Discuss: Climate Justice

I agree.  There is a direct, and demonstrably causal, connection between poverty and an economy so heavily based on consumption.

I don’t agree that we must tackle environmental injustice on a global scale before we tackle it here at home.

I am a victim of environmental injustice. I have environmental illness - multiple chemical sensitivities - due to exposure to toxins in my environment. I am trapped in a very polluted place which is extremely hazardous to my health and I am unable to move because there are no other subsidized housing units available to me.

I live on less than $700/month. I am homebound. I can’t even go outside on the balcony the air is so bad most of the time. I am trapped in this apartment stuffing rags under the windows and doors trying to keep out the poisonous fumes from the diesel trucks running in the alley, unloading at the shopping center just across the alley.

This building is full of elderly and disabled people and we are all affected. Today is an ozone alert day and summer is just beginning. Charity begins at home.

The poor suffer disproportionately from the effects of environmental damage. Witness the aftermath of Katrina (they lived in the lowest neighborhoods and lacked cars to escape.) and children with asthma in mold and pest infested slums. Pope John Paul II spoke of this in 1980.

very poorly written opinion! he says that unless there is social and economic justice thruout the world we can do nothing to affect climate change. he fails to show how this is all tied together, thus all he is doing is protesting the eniqualities of reality. article lacks substance!

Tom deserves kudos for linking the discussion of climate change with ‘radioactive’ issues permeating environmental justice. When measured in terms of CO2 released into the atmospheric commons, the developed world owes the developing world a huge debt. Between 1960 and 2005 the average US citizen released 90 times more carbon than did the average person in Kenya.

The poor people of the world didn’t pump the CO2 out of the ground and into the sky to make a hotter, less habitable world, but they will face its most brutal consequences: “Drier areas will become more arid, causing crop failure and forests to become dried up. Three billion people will face water shortages. All of this, they expect, will produce a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions.”

Three billion people, that’s half the world’s population.

Because those fleeing a deteriorating environment will be forced to migrate into areas already torn by warfare and ethnic strife, some defense analysts believe that climate change is the greatest security threat facing the world today. America is not immune to that threat.

It is because of this final point that I have a minor quibble with Tom’s dismissive use of the word ‘pragmatism.’ Ending climate change in a way that promotes environmental justice would be in the deep tradition of American pragmatism. The environmental medicine necessary to limit global warming could preserve rainforests, could limit the spread of deserts, could prevent ‘floods” of environmental refugees, could help to reduce poverty, and could promote human rights for indigenous peoples. All those goals are technically possible, and are well founded in the philosophical system of American Pragmatism, a way of thinking that integrates science, evolution, education, ethics, and law. Pragmatism evolved, phoenix like, out of the ashes of the America’s Civil War. A long look at those times of crisis and dueling absolutes has much to teach us about our crisis today.

It is in our pragmatic interest to prevent war, to limit suffering, and to preserve other life forms. It is in our spiritual interest as well. Maybe times of great change make us aware that our spiritual needs and our pragmatic needs are often one in the same.

Everyone should start taking responsibility for the climate/peak oil crisis (both intertwined with one another) and for turning it around. If everyone started acting locally, which is how society is going to be in years to come once the crisis fully hits, the human race may stand a chance - check out the Transition Movement.

The downturn in the world economy may have provided us with a little
breathing room in the fight against global warming.  The goal of economic policy should not be to try to re-create the same levels of economic activity that were causing so much environmental destruction.  The age of the automobile is over.
    Governments should be giving more support to people who are
unemployed, during the transition to a sustainable society.  In the
United States, the programs are already in place, but need more
money: extended unemployment insurance, food stamps, housing
subsidies, food banks, etc.  Organic agriculture requires more labor than chemical agriculture, and would provide an alternative
livelihood for workers.

Just want to take this opportunity to plug the burgeoning grassroots climate justice umbrella group mobilizing around the COP15 meetings this December.  N30 is our day of action.  Visit the Mobilization for Climate Justice at http://www.actforclimatejustice.org

The Climate Justice Action Network is convening on an international scale, visit them online at http://www.climate-justice-action.org

oh, and get involved!