November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Global Warming Is Color-Blind

(Page 2 of 2)

Mar.-Apr. 2008
by Jennifer Oladipo, from Orion 
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Minorities make up one-third of the population, and as our numbers increase we are growing as an economic and financial force. We are a key to maintaining the energy that environmentalism has gained as a result of intense mainstream attention. That momentum will peter out without more people to act on the present sense of urgency. Imagine the power of 100 million Asians, African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans invested in sustainable living, joining green organizations, voting for politicians and laws that protect the environment.

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Nobody benefits from the perception that enjoying and caring for the environment is an exclusively white lifestyle. The truth is that brown, yellow, red, and black people like to go backpacking, too. Those of us with the means are buying organic, local, and hybrid. If environmentalism continues to appear mostly white and well-off, it will continue to be mostly white and well-off, even as racial and economic demographics change. The environmental movement will continue to overlook the nuances, found in diversity of experience, that reveal multiple facets of environmental problems—and their solutions.

Sooner or later, even global warming will be pushed off magazine covers, television screens, and the congressional floor. Before that time, we need to have in place something even more impressive: a racially diverse, numerically astounding mass of environmentalists ready to pick up the ball and run with it.

 

Jennifer Oladipo is a writer and independent journalist in Louisville, Kentucky. Reprinted from Orion (Nov.-Dec. 2007), a magazine about the environment, culture, and spirit. Subscriptions: $50/yr. (6 issues) from Box 469090, Escondido, CA 92046; www.orionmagazine.org.

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