Author: Mauricio Leon, co-chair Clean Air & Renewable Energy Committee
Date: 5/7/2018
Let me start by telling you why I decided to volunteer for Sierra Club North Star Chapter.
In the Twin Cities, there are a number of environmental groups that have unfortunately sold their souls to the devil.
What I mean by this is that, ironically they are directly supporting the system that they are supposed to change. Their money comes from the fossil fuel industry or from other interest groups that set really specific boundaries on what they can do or say. Sadly, they become an instrument to prevent any "change" that could harm the financial interest of those at the top by giving an illusion of green activism.
But Sierra Club is different, our funding comes from thousands of individual donors that trust that the volunteers and staff deliberate on how to have the best impact on society. This gives Sierra Club great freedom, but this great power comes with a great responsibility. Environmentalism for the sake of environmentalism is a bad idea, environmentalism is an instrument to promote a better society. With this in mind, it is important to wonder: what is the type of society that we want to see?
During one of our meetings of the Clean Air and Renewable Energy committee, it came to my attention the fact that some of our volunteers are not necessarily aware of the value of spending a considerable part of our time speaking about issues of environmental justice. Some even see it as unproductive use of time, when we could be using the time to speak about urgent environmental issues that demand attention.
This came to me as a surprise. I felt like at some point we got consumed by what we are doing and forgot to wonder why we are doing it. For me, the equity section of our agenda was not meant to be something symbolic or a nice gesture but something elementary of doing good advocacy work. In fact, having a section for equity in the agenda falls short in relation to what we ought to be doing, putting equity at the center of all of our discussions.
There is an implicit assumption that by doing environmental work we are automatically creating a better society for everyone, this is not only simplistic, it is wrong. Society is not going to be better as long as we continue to carry a legacy of sexism, racial disparities, colonialism, white supremacy and discrimination of all kinds.
In these times of polarization and tribalism a bad mistake would be to demonize those who don't share our values and to disregard them as arrogant or ignorant. We need to provide clear evidence and arguments to support our guiding principles, with the hope that we can convince others. For this reasons I assigned myself to be critical about what I already take for granted and rethink the question of why do we care about diversity, equity and justice (DEJ) in the context of fighting climate change.
To understand why Diversity, Equity, & Justice (DEJ) is central in our work, we need to start by analyzing some basic facts:
Climate Change impacts people disproportionately
Climate change is already impacting very negatively people's lives. However, the impacts of climate change are disproportionately experienced by people in low socio-economic groups, in particular women and people of color.
This is the case in Minnesota, in the United States and in whole world.
A good local example is how poor people have less access to air conditioning, which can be a significant health risk during extreme heat. In general, lower income American have less opportunities to escape extreme weather events than the wealthy. When disasters occur, the wealthier can move easily from one place to the other, while the poor don't really have as much mobility.
The responsibility for Climate Change is also disproportionate
Just as there is inequality on how climate change impacts are experienced, there are inequalities on who is responsible for climate change. Wealthier people who have bigger houses, more vehicles, travel by air more frequently, and eat more exotic food are by far more responsible for climate change that people who don't have all these privileges.
Yet, society has enabled a false sense of environmental awareness that is based on "green" consumption habits, to which wealthier people have access and poorer people don’t. This alienates marginalized people from joining certain environmental causes and keeps society segmented when it comes to environmental action.
When a person buys an electric vehicle for example, they celebrate their environmental consciousness. A poor person using the public transportation every day out of necessity is not celebrated the same way. Even when the environmental footprint of the person using public transportation is much smaller.
Disproportionate process, disproportionate outcomes
If equity is ignored in any process of promoting social change, equity will also be missing in the outcomes. The history of the United State is full of evidence of how excluding certain groups from policy and decision making creates systems that favors only certain groups of people.
At Sierra Club we are not necessarily actively excluding anyone (at least not in the Club's recent history), but given the social and cultural context in which we are, it is likely that we might be inadvertently repelling people by not listening, choosing the wrong issues, not being allies, being culturally and gender insensitive, not engaging with our communities and lacking representation of minorities.
If our work is creating a more unequal society, then it is bad work. We might be creating a more unequal society even if that is not our intention.
A good example of a mindset that we need to examine is the emphasis on simply increasing renewable energy. While the logic of doing this is clear, if the implications of increasing renewable energy on the lower socioeconomic groups of society are not considered, the outcomes might not be equitable. For example, if poor people who already struggle to pay their bills, have to pay even higher prices for energy.
Many talk about the jobs that are created by the renewable energy industry, but if the jobs are only benefiting a certain group of people, it could end up creating resentment in society and more division rather than unity.
There is evidence that renewable energy is at a point where it can actually be cheaper than fossil fuels. However, it is not about the price per kilowatt hour, it is the cost of the energy transition. We need to wonder who is paying for the energy transition?
There are many more reasons why Diversity Equity and Justice (DEJ) must be central to our work. What I provided here does not even scratched the surface. DEJ is not something that we do for the sake of appearing social justice minded, but it is at the core of doing proper advocacy work. For that reason, I see DEJ as a skill that we need to develop as a group and each of us members and volunteer of the Sierra Club individually.