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The Climate Change Fight Cannot Be Won with White Liberal America Alone
The Climate Change Fight Cannot Be Won with White Liberal America Alone
Environmental advocacy must start representing the country we live in – a country where Asian and Latino families are the fastest growing populations
5/26/2015
A recent report released by Green 2.0 highlights the environmental movement’s disconcerting lack of diversity. Unconscious bias, inadequate recruitment and poor retention all stand in the way of a more diverse environmental movement. People of color make up 36% of the US population and comprise 29% of the science and engineering workforce, but the report found that only about 12% of staff at the mainstream environmental advocacy groups and foundations that fund them are people of color. A separate report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy found that while environmental funders spent $10bn between 2000 and 2009, just 15% of those dollars benefited poor and under-served communities.
The problem is just as serious at the top levels of environmental organizations. While 22.5% of interns at environmental organizations are people of color, only 12% of leadership positions and 4.6% of board positions are held by people of color. With some notable exceptions – such as Aaron Mair’s recent appointment as The Sierra Club’s first African-American national president – you see less diversity the further up the organizational chart you go. This failure comes despite the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on communities of color and the fact that people of color support executive action on climate change more strongly than white Americans.
If environmental advocacy doesn’t start representing the country we live in – a country where Asian and Latino families are the fastest growing populations and where California is already majority non-white – everything we’ve worked for is at risk. Even if general public awareness of environmental issues is higher today than it was 50 or 100 years ago, the momentum we’re seeing today could evaporate if we don’t include new partners in the coalition.
We’ll never get climate legislation if Congress thinks only “environmentalists” – in most minds, a relatively small slice of white liberal America – truly care about the issue.
... Without a more diverse environmental movement, I’d question whether we’ll see any major policy advances in the coming decade at all.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/26/climate-change-fight-cannot-be-won-white-liberal-america-alone
Environmental advocacy must start representing the country we live in – a country where Asian and Latino families are the fastest growing populations
5/26/2015
A recent report released by Green 2.0 highlights the environmental movement’s disconcerting lack of diversity. Unconscious bias, inadequate recruitment and poor retention all stand in the way of a more diverse environmental movement. People of color make up 36% of the US population and comprise 29% of the science and engineering workforce, but the report found that only about 12% of staff at the mainstream environmental advocacy groups and foundations that fund them are people of color. A separate report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy found that while environmental funders spent $10bn between 2000 and 2009, just 15% of those dollars benefited poor and under-served communities.
The problem is just as serious at the top levels of environmental organizations. While 22.5% of interns at environmental organizations are people of color, only 12% of leadership positions and 4.6% of board positions are held by people of color. With some notable exceptions – such as Aaron Mair’s recent appointment as The Sierra Club’s first African-American national president – you see less diversity the further up the organizational chart you go. This failure comes despite the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on communities of color and the fact that people of color support executive action on climate change more strongly than white Americans.
If environmental advocacy doesn’t start representing the country we live in – a country where Asian and Latino families are the fastest growing populations and where California is already majority non-white – everything we’ve worked for is at risk. Even if general public awareness of environmental issues is higher today than it was 50 or 100 years ago, the momentum we’re seeing today could evaporate if we don’t include new partners in the coalition.
We’ll never get climate legislation if Congress thinks only “environmentalists” – in most minds, a relatively small slice of white liberal America – truly care about the issue.
... Without a more diverse environmental movement, I’d question whether we’ll see any major policy advances in the coming decade at all.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/26/climate-change-fight-cannot-be-won-white-liberal-america-alone
We are compartmentalized into this "far left" group of liberal "environmentalists", called "elitists". All manufactured BS. And this article points out a glaringly obvious reason why the efforts to paint us as a fringe group are so successful. We really need to get more people of all backgrounds & color involved in order to be heard & seen as a national voice to be represented rather than the relatively small, easily dismissed white liberal group we are currently.
I think its a very important point! We can spend all of our time pointing at the science and hoping the population will get their heads out of the sand, or we can get more of the population involved in trying to save sustainable life on earth.
What do you guys think?
7 replies
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