As the world was reveling in the Jordyn Woods, Tristan Thompson, Kardashian drama that America has come to love and worship, the ground beneath us rotted just a bit more.
Just a few months ago in October 2018, leading climate scientists and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report warning that global warming can be kept at a maximum increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius for only 12 more years. Any more, and we will continue to see increased disasters and extreme weather conditions like droughts, floods, extreme heat and resulting death and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
As a species, we are now in the midst of witnessing the consequences of our choices - extreme weather and natural disasters have and are continuing to devastate our country. In the past 6 years, 21 hurricanes have raged through America. Three category 5 hurricanes (have been especially damaging, physically and economically: Katrina, Rita, Wilma. Katrina has also been the costliest, valued at $81 Billion dollars in damages, still rising and affecting Louisiana’s economy still. Puerto Rico also has not fully recovered.
And why is that?
Why is it that areas that are predominantly homes to people of color, are dismissed and treated as unimportant? When fires raged in California and millionaires were fearing for their Calabasas mansions, aid was sent quickly and evacuation handled effectively.
Where was that care after Katrina? After Hurricane Maria?
Even in a city as liberal and progressive as New York, people consistently forget that social issues are so inherently tied to environmental issues and environmental justice. It’s no surprise that areas that are predominantly black and brown, receive little to no attention from the government systems built to support them. When we fail to look at the entire ecosystem with all the systems at play, including natural systems, we are failing to advocate efficiently and holistically.
In racism, we can’t only fight for equality for blacks alone or the entire movement falls apart. We fight collectively for blacks, Asians, latinxs, all people of color that are oppressed by the status quo. We look at Flint without clean water in our own country. Wars in Africa over diminishing clean water sources. When we fight for the environment, we fight for equity and we fight for justice.
The most important system of our era, may very well be the Natural System. Without it, life will cease to exist.