And especially you white middle class men, so, it needs to be “intersectional”
Climate change discourse is dominated by middle-class white men – it must be intersectional
Research from the United Nations has found that 80 per cent of those who have been displaced by climate change are women. This doesn’t mean the leading voices in tackling it are women, though. Earth Day, which falls today (22 April) with the theme “Invest In Our Planet”, provides a critical chance to look at the dearth of attention placed on women and marginalised communities within climate discourse. While the day is an opportunity to engage in crucial discussions about the future of our planet, it must also be a wake-up call to reflect on our response to the climate emergency and ensure our approach does not exclude those individuals who bear the most brutal repercussions of this crisis.
But what exactly does this kind of intersectionality mean? Intersectionality, a term coined by black feminists in the 1970s, is a framework used to analyse how different aspects of our identity intersect each other. This includes gender identity, race, ability, class and sexuality. The premise is that systems of oppression like racism and capitalism do not occur in isolation, but facilitate one another. For example, the climate crisis disproportionately affects women by leaving them more exposed to domestic abuse and intensifying existing gender inequalities, but this analysis does not account for disabled or queer women, whose situation will be even worse.
Intersectionality and climate change are inextricably linked and we must consider how different communities are affected. People of colour, for example, are more likely to live in areas with the most toxic air. Similarly, members of the LGBT+ community experience social stigma and housing insecurity, making them more vulnerable to environmental disasters.
This is all cute, but, at the end of the day, the majority who give a flying shit about ‘climate change’ are white, middle class and up folks who live in the 1st World. They have the luxury of caring because they have nothing truly pressing in their lives. Yet, the majority do not change their own lives to accord with their pronounced beliefs.
As far as women go, are they to be forced to be a part of this? How about “marginalized communities”? Notice this is all written from the advantage of being in a 1st World nation, where the white middle class and up folks think of anyone with a different color as being a minority. As “people of color.”
If comments from Dr Alix Dietzel, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol, are anything to go by, part of the problem may lie in the lack of diversity among those at the upper echolons of climate change discussions. Dr Dietzel says that climate change discourse is currently “dominated by middle-class white men” and that people of colour or working-class people are “rarely part of decision making”.
Because they have real world concerns. They aren’t worried about the latest Tiktok dance, that the new iPhone has a better camera, or about the climate scam. These 1st World climate cultists really think of places like Africa, India, Asia, etc, as minorities, which would be a hell of a shock to those who live in, say, Ghana. But, they are happy that all the strip mining, often by children and women, is occurring far away in those countries, eh?
So, it's not science, it's politics. Thanks for confirming, person with no degree in STEM as of yet (good on you for majoring in science, though, Sophia, in all seriousness)
— William Teach2 ??????? #refuseresist (@WTeach2) April 23, 2023
This is politics, along with a bunch of bored people with no real issues. Too bad they do not turn their attention to real environmental issues, rather than the scam.