The author argues environmentalists should resist efforts to make "environmental justice" the core tenant of the movement, claiming it would risk making environmentalism "just one more slice of the pie".

I guess Ken Ward has never heard that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" (Martin Luther King, Jr.), or that "injustice must be rooted out wherever and whenever it exists".

If we are to have any hope of resurrecting the environmental movement, JUSTICE MUST BE CORE.

Injustices must be acknowledged and corrected, without inexcusable delays.  When human beings are being adversely impacted, any amount of delay in mitigating the impacts prolongs the time of the injustice.

Environmental injustices occur also to individuals and communities who are not poor or minority populations.  Those injustices should also be eliminated!  

Environmental justice applies to the condition we leave the environment in for future inhabitants as well.   Earth belongs to us no more than it belonged to past inhabitants or will later belong to future inhabitants.  Therefore, it is only right and just that we leave Earth in at least as good a condition as it was in when we received it.  To leave it otherwise would be environmentally unjust and not right.

Finally, I believe environmental justice also means eliminating economic injustices in the populations.  "Environment" is commonly defined in laws to include the natural, social and economic environment, including the human environment.  

Most of the article deals with the importance of protesting as integral to achieving results.  But the article neglects to talk about the important role that the media plays - particularly the TV media - in fairly (or unfairly) presenting the merits and behavior of protesters.  Moreover, the dismal lack of success of the protesters of the Iraq War the last two years is not even given any mention, despite the fact that with the Bush administration's being in power, it seems that no amount of protest - no matter how large and boisterous - seems to have much of an effect on decision-making in the White House, which calls in question its relevance.  

It is not surprising that Ken took the usual step of dismissing environmental justice.  However, to blame the demise of Greenpeace on their EJ work is inaccurate and illogical.  The Greenpeace decline started when they opposed the Gulf War.  Their door-to-door campaign against that war caused significant member cancellations.  Plus, the country was moving to the right and Greenpeace's leftist politics turned off a signficant number of potential members.  Their budget decline led to closing offices.  The closure of the Boston office was a particularly painful event.  Much of their EJ work was handled by Damu Smith, who is no longer with the group.  That work appeared to be concentrated in Cancer Alley and working against the Shintech in St. James Parish as part of their global anti-chlorine campaign.

After dismissing environmental justice, Ken moves on to his 'real' topic -- protest.  I don't remember any proposals for groups to change their main mission to be environmental justice.  Many groups work on this issue to one degree or another.  However, the mainstream environmental community has been woefully inadequate in providing meaningful resources to African Americans and African American communities. I will not go through the full list of problems, the the multibillion dollar environmental movement does not hire African American professionals for the most part and do not invest any money in the black community.  We recently requested information about hiring and investment and only 5 of 25 groups even bothered to respond.  But don't get me whining.

Ken's suggestion to move on is unconscionable considering the almost complete failure of the environmental movement to engage the African American community.  This is why we formed the African American Environmentalist Association.  It is why the Congressional Black Caucus should rethink its voting on many environmental issues.

It has been estimated that the top 25 mainstream environmental groups spend about $1 billion annually -- Shellenberger, Nordhaus and Werbach scream that most of this money is being wasted on groups that are failing in their funded missions.  And not one hybrid car is produced with this money.  Yet, we estimate that less than one hundreth of one percent of this money goes to improvements in the African American community -- even though they all acknowledge that this community is the most impacted all over the country.

Well good luck Ken and the rest of the mainstream environmental community.  The reapers are right.

Norris McDonald

Norris,

I'm not sure if you had a chance to read through the remaining sections or not. It's a bit awkward having an argument go out in installments. If you have, I'd be interested to know whether you have the same reaction.

The overarching point is that building sufficient power to put climate change on the national agenda, let alone have any hope of winning same, requires a mammoth effort with a level of coordinated funding and campaigning that the environmental movement and our funders are not, at present, contemplating. We've got maybe 20 years to accomplish this Herculean political task. Failure to approach this in a single-minded way will result in the largest human-induced tragedy in history. Catastrophic weather events, changing patterns in agriculture and sea level rise will have a disproportionate impact on those nations with the least capacity to take protective measures. America has the money to build hurricane barriers to protect Wall Street - the carnage in Bangladesh will be agonizing. Lousiana, we may assume, isn't going to be in much better shape.

We might disagree on the causes and effects of the Greenpeace decline, but that seems to me to be neither here nor there in the face of the immediate choices we face. I'm in favor of all environmental organizations immediately shifting a minimum of 50% of their resources to a joint climate change campaign. I agree with your estimate, and Michael & Ted's, that the current incremental, moderate approach to climate change is virtually meaningless - we will have to mount a very different, much more powerful, concerted and tougher effort.