Social Justice and Climate Justice: How One Environmental Leader Is Moving Forward

Consider This from NPR

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🗓️ 20 February 2023

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

The Sierra Club has been at the forefront of the American environmental movement for decades. However, the group has also face criticism for racist and exclusionary attitudes embedded in some of its founding ideals.
The Sierra Club's new executive director, Ben Jealous, explains how he aims to advance the group's climate goals, while also reckoning with that past.
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Transcript

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0:00.0	Four years ago, a Swedish teenager addressed world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City,
0:06.5	and she opened her speech with a simple message.
0:09.2	My message is that we'll be watching you.
0:11.7	Gretetunberg was only 16, and her speech introduced immediacy and anger to the fight for climate justice.
0:19.0	People are suffering, people are dying, and tired ecosystems are collapsing.
0:26.5	We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.
0:36.5	How dare you!
0:38.5	Since then, Tuenberg has become one of the most prominent climate activists in the world.
0:44.0	In 2019, she became Time Magazine's youngest ever person of the year, and she's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize the last four years.
0:53.0	In an interview with NPR the other day, Tuenberg explained how she sees the fight for climate justice.
0:58.5	Right now, it's like saving the climate is seen like an act of tree hugging.
1:05.0	It's not being seen as a way to protect our civilization, as we know it, and to save countless of human lives.
1:13.0	That is being put against jobs and workers when it's actually the opposite.
1:20.0	The fight for social justice is the fight for climate justice. We can't have one without the other. We can't put them against each other.
1:28.0	Consider this. Many environmental activists seek climate justice and social justice as inextricably linked.
1:36.5	Coming up, how the new leader of one of America's most prominent environmental groups is thinking about it.
1:45.5	From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Monday, February 20th.
1:55.5	It's consider this from NPR. Yosemite is renowned for its towering Sequoias and waterfalls and polished granite domes.
2:03.5	It became a national park thanks to the lobbying of conservationist John Muir, whose legacy lives on in the organization he founded, the Sierra Club.
2:13.0	That group has been wrestling with the racist and exclusionary attitudes embedded in some of its founding ideals.
2:20.0	Ben Gellis was recently chosen to be the group's executive director. He was the former head of the NAACP and is the first person of color to lead the Sierra Club.
2:29.0	Gellis begins his formal duties later this month and he joined me to talk about the road ahead.
	...

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