Elizabeth Sawin, Making Connections

Yesterday's white supremacist shootings in El Paso and Dayton prompted a notable Twitter thread from Elizabeth Sawin, codirector of a think tank called Climate Interactive.

CI spun off of the Sustainability Institute, which was founded by Donella Meadows, lead author of the 1972 book Limits to Growth. Sawin is a biologist with a Ph.D. from MIT who specializes in system dynamics and sustainability. She currently concentrates her work on what CI calls multisolving, systemic solutions that protect the climate while also improving health, equity, and well-being:

Because the latest mass shootings are opening a tiny crack of a conversation about white supremacy in the United States, remember that climate change and white supremacy are also connected.

The political party that more explicitly promotes white supremacy also promotes climate inaction. The worldview that sees non-white people as 'other' or 'less than' also frames other species and ecosystems as 'resources'.

The worldview that puts white men at the top of a hierarchy of humanity also puts humanity at the top of a hierarchy of living beings, a logic that contributes to everything from over-extraction to the biodiversity crisis to climate change.

That worldview prioritizes narrow nationalism. But we can only succeed on climate if every country on earth is supported in developing a low-carbon economy where its citizens can thrive. That looks like rich (likely higher % white) nations acting on their carbon debt.

In the U.S., white people disproportionately benefit from the fossil fuel economy and people of color are disproportionately harmed by it.

For instance people of color, as a whole, breathe in more health-harming air pollution from fossil fuels than they produce; white people the opposite. [citation provided in the original]

Refineries with their toxic pollution as disproportionately located in communities of color. [citation provided]

White supremacy shows up as well in the implementation of solutions. For example, Black and Hispanic households have less access to [solar panels] than white households of similar income levels. [citation provided]

I could go on, but you get the point - these multiple crises are not unconnected. They share common ideological roots, and they have the potential to reinforce each other, for instance - if white people frightened by climate change lean more heavily into a supremacist frame or if the economic opportunities in building a clean energy economy fall disproportionately to white people - the racial wealth gap widens further.

But the thing about self-reinforcing systemic structures is that they can turn in two directions. Worsening of one element can worsen the other, that is true. But improving one element can improve the other, too. And the potential for mutual improvement is as big as the potential for mutual worsening.

Undoing white supremacy in the push to zero carbon increases the number of people acting, the number of homes and businesses shifting to clean energy, the number of neighborhoods where people can live without cars - and all of that hastens the drop in carbon emissions.

And, because of how mental frames work, you can't hold an ecological view of interdependence and a racial view of supremacy. It's either all a mutual web of connection or all a giant pyramid of 'better than' and 'worse than'. Movement on one ideology creates movement on the other.

These are the promises of the most important ideas of the climate movement from Just Transition to Green New Deal, these strategies combine the needed scale of climate action with steps to undo structural racism and white supremacy.

It is scary how one crisis seems capable of enflaming the other, but don't let the scariness hide the possibility that we can tackle both crises together. And if you are looking for leadership, look for the people who, day by day, are doing just that.

Emphasis added.