It's a Small World, and It’s About to Get Even Smaller

Inequality and injustice, racism and gender discrimination, the poor and the rich.

Inequality and injustice, multi-dimensional black holes laced with money, war and suffering. The widening gaps among society's chapters often seep into the intricacies of our daily lives. At times, posing as unanswered questions, or a Category 5 hurricane ready to engulf everything in its path in a blaze of fire and ash - ash our future generations will then have to pluck off the eclipsed ground and hope to cultivate into fertiliser.

Amidst the numerous battle cries of modern society, the term 'climate change' sparks activism, in its varying stages of peaceful conversations, riots, petitions, and veganism movements, but more commonly, empty promises. With the ever evolving and ever-expanding focus on not only protecting the environment and the little triumph its future holds but also working towards somehow, simultaneously fixing the blunders of the past and ensuring a future free of room for those same errors, we find ourselves losing sight of the target. As the tub which contains the elaborate orchestration of our civilisation overflows, our Earth mimics the rising water levels, threatening to spill out in a manner with similar consequences - the fight for money, power, war and suffering, but also, notably worse, and in more elevated numbers.

People fail to realise that the paths stemming from each aspect of society lead to each other; in more than just the obvious connections, such as the economy and the government. Our world is interconnected, on the surface and deep within. And so, comes in environmental intersectionality. It identifies how injustices happening to marginalised communities and the Earth are interconnected.

When facing all the world's dilemmas in such copious amounts (despite our ceaseless efforts to develop and strengthen the delusionary state we have all pursued in search of believing in our society's ample freedom), we often choose to pick apart the pile and work at refining each scrap one at a time. Stuck in a haze of chasing perfection, even in the realm of what our environment has become, we ignore the sheer fact that despite the fabrics within the pile comprise of different colours and appearance, their stitching points towards a joint line of thread - one that could unite the parts in a colourful blanket to keep the Earth and its inhabitants warm, safe and happy.

Why do we take the inequalities attached to gender, race, financial status and locate connections, but always place anything to do with the climate crisis in a separate category? Does no one stop to think that perhaps, the solutions lie in our attitude towards ourselves, each other, our jobs; how emotionally, physically and financially capable we are of contributing to the 'saving' of the environment? In the words of my friend and environmental advocate, Ayush Hans, “It is nothing but mere hypocrisy of the elite where they organise rallies to save the environment on one hand, and then choose to ignore these same principles when it comes to marginalised communities.”

Everything we do is interconnected, and all our lives are intertwined. Social justice and environmentalism are not conflicts made to face separately; they intersect to form environmental justice - an aspect lesser-known as a critical ingredient to a sustainable future.

Those whose lives revolve around financial instability would seldom prioritise helping the environment, primarily because in most places in our consumer-driven world, that comes at a higher cost than mere survival. Yet, the same industries we work so tirelessly at are responsible for the pollution of the environment, but that has always been justified in the name of growing the economy or increasing employment in rural places. “However, that's just a charade to cover up the fact that they're trying to risk the lives of the irrelevant for economic and financial gains”, explained Hans.

Just as with disparities in the distribution of economic assets, our 2020 world lacks clarity in terms of race and gender, among an intimidating list of other inequalities - far from what is defined as 2020 vision, a meme we so gloriously and obliviously encouraged at the start of this year. We live in a society organised by hierarchies of class, race and gender. It is crucial to recognise that with unfairness present in each hierarchy, struggling communities rarely come across opportunities to actively dedicate their time, money and their possessions to improve the environmental state of our world, let alone have access to a safe environment. “Environmentalism has become like those charity parties that some rich wives host to show the world. What these people don't understand is that if some natural disaster occurs as a result of the environmental degrading practices they're promoting, it will affect them too”, shared Hans.

We do what we can, with what we have, but that unmistakably will not be enough. Just as when we approach Feminism or Black Lives Matter and find a societal spider web, we must adopt a way of thinking which allows for the acceptance of interconnection with the environment - true progressive and proactive thinking.