ecological movements and organizations

By Our Changing Climate - Our Changing Climate, March 10, 2023

By C.J. Polychroniou - Truthout, March 6, 2023

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act are two landmark bills with the potential to carry significant economic and environmental benefits. They also speak volumes of the role that progressive voices and organizations can play in helping to create sustainable and equitable economic growth and in powering a safer future. Of course, they are imperfect bills, points out National Director of the Green New Deal Network Kaniela Ing in this exclusive interview for Truthout, but they are important stepping stones toward a Green New Deal and advancing justice for frontline and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) communities. For now, however, the most immediate concern, Ing says, is making sure that “the full benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act reach communities across the country and have a positive impact on the planet and its people.”

Ing was a founding member of the Green New Deal Network (GNDN) as the climate justice director for People’s Action, where he led campaigns to combat climate change. While at People’s Action, Ing co-created and led mass mobilizations around the People’s Bailout and THRIVE Agenda, which largely shaped the suite of federal legislation.

C.J. Polychroniou: Last year, the United States Congress passed the largest federal investment to tackle climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This was preceded by Congress passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, another bill breaking spending records to restore and modernize our infrastructure. What role did the Green New Deal Network and other movement organizations have in passing these bills?

Kaniela Ing: The historic levels of investments passed in the last two years is a direct result of communities across the country fighting for climate, care, jobs and justice. Coalitions like mine have built on the decades of work by leaders and activists, advocating that everyone have access to essential goods and services, be protected from crises, and have the opportunity to thrive.

Since 2020, organizations and activists within the Green New Deal Network (GNDN) have fought for Congress to pass a package that tackles the overlapping crises facing our nation: climate chaos, economic instability, racial injustice, outdated infrastructure and corporate influence over our government. The Green New Deal Network — and its 15 national organizations and 24 state coalitions — crafted the THRIVE Act, a $10 trillion climate, care, jobs and justice bill that would create enough jobs to end unemployment; build modern, reliable infrastructure; and invest in community resources while ensuring labor and justice protections.

By Jessica Corbett - Common Dreams, March 3, 2023

"The capitalistic system continuously puts profit over people," says Fridays for Future. "The Global North's fossil finance is the cause of the climate crisis, neocolonial exploitation, wars, and human rights violations."

"It's time to end fossil finance because #TomorrowIsTooLate!"

That's the takeaway message from climate strikers who took to the streets worldwide on Friday to demand an immediate end to the financing of all fossil fuel projects amid a worsening global emergency largely driven by coal, gas, and oil.

"The capitalistic system continuously puts profit over people," the youth-led Fridays for Future movement said in a statement. "Corporations' greed for more profit is driving the destruction of ecosystems and the climate. At the same time, frontline communities are paying the highest price while being the most affected by the climate crisis."

#FridaysForFuture in Stockholm on the day of the global strike! pic.twitter.com/ZRYdpU9qv9

— David Fopp (@DavidFopp) March 3, 2023

By Steven R. D. Henderson - Institute for Social Ecology, March 2023

Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience was published when the American ecology movement debated social critique on one hand, or Malthusianism and anti-humanism on the other. Its authors Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier pointed to historic far-Right environmentalism as a warning.

The subject again gained attention in 2019 when a white supremacist gunned down 51 people at two New Zealand mosques. While he murdered friends and families in their places of worship, the attack was posted online for the world to see. “In his shoddy manifesto, the accused shooter in Christchurch identified as an ‘eco-fascist,’” reports Jason Wilson for the Guardian. A few months later another shooter in El Paso, Texas killed 23 people at a Walmart and cited the Christchurch perpetrator as inspiration.

“There have been significant links between environmentalism and Right-wing politics for more than a century,” Staudenmaier writes in his new book Ecology Contested: Environmental Politics Between Left and Right. “Knowingly or not, the perpetrators of the Christchurch and El Paso massacres continued that tradition. While they were unusual in putting their beliefs into violent action, many of the same basic ideas run through the contemporary far Right scene as well as substantial parts of the political mainstream.”

Staudenmaier’s concern is confronting these ideas. His new book hands readers the theoretical basis for a critical and historically-informed engagement with them. Earlier versions of some essays in the volume were published previously. “Disney Ecology” was first put out as a pamphlet, while “Ambiguities of Animal Rights” originally appeared in the journal Communalism. “The Politics of Nature from Left to Right” was written for the second issue of Harbinger. The remaining texts are new.

