Climate Justice and the Question of Reparations
Thursday, May 5th, 2022 12:00pm – 1:30pm PDT
Panel featuring: Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò, Naomi Klein, Sabrina Fernandes, and Jackie Fielder, moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen. Organized by UC Berkeley’s Climate Equity and Environmental Justice Roundtable, co-sponsored by the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2.
As the world burns, it’s time to get serious about climate justice. But the climate emergency isn’t just an environmental crisis—it’s also a crisis of racial capitalism and colonialism. The people and countries that have benefited the least from deforestation and fossil fuel combustion are the most vulnerable to climate change and its impacts. How can we address these harms, and prevent even worse? In his brilliant new book, Reconsidering Reparations, Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò makes the moral and political case for reparations for the harms of slavery and colonialism. Reparations, Táíwò argues, are equally essential to delivering climate justice. In this panel, Táíwò will summarize his case, and three distinguished panelists will respond, connecting Táíwò’s arguments to climate struggles across the Americas and beyond. Naomi Klein, the author This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, will draw on her global political economy of the climate emergency. Sabrina Fernandes, a sociologist, author, climate organizer, and major public intellectual, will draw on her work linking climate and progressive politics in Brazil and beyond. And Jackie Fielder, a former California State Senate candidate, based in San Francisco, and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, will draw on her experience as a political organizer in California.