Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference: An Ecointersectional Analysis

While the heavy social impacts of raging wildfires, punishing storms, and climbing temperatures worldwide have made many increasingly aware of the need for climate justice, the intersection of race and climate change has too often been neglected in the literature and in practice.

In Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference, author Nancy Tuana urges that engagement with histories and lineages of ecological indifference and systemic racisms leads to a more robust understanding of the nature of climate injustices. Applying her “ecointersectional” framework, Tuana reveals how racist institutions and practices often fuel environmental destruction and contribute to climate change. Building on the work of Black feminist theorists, she demonstrates that the basic social structures that generate environmental destruction are the same as those that generate systemic oppression, making clear that the more traditional focus on the differential distribution of harms and benefits of climate change, while important, constitutes only one dimension of climate injustice due to systemic racisms. This book provides a more adequate account of racial climates by disclosing the additional dimensions of climate injustice.

Ultimately, Tuana underscores that any effort to protect the environment must also be a fight against systemic racisms and other forms of systemic inequity.