It’s Getting Hot In Here

Earlier tonight, as part of a typical action-packed Wednesday night at Tufts University, I attended a panel discussion event organized by the recently formed Tufts Coalition for Endowment Transparency and Democracy. Having been active in campus organizing efforts around socially responsible investment (SRI) initiatives with a climate change focus a couple years ago, I was interested to learn more about this new group’s approach. For an hour or so I listened to an engaging group of speakers discuss a wide range of past and present divestment/SRI campaigns, focused on issues ranging from genocide in Darfur to apartheid in South Africa to defense and military contractors. As I sat there taking it all in, thinking about my own past activism around SRI issues, I wondered why these speakers weren’t talking about climate change. After all, if university endowments could be invested in companies doing business in Darfur, couldn’t they also be invested in fossil fuel corporations perpetuating climate chaos? Why weren’t these social justice-minded speakers discussing this compelling issue?

Many of us in the youth climate movement (myself included) talk about climate change as “the challenge of our generation.” Echoing Al Gore’s presentation in An Inconvenient Truth, we say that climate change is “a moral issue.” When it comes to climate change, we say that “everyone’s talking about the problem, but no one’s talking about solutions,” and then we point to dynamic youth organizing efforts under the Campus Climate Challenge as part of the solution. All of these messages are incredibly inspiring and we should continue to repeat them. Yet after the panel tonight, I am wondering if we are missing something. Of course we want our movement to transcend the doom-and-gloom environmentalism of years past and offer a message of hope and opportunity — but do our peers and the public truly understand what is at stake here? Why are people less likely to mobilize around climate change than they are to mobilize around the Darfur conflict (which ironically may be exacerbated by climate change)?

In his 1995 book Losing Ground, an account of the successes and failures of the American environmental movement, author Mark Dowie argues that “justice, the critical ingredient of any social movement, did not enter the agenda of American environmental movement until recently.” Here Dowie of course is refering to the people of color-led environmental justice movement, which challenges the disproportionate vulnerability of marginalized poor and minority communities to environmental hazards. Is justice on the agenda of the youth climate movement? People understand that the killing in Darfur is an injustice and a moral outrage. But do they understand that the fact that communities from the Arctic Circle to the Niger Delta to Cancer Alley in Louisiana to Tuvalu are suffering as a result of our addiction to fossil fuels is also an injustice and a moral outrage? As corrupt governments twiddle their thumbs while oil and coal corporations profit at the expense of vulnerable communities — our communities — shouldn’t we rise up and demand climate justice?

Many of us in the youth climate movement understand that climate change is a justice issue, yet we do not articulate the idea of climate justice as effectively as we could. We must challenge ourselves to do so if we want our movement to gain real traction. History teaches us that people demand social change when they perceive something as a moral outrage, as has been the case for movements around civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, unjust wars, and now genocide in Darfur. Similarly, we must talk about climate change in a way that will instill a sense of moral outrage in people, while simultaneously offering a path to a better tomorrow. Our movement has the latter down to a tee — but to mobilize people to demand action consistent with the scale of the challenge before us, we cannot afford to ignore the former. We know that climate change is not an abstract future problem — it is already devastating vulnerable communities and it will get worse if nothing is done. We must not shy away from these issues. Instead, we must engage them directly and honestly as we redouble our efforts to inspire, to transform minds, to build a just and sustainable future for all.