Climate Change and Climate Justice

No one's hiding from the fact that increased greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution have altered the Earth's natural climatic patterns. Climate Change, or global warming, is something that has gained acceptance in the lexicon and greater conscious collective of the world. I see it as an umbrella for the interdisciplinary environmental movement, as it encompasses numerous other environmental issues all species of life face, from increased desertification, forest depletion, water quality impacts as well as specie displacement. Sometimes I feel this is the greater issue to magnify the many unnecessary problems humans have brought upon the world, and sometimes I feel climate change overshadows other related issues that are lost in the translation that if you change your light bulbs things will be fine.





One such issue that is directly related to climate change and speaks to its greater reach is the climate justice movement. Recently, a study was published by the National Academy of Sciences that calls not on just wealthy nations, but wealthy individuals to bear the brunt of the burden climate change promotes to all life on Earth. As less than 1 billion people are responsible for over half of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions, it's clear those affluent global community members are able to ward off the most severe impacts of climate change simply because they can afford to do so. Being poor, and have trouble accessing clean drinking water is a much different predicament to be in than, than having the ability to buy bottled water-which is a whole other topic in and of itself. Moreover, as environmental movements have shown in the past several decades, lower income nations and individuals are much more likely to bear the greatest burdens of climate change while those in developed and more elite nations face less of a burden. Take for example Indigenous nations in Arctic regions who subsist on the bounty of the land, and those animals that are less vibrant than they have been in the past and aren't found where they once were. Take island nations like Micronesia, that have actively been trying to find other islands to inhabit, once sea levels rise and turn their homeland into an underwater uninhabitable landmass.





Alot of what climate change speaks to is the consumption of the worlds elite. Taking into account ecological footprint, we'd need at least 2.5 Earths to support the consumption of the US if the world were all from the United States. People continually place the blame on India and China, but what about where they've drawn their inspiration to grow from? And then you have the recent US climate legislation that just barely passed, but what does it really do to cut the real impacts of climate change or make any real meaurable lasting impacts? In any case, the whole world is affected by climate change and unfortunately our collective impacts may already ave a taken a toll that we can't repeal. That still doesn't mean we shouldn't change our habits, and it also means to those of us who do live in the US, who do have access to food daily and clean water, with a roof over our heads, that looking through a socio-political-economic-environmental lens allow us to see what we can do as individuals, as and communities to make sacrifices in our own lifestyle to lessen these impacts as well as understanding where the roots of the problem lie, and how to best offset the impacts of those who will be most affected. This is how the climate justice movement can take a leading role in the fight to combat climate change, foster peace, justice and sustainability not for some, but for all.



http://www.pnas.org/content/104/51/20195.full?sid=e6752ee2-8083-42bd-9598-099d9b77ddfa

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/5/1768.full?sid=e6752ee2-8083-42bd-9598-099d9b77ddfa

http://www.ejcc.org/

http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/