While this blog is dedicated to detailing WildEarth Guardians’ efforts to confront climate change in the American West, the reality is, saving our environment is inextricably linked to advancing tolerance, defending equality, and empowering social justice.
Whether it’s the fact that climate change and environmental destruction disproportionately affect communities of color or the fact that the corporate power structure responsible for polluting this planet is dominated by white men who, knowingly or not, sustain institutional racism, the intersect between protecting our planet and uplifting its people is enormous.
That’s why WildEarth Guardians’ Executive Director, John Horning, issued the following statement last week in wake of the events of racism and violence seen in Charlottesville. We thought it worthwhile to repost and to emphasize on this blog that we can’t possibly save our climate if we can’t acknowledge and address the social forces that are destroying it. As much as it is a scientific imperative, climate change is fundamentally a moral issue and solving it means securing justice for all.
Statement from WildEarth Guardians’ Executive Director, John Horning
President Trump has further disgraced the presidency by lending aid and comfort to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. His comments, suggesting moral equivalence between people filled with hate and those who stand against them cannot be tolerated by a nation built on the idea that we are all created equal.
I am shocked by the recent events in Charlottesville and the rise in hate groups around our country. Further, I am saddened that the President legitimates hate groups, giving oxygen to a toxic virus. His words condoning racism and anti-Semitism are an affront to our democracy and the dignity of all humankind.
We mourn the loss of civility in our national discourse and at the same time we condemn the words and actions of racists and bigots who gathered in Charlottesville last weekend. Monuments to individuals who supported slavery and fought against our country are a stain on our nation and must come down.
Our nation’s greatest monuments are not built to people. Our nation’s enduring monuments are our ideals. The Declaration of Independence; The Constitution; Our National Monuments and Parks; and the belief that all people are created equal.
WildEarth Guardians celebrates the diversity that is the hallmark of our nation. Just as diversity is a strength in ecosystems so too is it a strength of our national identity. We stand in solidarity with those who are confronting bigotry, racism, fascism and all other ways of thinking that deprive human beings of the dignity and respect we all deserve.
