What Does Sustainability Have to Do with Social Justice?

Peter Wood

In honor of Earth Day, Peter Wood examines the sustainability movement's Bookchin-born theory that "everything is connected to everything else." An excerpt:

What about that idea that that human social relations and the relation of humanity to the natural world belong on the same plane of analysis?  Is it true?  The answer is rather important, since pretty much the entire sustainability movement assumes that it is true.  The reason that the sustainability movement can range freely from concern over pollution and global warming to issues of economic organization and matters such as racism and women’s rights is that it treats all of these as not merely connected by UNESCO-style chains of cause-and-effect but also by a pseudo principle that, deep down, these are all instances of a single phenomenon:  oppression.  To cure the oppression of Mother Earth, we must simultaneously rid the world of man’s inhumanity to man.
  • Share

Most Commented

July 30, 2024

1.

Don’t Cry for Them, Academia

The dark secret of anti-Semitism is that ignorance alone cannot explain it away or absolve those who adhere to it. If anything, the most vivid episodes of history’s anti-Semitism have......

June 6, 2024

2.

Backlash: Sometimes It Hurts So Good

We have undermined the leftist status quo in higher education for decades with the persistence of Morlocks. You really should be more alarmed about us than you are. Not that I’m going......

August 6, 2024

3.

An Elephant Walks into Class

An assessment of the Republican higher education platform....

Most Read

May 15, 2015

1.

Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist?

A look at the double standard that has arisen regarding racism, illustrated recently by the reaction to a black professor's biased comments on Twitter....

September 6, 2024

2.

Professor Alleges "Widespread" Discriminatory Hiring Coverup at University of Washington

Audio acquired by the National Association of Scholars describes allegations of coverup race-based hiring coverup at the University of Washington...

October 12, 2010

3.

Ask a Scholar: What is the True Definition of Latino?

What does it mean to be Latino? Are only Latin American people Latino, or does the term apply to anyone whose language derived from Latin?...