On September 4th, 2014, if you stepped outside of your office around noon for a quick bite to eat in Crystal City, you may have noticed a crowd gathered outside the headquarters of Dominion, a major energy provider in Virginia and a number of other U.S. states. The crowd, made up of different ethnicities—European-Americans, Asians, and African-Americans—and ages—from young adults to what one of the speakers termed ‘the more-experienced-in-life folks’—held up banners, catching the attention of passing drivers and pedestrians, some of whom slowed down, talked with members of the group, or honked their support. A feel-good, do-good atmosphere pervaded the lawn where the people stood and chanted.
No, it wasn’t another Woodstock reenactment, despite colorful T-shirts calling for social change and posters announcing an intent to “Defend Our Mother.” Instead, this crowd of concerned citizens were coming together to show their support for environmental awareness, advocacy, and issues—including moving beyond coal to renewable energy in this country and protecting environmental resources—by protesting Dominion’s ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”). 
In recent years, the range of such concerned citizens has broadened and spread across ethnic, socio-economic, political, and national boundaries. More and more, people are coming to realize the signs of a planet under stress and the growing importance of collective action. In the last decade, environmental justice advocates have worked hard to get the issue the place it deserves on the global agenda. Economic-growth driven resource-consumption—increasingly adopted by a global population of over 7 billion people, and rising—has given rise to environmental degradation and pollution that is not being accurately accounted for in any individual, company, or country’s final cost analysis. We need to turn the tide of this trend before this tidal wave pitches us over the cliff of no return.
Nonetheless, ALEC—an organization that helps draft model state-level legislation that drives forward conservative social and economic agendas—and other groups like it would have American citizens believe that no such cliff exists. These organizations disperse claims that government regulations, support, and involvement in the energy industry—whether to support the fight against greenhouse gas emissions and climate change as the proposed EPA Clean Power Plan does, or to encourage investment in renewable energy—is unnecessary, perhaps even foolish if we are to remain competitive in the global economy.
Like Dorothy in the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” we are being told to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Greenhouse gas emissions don’t exist. If they do, they don’t really matter. If they matter at all, we shouldn’t care because our children or future technological advancements will take care of it. Basically, they are someone else’s problem. Does this sound like anyone’s idea of responsible planning or good governance?
No long-term strategy ever succeeded by closing its eyes to the obvious. And it is obvious that arguments for greater economic productivity are moot if we have no planet.
It is also obvious today that environmental issues have become a struggle between those who are in a position to delay, offset, or lay the burden elsewhere, and those who are at the edge of the abyss, with nowhere to turn. However, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The time to act against environmental injustice is now. If we accept climate change and rising sea levels as the new status quo—allowing enviromental changes to drive the poor, the disempowered, and the most vulnerable from their homes, communities, and livelihoods—how can we ever hope to take a firm stand against child hunger, global poverty, or genocide? How will we ever look our children and grandchildren in the face and say that, using the best information available at the time and to to the best of our abilities, we fought so that they could have hope for their future on this planet?
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