What is climate justice?
Climate justice is the intersection of social, political and economic forces that perpetuate climate change. For too long, climate change has been an issue centered around polar bears in trees, ignoring the disastrous realities of the millions of victims of climate change around the world whose numbers will only grow.
Climate change has happened, is happening and will only continue to get much worse, and we don’t care because the people who are dying, starving and losing their homes live in countries and places where the people don’t look like us.
The fossil fuel industry is an inherently racist and classist institution that perpetuates systemic violence through ecological destruction and climate catastrophe. Fossil fuels do not just threaten the climate; they also threaten the people in the communities where oil, coal and gas are taken out of the ground. The industry targets marginalized populations in part because they do not usually have the means to demand that the industry have better working conditions or stop polluting their communities. From tar sand pits on indigenous land in Alberta, Canada to coal mountaintop removal in poverty-stricken West Virginia, fossil fuel extraction destroys the land and exploits already vulnerable communities.
The fossil fuel industry is a cruel reminder that within capitalism, profit always comes before human life.
Climate change has happened, is happening and will only continue to get much worse, and we don’t care because the people who are dying, starving and losing their homes live in countries and places where the people don’t look like us.
The fossil fuel industry is an inherently racist and classist institution that perpetuates systemic violence through ecological destruction and climate catastrophe. Fossil fuels do not just threaten the climate; they also threaten the people in the communities where oil, coal and gas are taken out of the ground. The industry targets marginalized populations in part because they do not usually have the means to demand that the industry have better working conditions or stop polluting their communities. From tar sand pits on indigenous land in Alberta, Canada to coal mountaintop removal in poverty-stricken West Virginia, fossil fuel extraction destroys the land and exploits already vulnerable communities.
The fossil fuel industry is a cruel reminder that within capitalism, profit always comes before human life.