In Asoka Bandarage’s new article “The Climate Emergency and Urgency of System Change” in Asia Times, she argues for the need for a robust social movement to tackle the climate crisis:
Despite the climate emergency and related environmental and social collapse, the “top” 1% business-government media elite that rule the world are resistant to change. Strategies are used to divide and pit people against each other along ethno-religious, gender-sexuality and other “identity” lines deflecting attention away from class-based domination that is mostly responsible for climate and related crises.
Social change does not come by change in consciousness or individual mindfulness practice alone, but through increased citizen participation.
In the face of dramatically accelerating global warming, the failure of the Paris Agreement to address divesting from fossil fuel and the support of governments and multilateral organizations for new fossil-fuel projects, simultaneous action for climate protection and social justice – that is, climate justice – is intensifying around the world.
The goals of environmental sustainability and social justice can be achieved if we come together to “Change the System, not the Climate.”
