Within liberal-or-further-left advocacy and activism on campus, struggles beginning with the earth and ending with people—the environmental and food justice movements—seem to garner more participation than those that start with people but would end up helping the earth too, i.e. social justice movements. In general in the United States, such earth-centric movements are composed of a college-degreed demographic—whiter and richer than the overall population—more so than social justice movements are, with the possible exception of the gay-rights movement.
The general tilt toward earth-centrism rather than people-centrism, on and beyond our campus, among the more-privileged-than-not and conscientious makes sense. The liberal environmental movement offers the safety of not being forced to confront one’s own privilege because it requires no critique of power structures. But this movement, with its own shallowness and the underlying complacency of those involved in it while being uninvolved in addressing social iniquities, is bound to fall flat on its face.
Environmental exploitation goes hand-in-hand with various forms of social exploitation. Environmental crises take place within a social context. They are caused by the actions of some groups of people, affecting other ones. In North Carolina, all proposed fracking sites are in rural, poor and/or predominantly black counties. Would fracking be happening at all if classism and racism didn’t exist in our society, if no one group was powerful enough to frack over the lands of the oppressed? No view of an environmental issue is complete without looking at the forms of social exploitation that accompany it and, in a society with oppression, these forms on which it’s based. That’s one shortcoming of liberal environmentalism, which sees humanity harming the earth and appeals to society and its institutions to prohibit this harm.
But there’s more than the fact that environmental problems today stem from politico-economic issues. Concentrating on people is also strategically better. Currently, power lies in those groups who will be least affected by climate change or food crises. But if power is dispersed among the heterogeneous masses, particularly those most disenfranchised and likely to be affected, these issues will be solved organically.
History attests to this: The most significant and ongoing class-based example of this comes from Argentina. Since its economic crisis in 2001, there has been a movement of workers’ reclamation and self-management of bankrupt factories that lied in disuse, while the workers sat unemployed. By 2005, thwarting the workings of capitalism and globalization from impoverishing their communities, about 15,000 Argentine workers cooperatively ran about 200 factories and built robust economies. An even better example is that of women’s empowerment: Wherever in the world patriarchy has been structurally challenged and women have attained economic power, their communities—and humanity overall—have benefited. Increased income control, for example, gives women more power to influence domestic, business and reproductive decisions, as well as more of a say regarding land use and conservation.
Point being, the best way to protect the environment is by empowering the people, especially those most marginalized, because it’s to the collective advantage that the ecosphere remain healthy. So, to fix ecological crises, we need to deal with racism, economic exploitation, patriarchy, etc.
Or, to put it in terms of the scale of existing earth-centered campaigns on campus and beyond, if their predominantly liberal, white and middle-class participants don’t concentrate on fighting the axes of oppression from which they themselves benefit, they either hold to an unintelligent understanding of the situation, or are only concerned with appearing savvy and fashionable as per their cultural background.
And to resolve these axes of oppression, radical critique and politics are necessary. I can support local farmers all I want and then cross Hillsborough Street with a tote bag full of organic eggs over my shoulder to my cozy, 1940s-built home to lament the lack of carbon-limiting legislation while listening to a Pete Seeger record—while stopping at Global Village and pontificating about baby steps and purity for a bit—but then, I’d be fooling myself. Structures and institutions of power have led to our environment crises, and only their elimination or fundamental transformation will “save the world.”
The only way to be green today is to be red or black.
