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Climate
Change and Environmental Justice
"Katrina is part of a pattern,
and it may be just the beginning..."
By
way of preparation for the class, please view as much of the following
Frontline documentary as you can:
Then,
please reflect upon the IPCC Group II Report, issued last April
2007.
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Supplementary
Material
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Consider
the following documentary reports on hurricane Katrina... |
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Then
consider how the Katrina narrative is linked by Damu Smith and others
to a larger cultural narrative about justice and long-standing patterns
of injustice, both in America and abroad.
Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 [excerpts from "Beyond
Vietnam..." 4 April 1967 speech with video essay]
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Audio
recording of complete speech -
"Beyond
Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence," Speech delivered at
a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New
York City, (4 April 1967).
Text
of complete speech |
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"...we
must rapidly undergo a radical revolution of values..."
"The
whole Jericho road must be transformed...." |
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What
can be said to be the "appropriate" response to the
issue
of "reconstructing New Orleans" in the light
of
what is now know about climate change?
Who
should decide questions of New Orleans reconstruction?
Who are the "stakeholders" in this issue?
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In
addition
We
need to consider as well the environmental justice issues that are revealed
in recent trends in fossil fuel "producing" areas like Equador,
Nigeria and Ethiopia. As we have already seen in previous class sessions
these relate directly to the environmental justice of "resource extraction." |
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There
is a marked and growing sense in inequity and injustice because
of the ways in which the fossil fuel-driven development of the West
has been engineered with the net effect of creating direct ecological
devastation in many parts of the world.
The
sense of environmental injustice is therefore at least 7-fold among
communities of color -- either in the countries of the 'global South'
or among minorities in the 'global North.' |
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1)
First, local ecological devastation has been the repeated
legacy of fossil fuel extraction in areas of the Third World. |
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2)
Second, the combustion of the fossil fuels -- undertaken
largely in the "global North" -- has engendered the system-wide
ecological destabilization that climate change represents. |
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3)
Third, those who will feel the first and most pronounced
impact of the global destabilization of climate are primarily the
agricultural economies in the "global South." |
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4)
Fourth, when climate dangers are perceived to be imminent,
communities of color and those in the global south are neither adequately
consulted nor planed for in anticipation of forthcoming disaster preparedness. |
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5)
Fifth, extreme weather events occur more frequently because
of large scale climate changes, communities of color in the "global
South" and those located as minorities within the "North,"
do not recieve an equitable share of emergency goods or services. |
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6
) Sixth, in the aftermath of extreme weather events and area-wide
calamities, communities of color are subject to recovery and reconstruction
programs which persist in institutionalizing their relative social
disadvantage and frequently make them even more vulnerable to future
natural hazards that have victimized them in the first instance. |
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and
7) Finally, in trying to "develop" their
economies to move beyond the inherent vulnerability of their agricultural
sectors, countries in the "global South" are being told:
"..so sorry, you will have to learn to develop without fossil
fuels because that is bad for the global environment." |
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.In
addition, we ought to consider the IPCC - Group II - Report - Summary
for Policymakers issued in April: |
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Videos
of Class Session 3