Climate Justice: Moving to a Fairer World
Climate Justice: Moving to a Fairer World
Violence is a tricky thing to pin down, when you think about it. Do we consider it merely to be if one person physically harms another? What about psychological or other forms of abuse that harm, but leave no immediate physical traces? And then there are things like systemic level violence, such as racism, sexism, xenophobia. Yes, as with most Philosophical subjects, you can spend a lot of time navel gazing and not really coming to any conclusions.
One thing that I have concluded, in my studies, is that I believe in objective right and wrong, knowable truth that is reached incrementally, and the creation of meaning by people, for themselves and their communities. These may seem basic in terms of common sense, but can also be hotly debated around academic tables. Why do I bring up such seemingly fleeting and transient things as simple ideas? Because ideas have power. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, goes the saying.
I define violence to mean anything that hinders the future potential of an individual or group, done by another individual or group. This is why something like systemic racism, which certainly has more direct expressions of violence, is also considered a form of violence when it leads to a drop in SAT scores on average when a Black American student simply ticks the box saying that they are Black, as opposed to when the question isn’t present.
The bulk of my work, both academic and professional, has been on what was first called global warming, then climate change, and now more recently the climate crisis. In recent times, I joined Nonviolence International to work on things related to peace and nonviolence, but also continue my work on this specific issue. How does this work? As I define violence to include large, systemic, cultural, and organizational issues, which can span decades, and the economic and political systems which have produced, nurture, and protect them, the people on the receiving end of the effects of the climate crisis are, in my opinion, experiencing violence done to them by others. The people who put the carbon in the air may be temporally removed by generations, or geographically removed by thousands of miles, but this matters little. It is still one group of privileged people doing active harm to another group of marginalized people. This is at the heart of the growing climate justice movement, an outgrowth of environmental justice, which is itself the intersection between social justice and environmental issues.
Another key issue at play here is the current relationship between the high income and low income countries. The USA and Europe want India and China, for example, not to use a carbon-intensive industry, and transition as quickly as possible to renewables and carbon neutrality. Of course, from their perspective, this makes sense, because their populations, and economies, are growing exponentially, and projected only to continue until at least the 2050s, perhaps beyond. How can these developed countries, however, credibly argue such a thing, when their entire economic growth and industrialization, since inception, was predicated upon the unlimited use of carbon intensive fuels? Does it not seem somewhat hypocritical to argue that now, given what these countries have done, other countries can’t do the same?
I’m not saying that China, India, and other developing countries should emit whatever they like. Far from it. I am saying, rather, that we must appeal to a new, and different, argument, when considering this issue at a systems-level analysis. We must make the cost of renewables so cheap that they are the first choice for powering our economies and growth. We must encourage research and development, and share this freely around the world. We must understand that many of those on the receiving end of the climate crisis’s worst impacts are those who contributed the least to it. And we must help these marginalized people as much as we can. I consider it not just good policy and in line with the science, but a moral obligation.
For more information on the growing Climate Justice movement, particularly among the youth, check out Fridays for Future:
https://www.fridaysforfuture.org
Greta Thunberg’s movement (@gretathunberg on twitter),
and Extinction Rebellion:
References:
[1] “Climate Justice.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice.
[2] “Structural Violence.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence.
[3] “Peace and Conflict Studies.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 10, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_conflict_studies.
[3] “Greta Thunberg.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 10, 2019.