Achieving Climate Justice by Making Things Better

Hope & Justice Series Post 8.6

The Three Actions of Justice

I have suggested that for The Climate Movement there are five overlapping dimensions of justice: generational, distributive, environmental, climate, and justice for nature.

This is our final post in our subseries on Climate Justice, and is focused on achieving Climate Justice by making things better, the third of the three actions of justice. So what is involved in doing so?

Everything.

All we do as the Climate Movement on our Olympian Fields of Action. All the efforts of our Climate Action Supporters. All we do through ARTC and Governments-&-Markets to achieve our vision, purpose, and Major Goal: to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. All we do through the other two actions of justice: stopping bad stuff and setting wrong right.

In sum: all we do as The Catalytic-4.

I simply can’t think of anything we do that isn’t trying to make things better in relation to climate justice, in working to address the five distinct aspects of climate change that call forth our efforts to achieve climate justice:

1) legacy emissions and legacy pollution;

2) the systemic aggregate nature of the problem;

3) the simultaneous erasure of margins of safety, such as the destructive momentum built up in the oceans;

4) tipping points;

5) the unjust distribution of consequences.

While every step in the right direction makes things better, we can’t settle for making things less bad. If we are not careful, these five distinctive aspects can lead us in that direction, can have us settle for stopping the bad stuff. There is a huge amount to do to stop the bad stuff, but we can do so in ways that also set wrong right and make things better. We must continually strive for all three together.

Justice won’t let us stop with stopping the bad stuff. We must keep moving forward. We must keep making steps in the right direction until things are actually better.

Moreover, making things better can never be separated from setting wrong right and remain part of achieving justice. If things are made better only or primarily for those who haven’t been seriously impacted by climate change, or who won’t be in the future, we haven’t achieved justice; indeed, we have made things more unjust, and therefore we really haven’t made things better at all.

Thus, when it comes to justice, including climate justice, we must never forget that we can’t make things better if we don’t also set wrong right. As I’ve said, this means those who have been the most harmed, and those most threatened — the poor, the powerless and less powerful, the marginalized, the vulnerable, children and subsequent generations, and the rest of nature — must be at the front of the line when we are making things better.

This won’t happen on its own. We must make it happen. We must make justice happen.

Together, as we strive for justice we become our better selves, we become who we always hoped we would be. And along the way, as we achieve some measure of justice, we create a hope that keeps us moving forward in this great calling to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better and our future come faster — all accomplished through The Catalytic-4 working together.

This is why hope and justice are a reinforcing symbiosis. Justice creates hope; hope empowers justice.

Without this calling to achieve justice we can’t have the dual power we need to be the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world on all of our Olympian Fields of Action. We can’t be a moral movement. We won’t have the moral power to create the power of numbers we need to be the first and indispensable Catalytic Source of Transformation that pushes the other three — Climate Action Supporters, ARTC, Governments-and-Markets — to become what they must be. We won’t overcome climate change.

This is why love is our most important Movement Value. This is why we must come together to support one another through the Climate Movement. Only continuously empowered by love, only as we move forward together, can we live in and live out our calling for justice until we see justice in the lives of those who never deserved anything less.

Our love must give birth to justice.

And then we will see it. We will see the hope from justice that is everyone’s birthright. Sustained by our love, we will make hope happen when together we make justice happen and our future come faster. Striving together we are creating our justice masterpiece. Join us!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in our Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you are doing.