The presence of a single kind of justice
The planetary crises do not affect people equally. Marginalised people are hit worse most of the time. Not only are they hit worse, they also receive less support and are frequently not considered in decision-making. The examples are endless: in the global south, women and girls are exposed to more indoor air pollution because they are left to cook with unclean fuels like wood or dung; as LGBTQ+ Officer Anson To explained to Felix, homelessness affects LGBTQ+ youth much more than average, leaving them less able to find safe places to stay during extreme weather events like hurricanes; and, in the United States, dirty fossil power plants are built next to majority black areas. The ND-GAIN Index is an assessment of each country’s vulnerability to and readiness to adapt to climate change. It clearly shows that the worst effects are being felt in Africa, South America, and the Middle-East – places that have contributed the least to the climate crisis. Addressing these issues alongside climate change gives us the term climate justice. As an alum from Imperial Climate Action said to Felix, “Climate justice is intrinsically connected with social, racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ justices (and justice for other marginalised groups such as those disabled by society).”
Despite all that, my dad wishes there was a Green Party that was actually single issue. Unfortunately for him, it is impossible to separate the planetary crises from justice, and let’s hope we don’t forget that, because to do so would be the end of us.
Let’s take an example I’m fairly familiar with: a carbon tax. A carbon tax is a tax on fossil fuels where they are taken out of the ground. This cost affects what it is economical to buy and sell, and a tax rising to $250 per ton of CO2 by 2035 could reduce warming by a degree or so. That said, a carbon tax is regressive: since essentials like fuel and heating form a larger part of poorer people’s spending, a carbon tax would affect them more than richer people. If you care about people and the environment, a carbon tax isn’t good enough. It’s only by thinking about justice that we reach a good solution.
What if we paid out the revenues of the tax as a dividend? As an analysis from LSE showed, in the UK this would mean about 60% of people would receive more money than they paid in the tax. This turns a regressive tax into a progressive one, with the ability to affect emissions and improve peoples lives.
Some kind of carbon tax is a good idea for developed nations, and the numbers we’re suggesting fall well short of the true social cost of carbon, which En-ROADS estimates at well over $1000 per ton of CO2.
So climate policies without thinking about people would be a terrible idea. There’s a useful historical perspective on this too, and I find it particularly compelling.
Many of the injustices we see today have emerged at least partly from the same source: the worldview required to justify empire. To justify empire, some people need to be lesser. To justify empire, land needs to be just a thing. To justify empire, efficiency and growth are the only goals. Seeing this, it would be silly to try and treat the symptoms separately.
Activists have been around for much longer than climate activists (in their current form). It’s natural that we have a lot to learn from each other, because we face similar roadblocks. This makes sense when the same mindset justifies injustice. Pinkwashing (presenting as particularly queer-friendly to cover up bad reputation) is very similar to greenwashing (presenting as particularly climate-friendly to cover up bad reputation) so why address them separately?
Not only does working together help us understand problems, it helps us find better solutions too, by bringing as many different voices to the table as possible. Much of what we need to do to address the planetary crises is profoundly difficult. Change will require reform of the way our societies work. If we want to do a good job, each implementation must be contextual and created using knowledge from each affected area. As well as doing a better job addressing the planetary crises, we will also be better able to address other intrinsically linked and equally important justice issues.
“If your climate movement is prepared to make a statement condemning genocide (and preferably not just the most well-known), and to take the flak that comes with that where often we are told to ‘stick to the climate issue,’ then I find that movement makes me more comfortable as I can see both sympathy with other causes and an understanding of their intertwined nature. After all, war is often about resources, including oil, and is also a huge contributor to resource use and emissions.” A member of ICA told Felix.
There’s a small lesson to take from the right on this one. We need to be a big tent: our movements can’t leave anyone out; they need to be where the cool people are; nd they need to meet people where they are, with a low barrier to entry. If we want to solve the planetary crises, our politics needs to ask people what they care about and address those problems in a way that also addresses climate, rather than telling them what to care about and addressing that.
