Plastic Straws and Beyond: Able-Bodied Environmentalists Educating Ourselves About Eco-[Dis]Ableism

This quarter, graduate students enrolled in ENVS 597: Power, Privilege, and the Environment are writing short responses emerging from readings and/or discussions in class.

Plastic Straws and Beyond: Able-Bodied Environmentalists Educating Ourselves About Eco-[Dis]Ableism

Sarah Rose Olson

 

In 2012 Flo, a blogger under the handle Disabledmedic coined the term “EcoDisablism” (Flo, 2012; Cabat, 2017). Flo describes their experience as an activist, campaigner, and member of the climate justice movement and how these parts of their identity interact with their disabled identity. In writing about their experience with ableism within the climate justice movement, and the process of internalizing it, Flo writes,

“That’s why we need to make climate solutions cheap and easy, why industry needs to do their part and why we need to think carefully before turning societal problems into individual problems with individual blame and individual solutions” (Flo, 2012).

Oberlin College Environmental Studies scholar Melissa Cabat summarizes EcoDisablism as “the connectivity between environmentalism and disability rights … [that] is deeply rooted in the anxiety of not being able to live up to mainstream environmentalist norms and expectations due to ability” (Cabat, 2017). Representation of EcoDisablism began to make waves in general and environmental mainstream media last year following calls to ban plastic straws across the U.S.

When you type “ableism and environment” into Google, the first page is full of articles on plastic straw bans and how such bans place unfair blame and burden on people for whom plastic straws are a necessity.

The media coverage surrounding the connection between ableism and the plastic straw ban was a good starting point for sparking conversations around EcoDisablism, but I fear the conversation stopped at straws for many able-bodied people and environmentalists.

There are a number of excellent scholarly articles drawing connections between ableism and aspects of environmentalism such as outdoor/risk culture (Ray, 2013) and the anti-toxin movement (Di Chiro, 2010).

Yet not everyone has access to scholarly articles.

In actively working towards solutions to the ecological crises our planet is faced with, EcoDisablism must be at the forefront of environmentalist futures-thinking. Information about EcoDisablism and how to tangibly confront it needs to be made more readily available to the general public.

The question is then how to go about this.

When trying to find more sources about EcoDisablism beyond the plastic sraw articles, I was discouraged by the lack of non-scholarly resources that came up in my Google searches.

Perhaps I am searching for the wrong terms.

Or perhaps (and/or additionally) able-bodied editors, writers, and CEO’s need to actually start paying and hiring disabled environmentalists on their staff to write about these issues.

It is not the job of disabled folx to educate able-bodied persons about ableism. However, sharing sources and information produced by disabled folx about disability is often the best way to avoid able-bodied folx speaking over/for disabled people about the lived realities of disabled communities and individuals.

So, perhaps those of us who are able-bodied environmentalists need to start offering to fund disabled bloggers, social media content creators, writers, etc. who are already writing or want to write about these things, especially if we are hoping to use their words to educate ourselves.

As an able-bodied environmentalist I do not and will never be an expert on or have all the solutions to tackling DisAbleism.

As an able-bodied environmentalist I also know it is imperative that I continue to educate myself and others on this form of oppression and support (financially and otherwise) disabled people and/or environmentalists who are doing the work of making resources available to the public.

As an able-bodied environmentalist I need to constantly ask myself if my environmentalism perpetuates ableism, if my events are accessible, and if my ecological futures-thinking solutions are truly equitable.

The following is a list of scholarly and non-scholarly sources I found on EcoDisablism. Please feel free to add more in the comments section. I also welcome any and all commentary or critique on what I have written above.

Thank you.

Reference List

Clare, Eli. (2015). ​Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation​ (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press).

Di Chiro, G. (2010). Polluted Politics? Confronting Toxic Discourse, Sex Panic, and Eco-Normativity In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (pp. 199-230).

Duncan, J.M., Nocella II, A.J. (2012). Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco-Ability Movement. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing).

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. (2004). First Person: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. Retrieved from https://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2004/July/er%20july%206/7_6_04firstperson.html

Cabat, Melissa. (2017). Interrogating the “and”: A Study of Environmentalism and Disability (Undergraduate Honors Thesis). Retrieved from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=oberlin1502030946268842&disposition=inline

Imani. (2018). Being Disabled isn’t Eco Friendly: Get Off Our Backs and Put In The Work. Retrieved from https://crutchesandspice.com/2018/06/06/being-disabled-isnt-eco-friendly-get-off-our-backs-and-put-in-the-work/

Imgrund, M. (2018). EcoAbleism: What It Is, Why It Matters and How It Affects Disabled People”. Retrieved from https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2018/08/eco-ableism-what-it-is-why-it-matters-how-affects-disabled-people/

Flo. (2012). EcoDisablism. Retrieved from http://disabledmedic.blogspot.com/2012/04/ecodisablism.html

Ray, S.J. (2017). Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory. (University of Nebraska-Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press).*

*This book looks phenomenal and contains chapters by 22 different authors on topics of disability and the environment!

Ray, S.J. (2013). The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture. (University of Arizona Press).

Smith, S.E. (2012). To Each According To Their Own Abilities: Disability and Environmentalism. Retrieved from http://meloukhia.net/2012/06/to_each_according_to_their_own_abilities_disability_and_environmentalism/

Author positionality statement: This post is written through the lens of and informed by the experiences of my white, settler-colonial, thin, cis-womxn, queer, able-bodied, mentally ill, upper-middle class, college educated, U.S. citizen identity. I write this post from my current residence/settlement on the violently stolen and continually occupied ancestral land of the Lummi Nation and Nooksack tribe.