The Perils of Climate Activism


"Motivated by the fear of cataclysm, climate discourse tends to be futuristic and ahistorical. Meanwhile, communities engaged in environmental justice conflicts are fighting to spotlight their oppressed pasts and improve the present as a necessary pre-condition to securing their futures. Their fights are not restricted to fossil fuel projects, but extend to all land-degrading, resource-alienating activities required to keep the growth-centered economy growing. Such community responses assert the ideal of equality and resistance against the erasure of the plural narratives around land."

-- Nityanand Jayaraman, The Perils of Climate Activism, in Survivance -- A special issue of Eflux, 2021