climate justice

Climate justice acknowledges the unequal distribution of harms caused by climate change and unequal distribution of benefit derived from those inducing it. Justice requires that the burden of fixing climate change be shouldered mostly by those who caused and benefit from it. Climate justice also considers the ways in which climate change magnifies existing inequality and injustice.

the Work on Climate community has this great primer.

Examples

• Formerly redlined neighborhoods are hotter: people today are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to the racist housing policies of the past. Governments directed investment toward white neighborhoods and away from Black neighborhoods, one effect of which is that fewer trees were planted in the latter. Because trees take decades to mature and live for centuries, the effect on ambient temperature of these racist policies wasn’t felt immediately, but will long outlive the policies themselves if we don’t take the corrective action of prioritizing planting trees in formerly-redlined neighborhoods. “This study reveals that historical housing policies may, in fact, be directly responsible for disproportionate exposure to current heat events.”