The first time I witnessed racism in the environmental movement was 25 years ago. I was a student advocate attending a state-wide conference of the Student Environmental Action Coalition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The keynote speaker for the weekend was Zulene Mayfield, a Black community leader from Chester, Pennsylvania. Chester is the site of an unprecedented cluster of toxic waste incinerators, oil refineries, and other industrial polluting facilities. Zulene represented her community group, Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living. She provided our nearly all-white gathering with an education of the realities of environmental racism and the need for an environmental justice movement to respond.

Then came the question and answer session. A young white woman raised her hand and asked. “How can you say you care about the planet when I watched you throw your aluminum can in the garbage instead of recycling it before you spoke this evening?”

Zulene responded, “I haven’t had the money to throw away all the things that you have in your lifetime.” With this one simple statement, Zulene directly addressed white privilege to the group of majority white college students. She also succinctly explained environmental and climate justice.

What is Climate Justice?

One of the defining features of environmental and climate injustice is when those who have contributed the least to the problem are the ones who suffer the most negative impacts. This can take the form of excessive waste that requires the construction of a new toxic waste incinerator placed in a low-income black community, as was the case for Zulene, or it can take the form of the rising temperatures of climate change leading to increased energy bills burdening households already struggling with housing affordability.

Global climate change is impacting communities that are not white the most — African and island nations, through rising sea levels, drought, and starvation; South and Central American countries, suffering more frequent and intense tropical storms; and our urban communities, impacted by dangerous heat exposure, asthma, and rising energy costs.

In February, my colleague Erica Gaines interviewed several of her Black family members and friends as to why they weren’t more engaged on climate change. Responses included, “They don’t care about us,” and “the issue is the white man’s fault.” On the whole, their responses are tragically accurate. Human created global warming is, by and large, the white man’s fault, and “not caring about the Black community” is a reputation that environmentalists have earned in that community based upon their experience over the past 30+ years.

Racism in the Climate Movement

Over the past 25 years, I have witnessed the “othering'' of Black environmental justice leaders by fellow advocates, as was done to Zulene back in 1995. I have also lived through the uglier parts of our history where we have at best treated communities of color with a paternalistic lens as we tried to “help,” and at worst, harbored racists who used the platform of environmentalism to pursue their own agendas.

But perhaps the most insidious form of racism in our movement is indifference. Emily Atkin’s recent piece, The Climate Movement’s Silence, on insidious anti-blackness in climate activism and the rise of Climate Chads, draws important attention to those in our movement who refuse to see the intersectionality of racism and climate change. These “Climate Chads” insist that we must remain focused on climate change and not allow our movement to be distracted by issues of racism and injustice. These beliefs ignore the essential premise that climate change, as it’s currently unfolding, is an act of racism.

The killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor are unconscionable. Turning a blind eye to repeated violence against Black men, women, and children and the systems that perpetuate that violence should be seen by our movement just as indefensible as turning a blind eye to the systems that continue to perpetuate climate change, which disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities.

We Must Do Better

As Sierra Club’s Hop Hopkins writes in his recent piece, Racism is Killing the Planet, “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.” We must dismantle the systems that perpetuate racism wherever they exist — within police departments, within fossil fuel based economies, and within our own climate movement.

If we think we can avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change by continuing to talk to the same circles of people who have always been engaged, we will fail. In order to engage a broader community, we must first acknowledge the inherent connections between climate and racial justice, and then do our part to dismantle the structures that consciously or unconsciously keep people out.

The Community Climate Collaborative stands in solidarity with the Black Community in condemning racism, injustice, and police brutality. We resolve to dismantle all aspects of racism within our organization, address structural racism within the broader climate movement, and support antiracist efforts in the communities where we work. We call upon other climate organizations to stand with us, to stand for justice. We can no longer look away.

On June 24th, C3 will publish a follow up blog with steps climate organizations can take to dismantle structural racism within their organizations.

We Can’t Look Away: Why Indifference to Racism Imperils the Climate Movement

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