Art by Micah Bazant, from the Creative Wildfire “Regenerative Economy” Poster Portfolio.

My time in college studying environmental science helped guide my passion toward the environmental justice movement and subsequently the Just Transition Alliance. This period of learning was pivotal in my professional development, but ultimately neglected a lot of the vital truths that I have come to realize post-graduation. My work in the field with JTA has shifted my perception on environmental academia to understand it as being part of this problematic ivory tower. Dominant assumptions in environmental science primarily communicate scientific and socially-detached perspectives towards the climate crisis that fail to account for the socioeconomic realities and damaging structures and systems at play.

My college studies emphasized the urgent need for decarbonization and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions as solutions to the climate crisis. However, dominant environmental teachings in academia falsely identify carbon pricing systems, climate geoengineering, and so-called technologically-innovative energy sources, like biofuels, waste incineration, hydrogen, nuclear, and hydroelectricity, as the means to the solution. Through my time with JTA, I have learned to recognize these as “false solutions” because they represent a narrow minded market-based perspective that exists to protect the interests of fossil fuel industries. More so, these band-aid solutions present their own threats of land degradation, exploitive land grabbing, toxic byproducts, and further greenhouse gas emissions. False solutions superficially pretend to address the climate crisis, while enabling current emissions from wealthy countries and other nations that advocate for fossil fuels, rather than work to transform the wasteful and over-consumptive industrial capitalist economy altogether.

My environmental education also reinforced the fact that fossil fuel industries are inherently extractive, unsustainable, and ultimately must be decentered from our energy needs. Though, in this departure, the need for a “Just Transition” was not mentioned once in my studies. I have only now learned that a “Just Transition” is the necessary transition away from fossil fuels and other extractive industries towards local, regenerative economies led by frontline workers, Indigenous Peoples, and fenceline communities. In our university studies, students often become detached from the real livelihoods that these industrial workplaces represent. The pursuit of environmental justice is incomplete without also ensuring economic justice for frontline workers.

While the fossil fuel industry was being condemned, “Big Greens” were simultaneously being glorified. The term “Big Greens” refers to the biggest and most well-funded environmental nonprofit organizations in the United States. These green groups are depicted as the reputable Ivy Leagues of nonprofit organizations and are highly-regarded as dream corporations to work for post-graduation. It is true that these mainstream organizations can be generally impactful in their wide-scale environmental advocacy work, scientific research, and public education. However, Big Greens have often been viewed as being non-representative of the communities of color most impacted by environmental injustices. They have even infringed on these communities’ rights themselves, through the support of legislation for exploitive land grabs and the establishment of national parks on Indigenous lands, all in the name of conservation. The overall integrity of Big Greens has also come into question when considering they have in the past been guilty of selling out to fossil fuel companies and publicly endorsing false solutions.

At times, I felt that my environmental studies took on a narrowly scientific worldview that felt far away from the actual struggles and mitigation of climate change.  While scientific methodology and knowledge generation serves a purpose in building credibility and informing the public and legislators, there is real credence to the idea that something can be studied to death, especially when the same people keep relying on the same assumptions and approaches. At this point in the crisis, scientists have long been documenting evidence of exacerbating environmental destruction. While these research reports continue to pile up, increased wildfires engulf the homes of our people and wildlife; fenceline communities are being plagued by cancer and respiratory illnesses; and already scarce water sources are being poisoned with industrial runoff. Scientific efforts are futile without learning from and centering grassroots, community-led organizing, direct action, and structural changes away from the extractive industrial capitalist economy. The on-the-ground work being done by JTA, and many other organizations like it, is ultimately an effort to humanize this crisis and to point out its underlying causes. When we give these environmental statistics names, faces, and voices, we move closer toward real solutions that can advance intersectional forms of justice.