Race and Environment

Sam Lindo from Christian Climate Action spoke to Hazelnut Community on Sunday afternoon.  It was a similar talk to the one she gave to Resonate in November, but it was very powerful again.  The most striking images are the ones that juxtapose measures of inequality with the places most affected by climate change, and the people who have done least to contribute to the problem are the ones who are being most severely impacted.  This works on both a global and a local scale.  In Bristol, it is the people of Laurence Hill who have the highest levels of air pollution, but its residents are least lightly to own a car.  Also powerful was the commonality of George Floyd’s ‘I can’t breathe’ words, and the respiratory issues caused by air pollution.  This argument involves a conflation of climate change and air pollution, but that just serves to highlight the scale of the wider environmental crisis and its connections to inequality.  I’m fully convinced.  The big question, which we talked about in the breakout groups, is what letting go of privilege looks like.  Here is a place where Christianity might have a major contribution to make to the discussion of racial and environmental injustice, since it is, at heart, a religion founded on inverting the value system of the world.  Unfortunately, the way Christianity is frequently practiced – including by me – rarely lives up to this ideal.