Sierra Student Coalition
Returning home last Sunday from the UN climate negotiations in Lima, I'd watched from an unfamiliar distance as resistance to police violence against young people of color grew and workers seeking a subsistence wage of $15 an hour staged massive walkouts. And, I was struck by the similarities about what we have to do to get it right in each of these struggles for justice.
My colleagues Steve Herz and Fred Heutte have published an excellent analysis of the Sierra Club's overall take on the Lima negotiations, but I wanted to take a moment to focus on how my trip there deepened my conviction that achieving greater economic and racial justice is key to our work for climate justice at home and abroad.
COP 20: Agreement, but Deep Divisions Sharpened by Continuing Inequality
In Lima, the parties ultimately agreed on basic deal laying out the subjects that should be part of a global agreement, two days after the negotiations were supposed to end. Yet deep divisions that have troubled past negotiations remain unresolved. At the same time, these dangerous schisms -- often rooted in economic and racial injustice -- also illuminate just how inextricably linked the solutions to climate and human injustice really are. The strength of our efforts to address them is the basis for hope for progress in Paris and beyond.
The talks in Lima clearly showed that disagreements between wealthier and poorer nations remain some of the principal obstacles to a deal next year. These divides are long-standing, and have deepened over centuries of inequality. We have a great deal of work to do to begin to bridge them over the next year.
Three of the most important remaining obstacles include:
- Just Transition: A just transition to decent jobs in a clean energy economy that works for all, so that working class people are not forced to carry a disproportionate share of the burden of this transformation. Advocates for working people are outraged that negotiators omitted from the "Lima Call for Climate Action" the just transition commitment that had been included in the agreements following previous COP negotiations in Cancun and Durban.
- Climate Finance: The responsibility of wealthier countries that powered their development by burning climate-polluting fossil fuels to help finance emissions reductions and climate adaptation in the less-developed nations suffering the greatest effects of climate disruption. Developing countries are understandably unhappy that the Lima deal did not include a roadmap for how developed countries would meet their 2009 pledge of $100 billion a year in assistance by 2020, nor how much they would contribute after that.
- Emissions Reductions: The respective responsibilities of developing and developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to mitigate climate disruption. The original 1990 Convention divided the world into two camps, with developed countries required to take a strong lead on reductions. Since then, they have been pushing to give developing countries more responsibility to reduce their own emissions. Many developing countries object that their emissions are often the result of producing goods for the benefit of Western corporations and consumers rather than their own citizens. Although the language out of Lima takes into account "different national circumstances," less wealthy countries still object to the weakening of language in the original UN Climate Convention that imposed a greater responsibility on developed countries to reduce emissions.
A well-placed mistrust rooted in a long and tumultuous history seems to be one of the core issues here. Developing nations are accusing developed nations of "backsliding." It wouldn't be the first time. The power relations between developed and developing nations are based in part on economic and political institutions with their roots in colonialism, racism, and patriarchy. The schisms in these power relations have evolved to be reflected in the power of global corporations, including the fossil fuel industry, while much of the inequality has remained worldwide. As Robert Borosage argued, "[T]he wealthiest 10 percent captured all of the income growth of the society over the last two decades. This isn't an accident or an act of nature. It requires systematically rigging the deck to favor the few."
While people of all colors and genders suffer from economic and climate injustice, the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have told us that the killer heat waves, wildfires and deadly floods are taking a disproportionate toll on poor and working class people, children, indigenous people, and the elderly. Looking beyond current impacts to future risks, the IPCC scientists acknowledge, "Many key risks constitute particular challenges for the least developed countries and vulnerable communities, given their limited ability to cope." Working people will be particularly hard hit if we allow fossil fueled climate disruption to continue.
Back Home: Growing a "Movement of Movements" for Economic, Racial and Climate Justice
These disproportionate impacts based on race and class exist not only between regions and countries, but within countries. Indeed, studies in the U.S. have confirmed that the "climate gap" identified by the IPCC exists here as well: the health consequences of climate disruption will harm everybody in the U.S., but poor people, working class people and people of color will be hit the hardest.
That's one of the reasons why Dr. Jalonne White-Newsome, of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, argues persuasively that environmental justice must be included in the push for social justice that’s grown following police shootings across the country:
[T]he sad irony is that while the lives of African American women and men are being taken from us by 'clear and transparent' weaponry, there still remains a more subversive threat to our communities, the threat of environmental racism, that is perpetuated by the constant inundation of pollution and toxins in our air that literally can keep us from breathing, and cutting the lives of African Americans much too short/ . . Any agenda that is formulated to address social justice should not leave out measures to address environmental racism. It's all connected.
In the U.S., the links between climate, racial and economic justice have never been clearer. As Mark Bittman put it in this op-ed from last Saturday's New York Times,
The police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe "safety net." An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. . . This in part explains why we're seeing spontaneous protests nationwide, protests that, in their scale, racial diversity, anger and largely nonviolent nature, are unusual if not unique. . . The root of the anger is inequality . . .
Everything affects everything. It's all tied together, and the starting place hardly matters: A just and righteous system will have a positive impact on everything we care about, just as an unjust, exploitative system makes everything worse.
Acting at the intersections of these issues presents the best opportunity we have to deepen links between our movements and build a broader and more powerful coalition for real justice and sustainability for people and the planet.
The rainbow of 400,000 people who united under the broad umbrella of "jobs, justice and clean energy" at the People’s Climate March in September saw these connections. They knew that, "to change everything, we need everybody." And they didn’t stop there. In New York City on Tuesday, the coalition that organized the People’s Climate March announced Climate Works for All, a detailed policy platform and organizing plan for ambitious NYC emissions reductions (80 percent by 2050). The plan focuses on ramping up good clean energy jobs with justice for people who need them, especially in low-income and communities of color. The labor-environmental BlueGreen Alliance, co-founded by the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers, is building similar coalitions in targeted states across the country as part of the implementation of the EPA's Clean Power Plan -- the key domestic policy element of our countries' contribution to global emissions reductions.
In other words, the people who marched in NYC in September know that the clean energy economy will only lift up vulnerable communities -- including workers and communities affected by the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy -- when we plan and carry out a strategy to foster healthier, more just communities by simultaneously building environmental, economic and racial justice. They also know our leaders won't do it by themselves, especially given the power of the fossil fuel industry.
Linking Our Local and Global Movements
Thus, as we build towards a global climate agreement in Paris in 2015, environmental activists should do our part by focusing our advocacy on solutions that foster healthier and more just communities. As the Sierra Club's Board recently recommended, we can do this at home by helping to ensure clean energy jobs are good jobs. And, we can do it by addressing the needs of workers and communities whose livelihoods are affected by the clean energy transition, low-income and communities of color hit hardest by climate disruption and fossil fuel pollution, and consumers disproportionately burdened by energy costs.
Globally, we can move in the right direction by beginning to address the unfair and unequal power relationships that drove the growth of the fossil fuel industry and fuelled the disparate impacts of climate disruption on poor and working class people.
To get a global climate agreement that works for the world’s people, we must ensure it is not rigged to protect the powerful few. Of course, all countries must compromise, but our compromises must reflect both how deeply the fossil fuel industry's growth is linked to historic inequalities, and how much our ability to avert catastrophic climate disruption depends on greater economic, racial and environmental justice.