Environmental Justice comes garbed as the Green New Deal
Nov. 28, 2018, by Sue Edwards
As we have seen, the youth-led Sunrise Movement, with support from NY’s Rep-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is pushing the Democratic Party to take a powerful stand on climate change and convene a Select Committee for a Green New Deal as soon as their party takes control of the House of Representatives in January, 2019.
As climate activist and writer Naomi Klein writes in The Intercept (11/27/18), she's hopeful for the first time in a long time. That's because, she says, this represents a concrete plan with a science-based timeline to make the U.S. carbon neutral; also because this Green New Deal could become a platform and litmus test for the 2020 elections.
Klein declares “what is needed is 'rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.' By giving the Select Committee a mandate that connects the dots between energy, transportation, housing and construction, as well as health care, living wages, a jobs guarantee, and the urgent imperative to battle racial and gender injustice, the Green New Deal plan would be mapping precisely that kind of far-reaching change.”
This Green New Deal represents environmental justice at its best : global, concrete, and lifting up the less affluent nations that stand to feel (and are already feeling) the first impacts of rising oceans, droughts, more severe storms, and the disappearance of low-lying island nations. Klein links the need for action on climate with the immigrant struggles so much in the news, not only at the Mexican border but also in Europe. Climate refugees are clearly going to be an ongoing part of a changing planet, and we need to have strategies to make their home countries more liveable by controlling temperature rise rather than focusing on hardening borders.
Klein hails “the vast infrastructure of scientific, technical, political, and movement expertise poised to spring into action should we take the first few steps down this path.” She asserts that the basis has been prepared for many years by movements focused on “community-owned and community-controlled renewable energy; with justice-based transitions that make sure no worker is left behind; with a deepening analysis of the intersections between systemic racism, armed conflict, and climate disruption; with improved green tech and breakthroughs in clean public transit; with the thriving fossil fuel divestment movement; with model legislation driven by the climate justice movement that shows how carbon taxes can fight racial and gender exclusion; and much more.”
As the Intercept article points out, some of the newly elected members of Congress have roots in working-class struggles such as such Rashida Tlaib's involvement against the Koch Industries’ noxious petroleum coke mountain in Detroit. These new representatives are more likely than deep-pocketed leaders to promote the systemic changes their bases demand, such as massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and health care.
It appears that environmental justice has a good chance of being foundational in the coming struggle to protect civilization.
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