Shut up, ya green hippy
Ok, time for a little rant. Heaps of people don’t need to read this, so if you are already pretty clear on why environmentalism is a key part of social justice, you probably don’t need to bother to read any further! But I get really frustrated when people just don’t get why greenies keep going on about stuff like peak oil, climate change and water pollution (two of many examples I could pick).
So what does stuff like peak oil have to do with social justice? With poverty? With well-being? Rising oil prices will have an unavoidable impact on our society. They already are. Heaps of us are struggling to pay the prices at the pump, and are having to do without in other areas of our lives. Rising oil prices will directly affect the price of food, of transport, and in fact of practically everything that we consume. Our consumer society is completely dependent on cheap oil. Rising oil prices are also likely to spark severe increases in unemployment as rising oil prices cause global economic downturn. The parallel problem of climate change will make us more prone to devastating extreme weather events, cyclones, floods, droughts, desertification. And all of these will have enormous impacts on human wellbeing. And, as usual, all these things will hit the poor and vulnerable the hardest.
Furthermore, the end of cheap oil and other resources that we’ve been digging out of the ground like there’s no tomorrow will spark armed conflict. In fact, it already has, with Iraq as a case in point. Water scarcity too is a huge issue and competition over access to scarce fresh water resources is expected to be an increasing factor armed conflict in many regions of the world, like Africa, Asia and Central Asia in the coming decades. The conflict in Darfur is another current example of how environmental factors drive or contribute to conflict, with British Home Secretary John Reid pointing to global warming as a key factor behind the conflict in Darfur. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur,” he said. “We should see this as a warning sign.”
That’s why many environmental concerns are inextricable from issues of social justice. We need to get past the thinking of some that environment and social justice are two distinct concerns. We need to look at the bigger picture and see the linkages. Environmental justice is a key part of social justice, although one among many other concerns like poverty, income distribution, criminal justice, violence, discrimination etc. But the integrity of our natural world, of the biosphere, of our environment are absolutely essential to our ability to produce the food, water and basic resources we need to stay alive. We live in a really integrated system, and we can’t destroy the planet without ultimately destroying ourselves, and especially the most vulnerable of us who are already struggling.
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