Abstract
The year 2050 has become a benchmark for predictions and warnings about the global environment and economy. By then people of color will be the collective majority in the United States and many other industrialized nations. After tracing a history of injustices suffered by African Americans, Carl Anthony and interns show how commitment to the philosophical concept of the common good offers opportunities to repair past wrongs and transition to a new economy and society grounded in racial equity, clean energy, and sustainable technologies, while providing millions of healthy, living-wage jobs. Priorities for investing in the common good include environmental education for students of color of all ages, building-design and energy-use practices that emphasize efficiency, and construction of racially and socio-economically integrated affordable housing.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/why-are-we-losing-nature. Accessed January 30, 2021.
- 3.
The report projects that by 2050 oceans will contain at least 937 million tons of plastic and 895 million tons of fish. https://www.businessinsider.com/plastic-in-ocean-outweighs-fish-evidence-report-2017-1. Accessed January 30, 2021.
- 4.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “The Paris Agreement,” https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement. Accessed March 5, 2021.
- 5.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Global Warming of 1.5 °C – Special Report.” https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/. Accessed February 17, 2021.
- 6.
World Population Review, “Wealth Inequality by Country 2021.” https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country. Accessed February 10, 2021.
- 7.
Anthony Browne, “The Last Days of a White World,” The Guardian, September 3, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/sep/03/race.world. Accessed January 30, 2021.
- 8.
Gro Harlem Brundtland et al., “Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future” (Oslo, Norway: United Nations General Assembly document A/42/427, 1987).
- 9.
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 95–96.
- 10.
Jim Crow was a character in blackface minstrel shows whose dim-witted buffoonery suggested that foolishness is inherent in African Americans.
- 11.
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 178–79.
- 12.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 23, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/. Accessed January 31, 2021.
- 13.
Coates, “Reparations.”
- 14.
As an adult I learned that many U.S. cities had a Black Bottom, a tract of low-lying land occupied primarily by black people.
- 15.
For a detailed account of my life journey, see Carl C. Anthony, The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race (New York: New Village Press, 2017).
- 16.
The 11-member commission got its name from its chair, Otto Kerner Jr., governor of Illinois.
- 17.
Kerner Commission, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 1968), 1.
- 18.
Kerner 19–20.
- 19.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Ethical Demands for Integration,“ in J.M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1986), 118, from a speech given in 1962.
- 20.
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017).
- 21.
Rothstein, 70–71.
- 22.
Rothstein, 147–48.
- 23.
Rothstein, 210–11.
- 24.
Rothstein, 191–92.
- 25.
Mark D. Hersey, My Work Is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2011).
- 26.
On July 22, 2020, the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) NewsHour in the U.S. reported on this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/sierra-club-calls-out-founder-john-muir-for-racist-views. Accessed February 11, 2021.
- 27.
About the Sierra Club: https://www.sierraclub.org/about-sierra-club. Accessed February 11, 2021.
- 28.
Jedediah Purdy, “Environmentalism’s Racist History, “The New Yorker, August 13, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/environmentalisms-racist-history. Accessed February 11, 2021.
- 29.
https://urbanhabitat.org/. Accessed February 27, 2021.
- 30.
Paloma Pavel, ed. Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the next American Metropolis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009). https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/breakthrough-communities. Accessed March 5, 2021.
- 31.
https://breakthroughcommunities.info/ and https://earthhousecenter.org/news-and-blog/breakthrough-communities/. Accessed February 27, 2021.
- 32.
Paloma Pavel and Carl Anthony, eds., Climate Justice: Frontline Stories from Groundbreaking Coalitions in California (San Anselmo, CA: Human Development Books and CreateSpace, 2017).
- 33.
Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times Climate Fwd: newsletter, June 10, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/climate/climate-scientists-strike-black-lives-matter.html.
- 34.
A 2019 report Minority Serving Institutions: America’s Underutilized Resource for Strengthening the STEM Workforce (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2019) was developed collaboratively by an impressive group of organizations and individual editors. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25257/minority-serving-institutions-americas-underutilized-resource-for-strengthening-the-stem.
- 35.
These inequities were reported in a cover story in the November 2016 issue of the American Psychological Association’s monthly magazine: Kirsten Weir, “Inequality at school: What’s behind the racial disparity in our education system?” APA Monitor, 47, No. 10, 42. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/11/cover-inequality-school. Accessed February 18, 2021.
- 36.
International Labour Organization, World Employment and Social Outlook 2018 – Greening with Jobs (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2018), 43. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/%2D%2D-dgreports/%2D%2D-dcomm/%2D%2D-publ/documents/publication/wcms_628654.pdf Accessed February 20, 2021.
- 37.
ILO, 43.
- 38.
ILO, 44.
- 39.
ILO, 43.
- 40.
National Association of State Energy Officials and Energy Futures Initiative. 2020 U.S. Energy & Employment Report. 2019. 59, 62, 144. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98cf80ec4eb7c5cd928c61/t/5e78b3c756e8367abbd47ab0/1584968660321/USEER+2020+0323.pdf. Accessed February 4, 2021.
- 41.
- 42.
- 43.
Coalition for Urban Transitions, The New Urban Opportunity, 2. https://urbantransitions.global/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Climate-Emergency-Urban-Opportunity-executive-summary-ENG.pdf. Accessed February 11, 2021.
- 44.
Urban Transitions, 3.
- 45.
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/design/energy-efficient-home-design. Accessed February 11, 2021.
- 46.
About Freedom by Design (FBD). https://www.aiascmu.org/fbdweatherizationkit. Accessed February 20, 2021.
- 47.
About the Home Energy Score. https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/home-energy-score/home-energy-score-about-score. Accessed February 20, 2021.
- 48.
FBD, 1.
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Anthony, C. (2023). Justice in the Ecological Emergency: The Search for the Common Good. In: Weir, L. (eds) Philosophy as Practice in the Ecological Emergency. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94391-2_5
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