Climate justice can't happen without racial justice

Why has there been so little mention of saving Black lives from the climate emergency? For too long, racial justice efforts have been distinguished from climate justice work, says David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham, England. In a stirring talk about building a new movement to care for the planet, Lammy calls for inclusion and support of Black and minority leadership on climate issues and a global recognition that we can't solve climate change without racial, social and intergenerational justice.

I've got to start by admitting
that in many ways

me giving a talk about how climate action
can help Black communities is surprising.

I grew up poor and Black
with a single mother in Tottenham,

one of the most deprived areas in London,

in the 1970s and '80s.

Climate change was the last
thing on my mind.

And representing Tottenham as its member
of Parliament for the past 20 years,

my focus has been on trying to reduce
the deprivation I grew up around.

In the past, the climate crisis never
featured at the forefront of my politics

because it was never one
of the most immediate challenges

my constituents were facing,

or at least it didn't feel like it.

Rising sea levels feel unimportant
when your bank balance is falling.

Global warming is not your concern
when you can't pay the heating bills.

And you're not thinking about pollution
when you're being stopped by the police.

And so perhaps this is why

as the Black Lives Matter movement
roared across the world,

there's been so little mention
of saving Black lives

from the climate emergency.

For too long, those of us
who cared about racial justice

treated environmental justice
as though it was elitist.

And at the same time,

the leaders who did focus
on climate change

were usually white

and rarely bothered to enlist the support
of Black voices in their work.

Even progressive allies
sometimes took our votes for granted

and assumed that our community didn't care
or wouldn't understand.

The truth is the opposite is true.

Black people breathe in the most toxic air
relative to the general population.

We are more likely to suffer
from respiratory diseases like asthma.

And it is people of color

who are more likely to suffer
in the climate crisis.

This is no coincidence.

The cheapest housing
tends to be next to the busiest roads,

and many of the lowest paid jobs
are in the most polluting industries.

People of color consistently
lie at the bottom of the housing,

educational and employment ladders.

This story connects Black
communities across the world,

from London to Lagos to LA.

Black Americans are exposed
to 56 percent more pollution

than they cause.

White Americans breathe
17 percent less air pollution

than they produce.

It gives a whole new meaning
to the Black Lives Matter slogan

"I can't breathe."

We all rightly know the name
of George Floyd,

who was murdered by the police.

But we should also know the name
of Ella Kissi-Debrah.

Ella, a nine-year-old
mixed-race girl from South East London,

was killed by a fatal asthma attack.

Evidence suggests this was caused

partly by the unlawful levels
of air pollution near her home.

And it's not only urban areas

where Black lives are disproportionately
under threat from climate change.

My parents' home country of Guyana

is one of the most vulnerable
countries on Earth

to the effects of climate change.

So far, Guyana has contributed
relatively little

to the climate emergency,

but it's one of the countries
facing the most serious threats from it.

While the annual carbon dioxide emissions
per head in the United States

is a staggering 16.5 metric tons,

in Guyana it's just 2.6.

It is a pattern repeated across the globe.

Those countries that have contributed
least to the climate breakdown,

mainly in the global south,

will suffer the most from floods,
droughts, and rising temperatures.

This is a pattern of suffering
with a long history.

The exploitation of our planet's
natural resources

has always been tied
to the exploitation of people of color.

The logic of colonization

was to extract valuable resources
from our planet through force,

paying no attention
to its secondary effects.

The climate crisis is in a way
colonialism's natural conclusion.

The solution is to build a new coalition

made up of all the groups
most affected by this emergency:

Black people in American cities

who are already protesting
that they cannot breathe;

people of color in Guyana
watching sea levels rise

to the point where many of their homes
become uninhabitable;

young people in places
like Tottenham, London,

afraid of the world
that they will grow old in;

and progressive allies from all nations,

of all races, religions,
creeds and ages on their side,

all demanding recognition

that climate justice is linked
to racial justice, social justice

and intergenerational justice too.

And let me say something
about how we build this new movement

and what it must look like.

First, we need a recognition

that the climate movement
is not only about protecting the planet.

It is primarily about caring
for the people who live on the planet.

Globally as well as nationally,

we need to recognize
structural imbalances and inequalities.

A radical green recovery plan
should provide jobs to the people

who've been disenfranchised for centuries,

new jobs planting trees,
insulating buildings

and working on green technologies.

We cannot tackle the climate crisis
without addressing racial inequalities.

And we cannot solve racial inequalities
without fixing the economic system.

The new deal the economy
needs is not only green,

it's green and Black.

Second, we need more Black leaders.

It cannot be right in 2020

that almost all the leading climate change
activists we recognize are white.

At Davos this year,

five young female members
of the Fridays for Future movement

came together to give a press conference
at the World Economic Forum.

This is a picture
the Associated Press put out.

Here is the original image.

As the Ugandan activist, Vanessa Nakate,
herself put it afterwards,

"You didn't just erase a photo,
you erased a continent."

We need to look at
who is being cropped out

of leadership positions
in environmental organizations too.

People of color makeup around 40 percent
of the United States population.

So why is it a University
of Michigan study

found that the percentage of minorities
in leadership positions

in US environmental organizations
is less than 12 percent?

Global organizations should consider

moving their headquarters
to the global south

and urban areas that are most affected
by the climate emergency.

There should be new scholarships
and bursaries in environmental science

for people of color.

Educate yourself.

Join great movements that recognize
the links between climate and race.

To name a few,

the Black Environment Network
and Wretched of the Earth.

And finally,

racial injustice and climate injustice
are both rooted in the evil notion

that some lives
are more important than others.

If you march to say Black Lives Matter
in Minneapolis, London or Sydney,

please also march for the Black lives
on the Caribbean island of Haiti

as its children are displaced by storms.

Please also march for the Black lives
being lost in Darfur,

the first climate change conflict.

And please also march for the Indigenous
people of the Amazon rainforest,

as Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro
weakens its protections.

If we are serious about protecting
Black lives in the Global South

as well as the north,

we need to strengthen international laws.

We need a way to apply
international criminal laws,

like war crimes or crimes
against humanity, to the planet.

We need a new international law of ecocide

to criminalize the willful and widespread
destruction of the environment,

a law that criminalizes the most
severe crimes against nature itself,

even for acts don't involve
direct human suffering.

Economics, race and class

are at the center
of today's political struggles.

The Black Lives Matter movement
needs to wake up to climate injustices

just as the climate movement

must make every effort
to include the reality of people of color.

Young Black boys growing up
in single-parent households in Tottenham

won't have the opportunities I had

in a world ravaged by climate chaos.

My distant cousins and relatives
growing up in Guyana

won't have a future if their homes
are drowning under water.

Now is the time for Black
and climate movements

to come together unequivocally
and say, "We can't breathe."

Thank you very much.