Making the Sustainability Movement Sustainable
- Generation Now
- Feb 5, 2021
- 5 min read
By Julia Brgan
February 5, 2021
New York's climate countdown instalment is a 62 foot wide, 15 digit, electronic clock that faces Union Square. In bright red lights, it counts downーto the exact secondーthe moment when Earth's carbon budget will be exhausted, giving New Yorkers a daily reminder of the time remaining to take real action to keep warming under the 1.5°C threshold.
For some, it can be enough of a nudge to start bringing a reusable bag to the grocery store, or invest in plastic-free beeswax wrapping; however, even these small changes are a privilege that many don't have the opportunity to partake in.
This begs the question: was the sustainability movement sustainable for the majority of people in the first place? With just 20 global corporations contributing to a third of all carbon emissions, time on the Climate Countdown Clock continues to slip by. Meanwhile, the exploitation of the climate movement leads to those who cannot sustain it facing shame and ridicule. If this movement is to make meaningful change, it must exist in a way that is accessible to all regardless of their situation, while continuing to hold these large corporations responsible.
The Challenge Of Creating Sustainable Neighbourhoods
At its root, urban sustainability paves the way for positive and impactful change that promotes clean living and the development of eco-friendly neighbourhoods through creating, planting, renovating and repurposing. Unfortunately, this push has resulted in “environmental gentrification”, the process in which the development of sustainable cities has been co-opted by high-end real estate developers at the expense of low-income residents, both intentionally and unintentionally.
These neighbourhoods are in many ways, a dream to live in, however most often they are only affordable for high-income individuals. Although many countries, including the United States, are facing a housing crisis, little is done to create good, sustainable living situations for low income families. This phenomenon paints sustainability as something only accessible to, and deserved by, those who can afford it.
Sustainability, White-Washed
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a novel about the effects of pesticides on the environment, has long been attributed to be the beginning of the mainstream sustainability movement, leading to the first “Earth Day march”—an event attended by an estimated 20 million people worldwide. Although this novel sparked conversation, it overlooked the communities directly impacted by pesticides in a more immediate manner. At the same time, a labour movement in California’s San Joaquin Valley, headed by Cesar Chavez, included requests from farmworkers for protection against these pesticides. In the end, Carson’s novel gained traction, sparked a white-washed environmental movement, and actively contributed to silencing those who were most impacted.
Most often, people involve themselves in issues once they feel that it has directly affected them. This provides an explanation for how white activists have become the front-liners of the sustainability movement, even though BIPOC and/or low-income communities have been disproportionately affected by climate change.
The zero waste movement, an initiative that aims to eradicate the consumption of single-use plastics, also involves mostly white activists. The concept of carrying mason jars to gather grains in, and buying fresh produce daily to be put in a crocheted string bag is rooted in the idea of having both the time and leisure to do so. People working 9-5 jobs everyday to support their families do not have the privilege of making a trip to a farmers market to gather raw plastic-free ingredients on a regular basis. This type of sustainability is often an aestheticized lifestyle, sold with a price tag that for many, is incredibly inaccessible.
“All too often, climate change is depicted as a white people’s issue. You think of an environmental activist, and you picture Julia Butterfly-Hill embracing a redwood tree or a Scandinavian billionaire at a Greenpeace Gala, or that NYU environmental studies major who put all of her trash in a mason jar for a year. It does make sense in some ways; rich white people are largely responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves. But communities of color, the world over, are most likely to suffer because of climate change. And I’m not just talking about residents of island nations like the Maldives; I’m talking about people here in the U.S. too.”
- BRIC TV interview of Dominique Drakeford and Whitney McGuire, founders of Sustainable Brooklyn, a group that works with low income and BIPOC communities to make sustainability accessible.
Dominique Drakeford and Whitney McGuire
Making Space for BIPOC in Environmental Movements
When looking at the U.S. Suffragettes, who felt that including Black women in their messages would dilute their cause, or the Sierra Club, who took 2 months after the death of George Floyd to acknowledge the organization’s racist history, it is clear that BIPOC have been intentionally excluded from social and political movements.
Low-income BIPOC are far more likely to live near facilities creating pollution than they are to emit pollution, which tends not to be an accident, but rather exists as another way to target Black Americans. The ongoing Flint water crisis as well as the relocation of climate refugees from their native Isle de Jean Charles stand as examples.
As a whole, American environmentalism is rooted in white supremacy, as conversationalist leaders like John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, and Madison Grant, all had views rooted in racism. BIPOC exclusion from these movements led to outcomes such as the national park system, which although had great reception as well as success, ignored the ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion that was utilized to remove Native Americans and seize their lands.
- Keyra Juliana Espinoza, a Manhattan based climate activist and member of BIPOC youth-led Coalition Polluters Out.
The Eco Gender Gap
It is impossible not to notice the latest eco-friendly products marketed towards womxn, whether it be cosmetics made with recycled, refillable containers, or washable period-proof underwear for those who menstruate. When compared with the effort put in to make men’s products sustainable, the idea that women are responsible for the earth presents as an almost maternal instinct. With many advertisers marketing household goods and cleaning products to women through the guise of “saving the earth”, brands tend to give the idea that sustainability is in a way, women’s work. The most prominent climate activist at the moment is not a man in a suit heading corporations and companies, but Greta Thunberg, an 18-year-old girl from Sweden.
A 2016 paper in the Journal Of Consumer Research found that in order to safeguard their gender identity, men may distance themselves from green behaviour, suggesting that weakening the association between femininity and sustainability is the way to go. This issue goes in depth to the comfort of existing within the status quo, where women have less faith in outside organizations to face climate change, taking the responsibility upon themselves; whereas men see that technology and government are best suited to fix these problems, as they have been best suited to do so in the past. Although individual work is important, change is needed as a society involving everyone, regardless of gender identity, in order to solve the problem.
Greta Thunberg
What can be taken from an in-depth look at the sustainability movement is that everyone must have a place within it. Urban sustainability that caters to the upper class at the expense of low-income families, to the whitewashing of climate activism, all exist as ways to exclude those directly affected.
If change is to be made, BIPOC must have their voices heard; lest history repeat itself, and these movements flourish at their expense. Climate change is everyone's problem, and requires equal participation; the world will not heal itself on its own.
The task therefore is to unite people in order to make the sustainability movement sustainable.
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