Larry Glass, NEC Board President
Caroline Griffith, NEC Executive Director
Green Hate
As climate disruption becomes more and more undeniable, it is unfortunately human nature to point the finger of blame at someone else. This often takes the form of scapegoating; blaming those you don’t like and probably don’t understand for the way that your life is being changed. Many of us grew up believing that humanity, when faced with an existential threat, would put aside its differences and unite behind saving the planet and ourselves. Unfortunately for all of us, the pandemic is a prime example of us not rising to the occasion as a unified front, and there is a clear parallel between COVID-19 and climate change.
The rising movement to find a scapegoat for climate change is often called eco-fascism, but we’ve also heard it referred to as “Green Hate.” It manifests itself in various ways, one of the most insidious of which is blaming migrants and people from the global south for the causes of climate change. Here at the NEC we’ve gotten letters from locals advocating eugenics and brochures from national and statewide groups who are calling for closing our borders because, in their opinion, migrants are the cause of climate change. This is despite the fact that the United States, with its falling birth rates, is still in the top three emitters of carbon worldwide. Scapegoating serves the purpose of diverting attention from our collective responsibility to change our systems and change our consumption habits, and points the finger at someone else. Not only is this often racist and classist, it also prevents us from coming together to find solutions to the problem. As environmentalists, we have a responsibility to counter these narratives and work to root out the hate in our movement so we can work towards a better future.
As our journalist, Elena, addresses on page 6, these racist and xenophobic ideas are not new to the environmental movement. And unfortunately, Green Hate is growing, as is the link between far-right wing ideology and the environmental movement. Hop Hopkins, the Sierra Club’s director of organizational transformation, has said, “We need to be educating our base about these dystopian ideas and the scapegoating that’s being put upon Black, Indigenous and people of color and working-class communities, such that they’re able to identify these messages that may sound like they’re environmental, but we need to be able to discern that they’re actually very racist.” This is exactly why we are working tirelessly to link racial justice and environmentalism and to make sure that our work to heal the planet doesn’t come at the expense of those who are bearing the brunt of the climate catastrophe. Not only do we need to push back against Green Hate, but it’s also important that we work, collectively and following the leadership of communities of color and working-class communities, to present a vision of a better world and work to achieve it.
Indian Child Wellfare Act
Another harmful thread that we are following is the attempt to challenge the Indian Child Welfare Act, which is at the heart a challenge to the concept of tribal sovereignty and the concept that individual tribes, rather than state or federal governments, have the authority to make decisions regarding tribes or tribal members. The Supreme Court announced in March that it would hear challenges to the Act, which was passed in 1978 and is considered the gold standard in child welfare because it prioritizes family and community connection for children. Tribal sovereignty has played a role in the environmental movement because the ethic and law of many tribal entities (see the Yurok Tribe’s Constitution, for example) prioritize the rights of nature, and sovereignty has been used to reject and fight projects on tribal lands that would negatively impact those rights. We’ll be watching to see how this challenge plays out and what effect it has on tribal sovereignty as a whole.
Humboldt Candidate Forum
As we enter into election season, the NEC is proud to once again be collaborating with allied groups in the social justice and labor rights movements to be hosting candidate forums for the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, Districts 4 and 5. As a nonprofit, the NEC is prohibited from endorsing or supporting candidates, but we take our education mission seriously and see this as an opportunity to help voters learn about where these candidates stand on issues that are important to us. Tune in live on KMUD radio (or catch the live stream on the KMUD Facebook page) on May 2 and 9 from 6-8pm. If you happen to have picked up EcoNews after those dates, you can find the recordings on the Access Humboldt YouTube page. The last day to register to vote in the June 7 primary is May 23, so make sure your registration is up to date by then and get out and exercise your right to vote.