My Decision to Resign from the Advisory Board of Evergreen Action

The preamble of the 2002, Principles for Alliances with Green Groups is profound and lucid, in part stating, “Over the last ten years, there has been some history of collaboration between environmental justice organizations and green groups. In many instances, there has been at best unprincipled behavior and at worst abuses that have taken the form of opportunism, racism, classism, and a low or no value ascribed to community-level impacts.”

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the process that led to its development, has elucidated the undeniable fact that the climate “movement” is less an exercise of social justice, and more frequently a continuation of the white “supremacy,” patriarchy, and colonization that form the interlinked root causes of the climate crisis. For instance, before many climate and environmental justice groups even had a chance to review the so-called IRA far too many historically white-led “environmental” organizations acted prematurely rhapsodic and released statements and other public declarations of “victory” before speaking to environmental justice communities, and the organizations accountable to them, who will be most and directly impacted by the fossil fuel, false solutions, increased mining, and other extractive provisions contained in the so-called IRA.

In fact, since passage of the IRA in the Senate, many of these same white-led groups and certain white individuals considered to be climate change “thought leaders” are taking a…