By Robin Bravender - E&E News, March 1, 2023

Staff at the Natural Resources Defense Council have launched a unionization campaign, organizers announced, making the environmental organization the latest national green group to see a union organizing push in recent years.

Bruce Jett, an organizing director with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, sent a letter to NRDC President and CEO Manish Bapna on Wednesday stating that the union — which represents news and nonprofit groups — is seeking to represent NRDC employees.

“We urge the Natural Resources Defense Council to join with The NewsGuild to champion the rights of your outstanding employees to perform the above activities as we undertake a respectful dialogue and move forward together with the transparent, inclusive and equitable mission of both The NewsGuild and your organization,” Jett wrote.

The NRDC union effort launched a Twitter account Wednesday saying that staff at the environmental group is “working to build an organization that treats workers with dignity and respect, listens to our concerns, and makes it easier for all of us to safeguard the planet and its people.”

Representatives of the unionization effort did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

By Spencer Sunshine - It's Going Down, February 23, 2023

The increasing embrace by White Supremacists of environmentalism, which they use to justify their racist ideologies—dubbed “ecofascism”—is on the lips of many today. This has been driven by its mention in the manifestos connected to White Supremacist massacres in El Paso, Texas and Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019; between the two, 74 were murdered. Additionally, the new interest paid by fascists in Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, also shows rising interest in this trend.

Because of this, historian and anarchist Peter Staudenmaier’s book is a timely reminder that ecofascism is not just not a new problem, but also one that provides a bridge between the far-Right and the Left and anarchists. His book is a call, in the best radical environmental style, to blockade that bridge and stop fascists from entering radical circles.

Since the early 1990s Staudenmaier has been associated with the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE). The school was co-founded in 1974 by anarchist theoretician Murray Bookchin, and is best known for promoting what he dubbed social ecology—a fusion of Hegelianized Marxism, classical anarchism, and ecological thought. But ISE members have also been some of the earliest to warn anarchists about the danger of Red/Brown politics, especially in the radical environmental movement.

For example, Staudenmaier co-authored the 1995 book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience with Janet Biehl. His half was one of the first treatments in English documenting the “green wing” of the original Nazi Party, clearly showing how the fascist embrace of environmentalism has a long history and impeccable pedigree. But—especially in the context of Bookchin’s occasionally injudicious, and sometimes downright vicious, attacks on rival radical environmental currents—Ecofascism was controversial when it was published. Today it stands as a prescient warning of what was to come.

(The term “ecofascism” itself is muddy because of the different ways it’s invoked. Staudenmaier, following the clear understanding of different far-Right factions which antifascist work requires, uses it to refer to genuine fascists who embrace environmentalism. Other leftists use it to refer to all right-wingers who oppose environmentalism. Meanwhile, many conservatives use it to smear environmentalists themselves!)

Ecology Contested is yet another warning about the thriving postwar ecofascist currents. In the increasingly crowded field of writings about this subject, Staudenmaier’s book stands out by its focus on the relationship between the Left and Right on environmentalism, but also anti-tech and animal rights politics. He does so by showing their overlapping theoretical, but also in some cases existing political, relationships. Like his 1995 book, Ecology Contested is sure to ruffle feathers. Some may even see it less as a warning of potential right-wing incursions and more as an attack on their own politics.

By Jeff Ordower and Daniel Hunter - Waging Nonviolence, February 22, 2023

The Inflation Reduction Act wasn't written for climate justice, but there’s a ton of money for organizers and movement players to access.

Yes, the Inflation Reduction Act is the most consequential piece of climate legislation in the U.S. Yes, it’s also the only federal legislation. Yes, it’s imperfect. Yes, parts of it are downright vile. Yes, the negotiations exacerbated tensions between insider green organizations and those on the frontlines. 

But let’s be real, nothing more is going to pass at the federal level in the foreseeable future. So now that the IRA is the law of the land, how do organizers and movement players work with it? 

As long-time organizers and climate justice activists, we see organizing opportunities in the roughly $390 billion in climate funding available. As an analysis from Just Solutions points out, the bill was not written for climate justice. But there’s a ton of money that suddenly we can access for poor and disenfranchised communities — and it would be a wasted opportunity to leave that money on the table.

With all its limitations, the IRA can further our campaigns if we use the opportunity.

Ellen Robottom, Tina Rothery, and Allan Todd - Climate Justice Alliance, February 8, 2023