Hello Everyone!
I don’t really know what to talk about for this week’s prompt, however I couldn’t stop thinking about environmental justice. (Kudos to the group! and Lillith and Myla!) I am vegetarian and was vegan until college. I’ve done a lot of research about Big Agriculture and eating (and buying) clean, meaning without animals. Most of the information or resources that I looked at came from middle class white people. Environmental justice was overshadowed by their empathy for farmed animals. Before I took the quiz, I thought my carbon footprint would be pretty low. It wasn’t. It seems like it is going to take a lot more than “clean eating” to lower it. However, coming from a low-income family, it’s really not an option. Of course, it takes small changes for me to be more environmentally friendly, but as we learned today without access to certain stores, products, or resources, what could I actually do? I feel like environmental justice would fill this huge gap in my education to not only advocate for those most impacted by environmentally harmful practices and support companies that are environmentally friendly in the first place. Those companies are typically more expensive and this solution is capitalist to its core. I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to continue the conversation. What do you all think?
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Hey Ataia. We’ve had a great discussion about this in our breakout room. I want to coin the term intersectional environmentalism. Here’s a short reading: Conversations within environmental spaces cannot minimize or ignore the injustices targeting vulnerable communities + natural ecosystems, but rather denote the ways social inequalities influence our perception of environmentalism, regardless of how subtle or obvious. In this way, intersectional environmentalism calls for justice for people + the planet.” POC, low-income communities cannot always afford or have access to ways to be eco-friendly. So don’t feel too bad and have a sense of personal burden.