In this fraught moment in the summer of 2020 we mostly peer out our windows at a world rocked by three crises — a coronavirus pandemic that so far has taken 130,000 lives in the U.S. and left more than 22 million people unemployed, a forced accounting with our country’s centuries of violent racism and a rapidly manifesting climate emergency heating the globe, raising the seas and causing killer storms, droughts and fires.
We are motivated to confront all three effectively and immediately. The suffering is intense and widespread: people are jobless, hungry and hopeless; many young people in marginalized communities may be forced to leave school due to economic stressors and the pandemic’s disruption; many of us have lost someone we loved to the virus; police killings continue; and a summer expected to bring a turbulent hurricane season, more wildfires and unbearable heat is upon us. The urgency is compounded by daily updated scientific research showing runaway climate change is closer than we thought, and we have only a decade to cut carbon emissions nearly in half or face that catastrophe.
There are means to do it, though, that have been discussed and accepted by many since before the onset of the pandemic. Climate experts and leading politicians are supporting the Markey-Ocasio Green New Deal. It calls for massive investment in renewable energy sources and their technological and grid support, upgrading and rebuilding of housing and manufacturing for energy and water efficiency, and overhauling the transportation system to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and toxic pollution. Universal health care, Medicare for All, is listed as part of the plan.
The initial plan was geared toward justice and equity, beginning to address structural racism in access to good jobs, housing, transportation, energy and medical care while targeting elimination of the toxic air pollution sources disproportionately sited in poor communities of color. It has since been widely discussed and refined to better ensure it benefits and empowers those who suffer most from pollution but have been least responsible for its production.
The Equitable and Just National Climate Platform created by an impressive coalition of environmental and justice organizations has drilled down on the particular needs of disempowered communities. It demands the “right to return” or power over their relocation for those displaced by climate change. It stresses the right to housing and pollution-free transportation for all people. It reasserts entitlement to indigenous control over native lands and water.
Other groups have fought to strengthen the rights of workers employed in the transition to living-wage, safe jobs and of those displaced fossil fuel workers to be compensated through jobs or income.
A massive program like this is not only our only hope for successfully fighting climate change, it specifically targets the structural and economic foundations of racism and poverty. And critically at this moment, it is the long-term economic recovery package that we need to escape the deep recession provoked by the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of well-paying jobs and support for small- to medium-sized businesses are integral to the plan.
It poses a sharp contrast to the Trump stimulus which, though providing temporary relief to workers and some small businesses, has also been a windfall to major corporations, including polluting industries. Trump bailed out the emissions-spewing airline industry with no strings attached and handed fossil fuel companies funds intended for small business. Further, he used the pandemic as an excuse to speed the construction of energy projects and to permanently weaken federal authority to issue stringent clean air and climate change rules. United Nations Chief Antonio Guterres weighed in on the issue of priorities and restrictions in funding recovery, stating that public funds should not be used to save polluters. Environmentalists worldwide have called for a “green recovery.”
It is also critical to fund this transition in a just and equitable way. It will cost trillions. Much of it can be borrowed seemingly without fear of inflation, as Trump has done with his $2.3 trillion tax cut for the very rich and his bloated military budget. But to serve equity and the climate, the first should be reversed and the second slashed. Going back to baseline pre-Trump unequal income distribution would certainly be a step forward. And the U.S. military is the most polluting institution in the world and cuts to its budget mean cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. Further, the violence waged on the earth’s resources and its people through war is an environmental, public health and racial issue. (An intriguing source of funding is the decommissioning of our nuclear weapons, thus eliminating potential future cataclysm.
We must pursue a green and just solution to these complex and massive threats and do it now. If we ensure climate justice and fully empower and respect low income and Black and Brown people, we will build our movement to the critical mass that it will take to win elections in November and guide the necessary legislative and executive action necessary for a sustainable planet. Perhaps more important, the inclusion and leadership of front-line communities means that there is no longer any place for the toxic fossil fuel industry to hide. For polluters to function they need sacrifice zones to site their mines, wells, refineries, pipelines, chemical plants and so on. Those sacrifice zones require disposable neighbors and workers. But without racism and severe income inequality there are no disposable people. And when those previously disposable people become active resisters, they are the most dedicated and powerful in the struggle.
Thus, our coalition must be deep and meaningful. We as environmentalists must support efforts to oppose all aspects of racist violence and oppression affecting the lives of those in our community. Black Lives Matter. We must fight the health care disparities claiming those same victims in the COVID crisis and demand health care for all. The task is bigger than we ever thought. The benefits to all our incalculable.
Marty Nathan is a retired physician, mother, grandmother and social justice and climate organizer.