephants in the room: racism and inequality. Solutions cannot be implemented if exploitation and discrimination persist. Societies cannot continue to marginalizes populations that have been targeted and distressed for centuries by racism and economic oppression. Solving the climate crisis will, first and foremost, require justice. All private, non-profit and public industries, institutions and sectors must center equity in their response strategy. A goal of creating economies that consume less oil and gas or use total clean energy cannot be achieved if only certain populations or certain countries can afford to participate.

It is difficult to imagine a world where the climate is stabilized only in certain places, or the air is clean only in certain places, or the water sources are clean and abundant only in certain places … only because some populations can afford those as climate comforts when others cannot. We cannot visualize a world in which every household and apartment is powered by solar, or every household is driving an electric or solar-powered vehicle if only certain groups of people are able to afford it. Distressed, low-income Black communities in Philadelphia, for example, can’t expect relief from increasingly hot temperatures year after year that exacerbates high gun violence, high rates of respiratory disease and schools without air conditioning shut down early when they’re not provided basic access to clean energy sources.

Either everyone participates in a climate-friendly world - or we don’t have a climate-friendly world at all. Take the rapidly deteriorating Amazon rainforest for example: Indigenous populations and other poor communities living in that region need to rely on other sources of income other than tree-cutting and clearing land for livestock. Yet, they’ve struggled economically because of the Brazilian government’s inability and refusal to address the inequality these populations face and a recognition that the rainforest can no longer be used for industrial agriculture.   

The deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is just one out of countless examples showing how the climate crisis is the ultimate result of environmental injustice. The population groups who continue suffering - in the struggle space - on the front lines of climate crisis disaster must be the leaders in a necessary global shift to save our planet. 

Once we center equity, we then realize justice. With justice we stop climate crisis. Justice is realized through the end of destructive fossil fuel economies that poison our planet and disproportionately pollute and displace those who struggle the most from generations of disparity. A just world free of exploitation and extraction is a world fully powered by a clean energy convergence of solar, hydro, and wind (and, perhaps, fusion, too). A just future is where all communities, equally, are empowered by the political, economic and public health benefits of renewable energy. A just planet is one where our societies transition from a toxic capitalist economy to, finally, a prosperous remediation economy that repairs and heals.  

As a member of Generation Z with an uncertain future ahead of us, I remain optimistic. I know solutions are possible through the endurance of our demands and the persistence of our actions. It’s essential for us to understand that we all, as a global community, play roles, big and small, in reaching a just, climate-friendly world. It’s, really, not that complicated: we can all commit to living, advocating for, voting for, and pushing to legislate a world that lives sustainably and creatively. We can all - through how we clean our neighborhoods and build equitable government - design communities with zero negative impact on ecosystems, crucial sources of water and essential land. There’s no need to imagine a just, climate crisis-resolved, remediation-driven and clean energy world. The tools, creativity and innovation necessary to achieve all of the above already exist. The next move is, simply, ours to make.