With every passing year it seems we get closer and closer to not being able to turn back in terms of environmental destruction. And when most people think of environmentalists themselves, white hippies pop up in their mind. The flower children who started the recycling movement, and petition the government to end harmful activities like improper disposal of nuclear waste or fracking. People don’t picture the far-right activists in the same way, assuming since republican consensus is that any regulation especially on the side of environmental protection will hurt a businesses ability to make money. But through a new lens from social analysts, there is an interesting intersection between the far-right and the traditional environmentalist movement.
While there is this overlap, the reasoning behind beliefs is rooted in very different places. The mass shooting that took place in El Paso, TX was because a man believed he needed to control the population of Mexicans in the town. Instead of changing the individuals way of life to help contribute to a growing community the man insisted that killing was the only answer. While these acts were clearly rooted in racism and a belief that white people are somehow chosen people, overpopulation is a hard-hitting issue within the environmentalist community. Understanding that with a lack of development the earth cannot sustain the population growth rate, but their solution instead of murder is to accommodate and encourage development so that we can all continue to enjoy the earth.
The environmentalist movement itself is composed of mostly white people. Individuals looking to go into STEM related fields are diverse, while it is still mostly men, minorities and women who have made real headway in the sector. But when it comes to minorities going into environmental science the gap is still really large. With minorities only making up a combined 12.3% of workers in the field. It is suspected that this gap is so large because no matter what side of the environmentalist spectrum you’re on it has been and continues to be an institution that serves white people the most. Sustainability as a concept is marketed as a way to help the environment, and leave less and less of a carbon footprint. But the way sustainable products are priced and sold makes it harder for disadvantaged groups to participate in the movement. Because an overwhelming amount of these people are people of color it’s no wonder why the field doesn’t speak to them the same way it does white people. And discouraging them even more is the fact that their communities are often where companies and government organizations dump the things white people don’t want to deal with. In the case of the Keystone pipeline, original plans had it set up to carry oil through the land of upper middle class white people, but with their strong opposition it was moved to underneath Native American lands. Even though their resistance was harder and backed by most of the country it was ignored. As long as government policy and corporate expectations encourage the racism behind environmentalism we won’t see the movement evolve as it should.
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