Environmental Justice and Time

Have you heard about how children are suing over climate change?

I realize I’m a little tardy to the party with this, but in our discussions about environmental justice one of the things that I kept thinking was that we never explicitly discussed the temporal element of the problem. (Yes, we discussed how the past affects the present, but not explicitly how the present affects the future.)

As we (like, as a people, not as a college class) attempt to navigate these socio-environmental issues, I think it’s important to remember that actions that “externalize” disamenities onto disadvantaged groups ultimately externalizes the problem to the next generation as a whole.

The idea that environmental impacts can even be externalized is a privilege provided by distance (a function of resources, ability and social context) and time. Over time, distance will become irrelevant. The threat of global climate change affords humanity on it's best opportunities to reexamine these social phenomenon and (hopefully!) dismantle them.