6. Climate Careers and Social Justice?

 

As I read the arguments about social justice related to climate change and environmental issues I see the obvious connection. The people of this world who contributed least to our climate and environmental problems are unfortunately the ones earliest at risk and experiencing the greatest risk from negative climate consequences. It makes sense to look at Social Justice and Climate Problems at once.

 

Climate Social Justice means mitigating the negative effects of the climate problems you seek to solve by focusing on those most harmed. Social Justice means understanding people most likely to control the funds and define the issues are not representing those who most need protection. When Katrina inundated New Orleans evacuation was exponentially harder on those with less resources. Those with means had private vehicles or booked flights and had funds for places to stay. School buses sat idle while people did their best to escape. When the same hurricane resulted in loss of homes and businesses, that pattern was repeated, the least well-heeled had the greatest losses. More people of color lost their communities as well as their homes, jobs, and businesses and more lost their lives. Katrina seems a model for the social justice inequities. Since Katrina public evacuation transportation plans have unfolded, and not without problems. Social justice in these disasters requires our plans begin the least resourced among us to frame the problems with inclusive understanding, that is a necessary part of the job in a climate career whether that focus is energy transition or disaster response. All solutions need evaluation for effects on jobs, housing, transportation, health, education and on across the board as we do our best to make good decisions.

 

If the problem you are planning to attack through your career is transition of transportation away from fossil fuel, how will you address the social inequities? How do we transition a coal miner or an oil field worker to a position in alternative energy or something they choose in different field? As we transition from fossil fuel what do the families with small businesses do for a living when their small gas station closes? Or the job at the refinery ends? The industrial revolution is a history of displaced people as jobs were lost or housing cleared away or communities wracked with pollution. Solving these problems mean careers for creating solutions and alternatives.

 

If those able to buy or lease a non-fossil fuel vehicle qualify for incentives is that addressing inequities? I benefit from my neighbor’s electric vehicle (EV). It creates less pollution near my home and eases the burden on my lungs. It puts 40% less carbon in the air than a similar car burning gasoline even if the electricity is produced with fossil fuel. Why would it matter who owns the EV? I may not have the money to buy one even with incentives, so I will pay more for fossil fuel or use public transit. If my neighborhood is economically depressed there will be no EV’s helping to clear the air nearby and my benefit from an EV anywhere in the world will be less carbon in the atmosphere. That benefit is still good for me and my family. You may have to work harder to have me see I need this more than clean air and safe transportation or a job where I live. The inequities increase when we find poorer neighborhoods are more closer to industry emitting pollutants and freeways spewing toxins, some devoted primarily to heavy diesel truck traffic.  All of this coupled with less money, less education and generally fewer resources and options is part of the problem set involved in social justice related to climate mitigation.   

 

My goal is to inspire creation of careers that solve social justice AND climate responses. Trying to solve climate problems without eliminating existing social inequities and the possibilities of creating more of the same is an important key to progress. When we saddle those who were least responsible for creating the climate crisis with the negative consequences, we sew in injustice, dissidence and continuing social burdens that cripple people around the globe who did not sit at the board room table or on the government commission to help form the decisions. Long-haul climate solutions require political will at the ballot box and in the street as well as administrative, business and legislative support so we have a continuing mandate for solutions that last long enough to see success. If broad swaths of society are left out of decision making, and/or not included in the benefits and left with continuing burdens there will be no long-term support. Already we’ve seen governments topple that proposed better approaches to climate problems but failed to develop the long term political will to take it back to the polls to win again and again.

 

While the burden of the climate crisis falls most heavily on those with fewest resources it clearly impinges all of us. In the US we incarcerate more people than most. If you are a person of means, you pay for that warehousing of prisoners through your taxes. When a person of color is sick with asthma from the pollution they live with and they are unable to get treatment until it’s an emergency it’s a tragedy for the family and an expense for you, you are a person of means, as you support the ER response through taxes at much greater expense than preventative care and mitigation of the pollution.

 

Undereducated folks pay fewer taxes and have poorer health and contribute less to the market (certainly not the social/cultural system) so those with means experience a less robust economy than we could have. There are fewer customers than there could be and those customers have fewer dollars to spend. Worst of all, they have less access to the commerce of ideas that get funded or invented and we throttle the diversity of ideas and solutions from emerging from a vast swath of humanity. I want to tap all the ingenuity available for solving our problems.

 

We just looked through the lens of your monetary interests to see how you might be affected by inequality even if you didn’t think it was your problem. We also need to embrace our world as a community for the most humane ways to solve our problems. Social justice is a simple idea of the golden rule, looking out for each other and making life better, not just an economic anchor dragging us down. In the end, isolating on a private island with buckets of riches is an untenable personal solution even for the mega rich. We are in this together.

 

In the US as with other elected governments, we have to reach those opposed to solutions to climate issues, indeed, remain entrenched in denial.  They need solutions to stimulate vision (a worthy career goal) and a future for their families that involve jobs and housing needs too.  Failing to create a sustainable model that results in re-election of climate change policy governments will jeopardize any climate response that has only a one or two terms for what needs to be an enormous and continuing response. We need people in the climate careers that make it their work to bring a long-term majority into agreement on the most important of climate change responses.