Protect communities from the most harmful effects, and provide them access to the benefits. That was the mantra at a recent Center for American Progress panel, where eco-superstars Van Jones and Majora Carter made the case for “social uplift environmentalism.”
If you’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth, you may remember that, while richest nations contribute the most to climate change, the poorest (and least industrialized) are faced with the majority of climate change’s nefarious effects. Even more, the world’s richest countries more effectively defend against negative effects than their poorer counterparts. For instance, Africa only contributes to 3% of the world’s carbon emissions, yet its people are faced with climate change’s destructive effects. (We’ve seen this going on in the Sudan, where many observe that the fertile land/drought land divide will spur future conflicts.) Per person, an average American emits 19 – 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year, as opposed to 10 per Western European or 3 per Chinese.
Let’s change countries for a minute, and fly back to the United States. (Well, we should train it, since flying is the number one carbon producer in many of our lives: roundtrip from London to New York would emit 2500 tons of carbon dioxide.) Back in America, the “climate divide” — different communities having disparate impacts on and feeling disparate effects of climate change — was the crux of the argument at the CAP panel, where Jones, Carter, and others made the case that low-income communities in the US, predominantly communities of color, face climate change’s ills with no chance to participate in the emerging green economy – the markets and systems that aim to mitigate climate change’s effects. To Jones and Carter, access to the green economy and the new green jobs movement is the new civil rights, a type of “social uplift environmentalism.”
As Jones said, “I like the polar bears. But I like our people better. And climate change will destroy our people.”
d.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.