Toxic Tour and Environmental Racism (558)

This week the Green Majority is taken over by the students of Economics for the Anthropocene. Below is a description of the program and the episode written by the students themselves.

-Saryn

E4A  (Economics for the Anthropocene) is a partnership between York University, McGill University, and the University of Vermont. It is a problem-oriented program designed to train academics to deal with the unprecedented environmental and social crises that the world is currently facing. We are from diverse academic disciplines but all tackling problems from the perspective of ecological economics. As opposed to conventional economics, ecological economics sees the economy as a system that's part of the larger earth system.

You can't really study the economy without studying the natural systems it relies upon, and you also can't study it without seeing the ways in which certain people benefit and certain people are harmed. Climate change is an overwhelming problem facing us as a global people, but most often it is talked about as an environmental problem--which it is! But it also affects different groups of people in very different ways, and generally speaking, the nations and social classes of folks who have most contributed to climate change are the ones that are most protected from all the problems stemming from it, like natural disasters, droughts, food shortages, and pollution, whereas countries and people who have contributed much less to weather change and sea level rise are often much more vulnerable. 

So as part of our studies, we are in Toronto studying climate justice, which is actually to say we are learning about all kinds of climate INjustices and trying to envision what it would look like to achieve justice in the future. 

We're trying to tackle huge and very real problems, and it would be naive and arrogant to think that we could learn enough within the ivory tower of academia, so we have been partnering with "community scholars," or people outside of universities who are experts in the problems we're grappling with. One of the E4A community scholars, Beze Gray, is here with us today to talk about the Toxic Tour of their community that they guided for our class last week outside of Sarnia, Ontario. Beze's going to talk more in-depth about their community's experiences of climate injustice at the hands of the fossil fuel industry that we all participate in.  

You'll be hearing from Beze Gray, and E4A students Molly Fremes, Sam Bliss, Alison Adams, Caitlin Morgan, Kelly Hamshaw, Barb Sniderman, Karan Kumar and Alice Damiano

Please consider joining the event Aug 18-20 or donating to the Aamjiwnaang Solidarity Against Chemical Valley campaign, you can learn more here.

This Weeks Music:

A Tribe Called Red Ft. Black Bear "Indian City" & "Stadium Pow Wow"

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