Environmental Justice is Our Urgent Way Forward

Co-authors: Sierra Club, Oʻahu Group and Hawaiʻi Youth Climate Coaliton

Racial Justice is Climate Justice

As environmental justice advocates, it is critical that we hold steadfast to the fact that the climate crisis is a product of the same extractive capitalist system that dehumanized the labor of enslaved people. We recognize that extractive industries were built on racism, colonialism, and patriarchy. And that continues today as indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities that face the highest levels of toxic pollution, more powerful storms and floods, more intense heat waves, and other devastating effects of the climate crisis. 

We are living in a tumultuous times and the uprising happening now may seem unprecedented. But it’s not. It’s an extension and a deepening of the years of work that’s long been central to the principles of the environmental justice movement -- understanding the intersections between environmental justice and racial justice -- and working to combat both. Even after this whirlwind ends, and mass protests cease to be near-daily occurrences, we will still be doing this work. 

BIPOC have been dying and suffering because of environmental racism and the pollution from dirty fossil fuel infrastructure in our communities at the same time they have been dying at the hands of racist policing. Sierra Club national strategic director of partnerships, Hop Hopkins says it best: “You can’t have climate change without sacrifice zones, and you can’t have sacrifice zones without disposable people, and you can't have disposable people without racism.”  

Without a focus on addressing all injustices, work on climate change addresses only symptoms, and not root causes. 

INWARD REFLECTION

There is no other way to say it but to just say it. The roots of the climate crisis threatening each and every one of our futures lie in systemic racism, land-theft, pillaging, colonialism, and patriarchy. Hawaiʻi has a long deep history with white supremacy and systemic racism as a result of its colonization for capitalist gains. As allies, this is not our story to tell but it is certainly our duty to honor their struggle to protect their land and revive their culture. Because that same history is present today and is an experience shared by the mutli-racial residents in our islands. The shared experience of the dehumanization of labor, culture, and individual cannot continue. It has separated people from nature and one another, the alternative is to reclaim our humanity and relationships with one another. 

The only path to heal our communities and our planet is to abolish these systems. That happens through actively pursuing justice for every part of our local and global community. We can work together to build a future where people and land are celebrated and never subjugated. It happens when we step back, listen, unlearn, grow, amplify others and become anti-racist. 

WHY SOLIDARITY MATTERS 

Anti-racism is understanding how years of federal, state, and local policies have placed communities of color in the crises they face today, and calling those policies out for what they are: racist. When you come to see and understand these intersections between systemic racism, white supremacy and environmental destruction, you might find yourself at a crossroads or uncertain of what to do. You can choose—we as a society can choose—to live a different way. Indeed, we must. If our society valued all people’s lives equally, there wouldn’t be any sacrifice zones to put the pollution in. If every place was sacred, there wouldn’t be a health crisis in Nānakuli, Waiʻanae. We would find a way to share equally both the benefits and the burdens of clean energy prosperity. 

IMMEDIATE STEP FORWARD- VOTING #PEOPLEPOWER

Like climate change, there is no quick fix for systemic racism. But like in the battle to protect the planet, every fight we enter is also a choice about whom to protect—will we protect the privileged or the oppressed? The heard or the unheard? Those who feel the brunt of environmental impacts or those who don’t?

Locally, Hawaiʻi has amongst the nation’s lowest voter turnout, especially amongst the voting block from 18-29 year-olds. It is critical that we act proactively to increase voter turnout. This means that we must go beyond voter registration drives, though voter registration is also an important piece of the puzzle. We need to lower the voting age to 16, so that Hawaiʻi’s youth are engaged with the governmental process even before they leave our islands for college. We need to create venues for youth who are too young to vote to get engaged with government, whether it is by implementing civic engagement in education curriculums or creating youth commissions. We must understand that youth are not just the future of Hawaiʻi–they are living in the present facing current issues, and therefore deserve to be heard today.