By Mayté Salazar-Ordonez, Sierra Club w/ contributions from Dave Cortez
All across the nation and the world tens of thousands of people are taking to the streets to greet world leaders at a gathering of the United Nations and to demand strong action on climate change. From flooding in Pakistan and Colorado to record superstorms in Indonesia and NYC, citizens are mobilizing to speak out as if in an escalating war against the polluters largely responsible for our rapidly changing climate, for polluting our communities with toxic chemicals, and for holding our economy hostage to a system built on extracted minerals and fossil fuels.
In NYC and Austin, the call to frame the mobilization through a lens of climate justice is being heard and is creating space to rapidly forge new relationships among activists and communities directly impacted by climate disruption.
(Click here to read the communiqué written by organizers of the #ClimateMarchAtx)
Here in Austin, it seems like we’ve won a battle in the larger war.After all, the two newest City Council resolutions addressing climate change mark a significant and historic step in the direction of an economy less and less reliant on polluting fossil fuels. The two items together (item 157 and item 158) powerfully reject our dependence on fossil fuels and our resistance to change; they embrace the call to affordability, local job-creation, and public health; they reject our ties to rising costs – both acknowledging the benefits of energy efficiency programs and the sourcing of energy from clean, renewable, water-saving solar power. Most importantly, to me, however, is that they each pertain to issues of equity in a way that finally recognizes how climate change and other environmental issues affect everyone, but not equally; in other words, how these issues disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color.
I remember that Tuesday in late August, gathering for a press conference to launch the Affordable Energy Resolution, feeling droplets of sweat running down my back as I stood alert, listening to the voices in the crowd; I could see the earth breathing contently all around me and could feel as it sometimes stopped to greet my skin in peace; I saw different shapes, sizes and colors in the crowd and knew I was meant to be celebrating this remarkable moment.
Still, what remained was as oppressive as the heat beating down my bare skin: it was the thought of the climate justice work still to be done; of the voices I had not heard; of the shapes, sizes and colors I had not seen; and of the opposition yet to be faced. I thought of a piece I had recently read, hearing the imagined voice of the author, Deirdre Smith, say to me:
“OUR FIGHT IS NOT SIMPLY WITH THE CARBON IN THE SKY, BUT WITH THE POWERS ON THE GROUND.”
I anticipated Austin Energy’s opposition to the resolution to cite monetary issues as a primary concern. Still, what was disheartening about this response was the way in which it continued a tradition of marginalizing black and brown, low-income communities near the gas-fired Decker Power Plant by failing to address the public health concern of continuing to run the old and inefficient plant. In opposing Decker’s retirement, in other words, Austin Energy made clear it would prefer to gamble for money at the expense of people’s right to clean air - while Decker made money in the anomaly year of 2011, it lost money in 2012, still able to claim its mantle as the largest point source of smog-forming pollutants in Travis County.
To me, the passage of these resolutions acknowledges that there are issues of justice and inequality at play in the fight for clean energy. They recognize the need for systemic institutional change – in other words, the modification of institutions so as to represent stakeholders that have traditionally been ignored. What is most exciting, then, is how this new framework at play, will open doors to the kind of justice work still to be done.
My hope is that we within the movement begin changing our behavior towards those we believe to be “outside” the movement; that we recognize the ways in which our success is tied with the success of the communities on the ground; that we no longer forget how environmental issues are interrelated with other issues of justice and equality; and that we no longer wrongly assume people are too concerned with their own advocacy work or are too apathetic to care about ours.
For too often I’ve heard excuses that blame people of color for their lack of representation; too often people have told me poor, brown and black folk don’t have an interest in going green; too much I hear there is no time for trust and conversation and that we who have the privilege of being educated on these issues truly know what is best for these communities.
The fact is that these excuses allow people who employ them to feel unaffected and disconnected to the ways in which the very issues they are fighting against disproportionately affect marginalized communities. Ironically, these same people do not realize how these statements alienate others and make the road to a green future a much longer and lonelier one.
My challenge to you, the reader, is then to fight not only against the Decker, Fayette and South Texas Nuclear plants yet to be retired or the carbon emissions yet to be lowered, but also the inequality yet to be considered and the racism and classism yet to be fought… for the perfect future is not only a green one, but one in which a green, clean world is enjoyed equally by all.
Because this is a world we all share, it is our responsibility to take into account all voices whenever speaking about environmental issues and to acknowledge the history of exclusion and racism in our local environmental movement, always keeping in mind that when voices are not heard, concerns are forgotten.