Frameworks of opportunity

By Maggie Langsted and Cheyanne Das

In Spring 2024, students in WWU’s ENVS 499D: Readings in Environmental Justice are reading about climate hope and climate futures. This post reflects some of the group’s learning and discussion.

Photo courtesy of Rob Wilson Photography @RobWilsonFoto, rawpolitics@gmail.com Image of NODAPL demonstration

When thinking about the climate’s future, it can seem daunting to imagine what life may look like in years to come. It can feel as if those who care for the environment are trying to hold the planet on their shoulders amidst the climate crisis, habitat loss, and environmental injustices that occur. However, this spring, our Environmental Justice Seminar is confronting these disconcerting matters and transforming them into possibilities for opportunities. The class is reading Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors from the Cli-Fi stories of Grist’s online journalism platform and the Not Too Late anthology. Our blog post addresses themes from Not Too Late: encouraging the collective to learn how to nurture social movements and gain a sense of community to create purposeful meanings to combat long-term struggles (either about the environment or within our own lives). We discuss the importance of the community’s role in people’s lives and how it helps people divert their struggles into a communal space for collaboration – making people feel less alone. Western culture encourages individualism, so working as a community creates disruption. This disruption is a beautiful act where people fight against the systems hurting them or those in their community to create change. 

One of the selections from Not Too Late centered on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Reservation and the ongoing battle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline and restore Indigenous people’s water rights. While some people doubted the protestors, massive numbers of people built coalitions, educated people about the health dangers of the pipeline, and created inspiration for more people to campaign against other pipelines. It was an opportunity for non-native people to learn about Native American history and its accordance with environmental and climate issues and a sense of hope and agency to be a part of the environmental justice movement. 

We showed the class a music video from the Indigenous people at Standing Rock because it was relevant to our reading and shows that activism can be done in many ways, bringing opportunities and possibilities for environmental justice (Stand Up / Stand N Rock #NoDAPL (Official Video). Actress Shailene Woodley – most known for Divergent & The Fault in Our Stars showed up at the beginning of the video. I was curious and found that she promotes environmentalism, advocates for Indigenous people’s rights, and stayed at Standing Rock for a month, where she was arrested for peacefully protesting and even posted the arrest live to show the injustices. Shailene displays a transformative justice fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline; it was encouraging and inspiring to see a celebrity talk about environmental justice, and it makes me hopeful that other celebrities can use their platforms to bring awareness about environmental justice. 

Agency > despair  

What stood out to me (Cheyanne) from the book is that when feelings of despair occur, and everything seems inevitable, as if the future is already written, despair and sadness limit our senses to the possibilities of making real change. In contrast, people can tap into their sense of belonging and purpose by taking agency in all emotions and involving smiling, laughing, crying, expressing love, rage, care, joy, love, and gratitude. We can become the beam of light in the dark by taking agency and transforming despair into space where we can feel all the emotions, and through that, we can build meaningful connections, ideas, and solutions. 

What stood out to me (Maggie) was that immediate failures do not mean a complete loss for social movements. The Green New Deal (GND) combats the climate crisis while providing good jobs and a livable future for everyone. It corrupted the false belief of jobs vs. the environment, creating a jobs-and-infrastructure narrative. Even though the GND was not passed, it created a climate plan structure that was used to create Build Back Better, later passed as Inflation Reduction Act, the most progressive climate plan the US has had. Even though the GND was not passed, there were still victories because it eventually implemented some parts into legislation. 

To conclude, the  environmental justice movement is successful when communities organize and create disruption. The climate crisis can feel alienating because loss is a personal feeling, but coming together as a community is one way to overcome grief. Demonstrations and the organization to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline show how coming together as a community can create inspiration and lead to environmental justice victories. The No DAPL organizations had many different outlets, including protests and artistic outlets like the music video. Movements against the climate crisis, such as No DAPL and the Green New Deal, display agency in a world where everything feels inevitable; these demonstrations of agency create a butterfly effect that inspires people to get involved and make connections in their community. Feelings of loss can occur during these movements, but victories can come through these moments with impacts. We believe it is important to remember that you are not alone in the climate crisis fight, and connections with your community are essential to creating change. 

Solnit, Rebecca Editor; Young Lutunatabua, Thelma Editor; and Gill, Jacquelyn, “Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story From Despair to Possibility” (2023).