Environmental Justice
Intersectional Environmentalism
Gen Z Steps Up
Environmental protection deeply practiced
An interwoven, thriving community
Eco-influencer Leah Thomas, commonly known as Green Girl Leah, posted on Instagram last May, asking environmentalists to step up and acknowledge the racial disparities in their own organizations. “I’m calling on the environmentalist community to stand in solidarity with the black lives matter movement and with Black, Indigenous + POC communities impacted daily by both social and environmental injustice,” she wrote. “Please swipe to learn more about intersectional environmentalism and take the pledge.”
Intersectional environmentalism serves as a kind of generational marker. Even the word intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, means different things to different age groups. To many older millennials and their forebears, it is an overly wordy and academic addition to perfectly good terminology already in existence; a movement can be intersectional, but intersectionality is not a movement in itself, they say. Not to mention that the phrase “in-ter-sect-ion-al en-vir-on-ment-al-is-m,” clocking in at 12 syllables, doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Environmental justice is a mere seven beats (and is associated with nearly four more decades of experience).
But young people say those arguments miss the point. Gen Zers don’t relate to intersectionality because it’s fun to say (it’s not). The appeal comes from its framework, which emphasizes the idea that everyone’s individual worldview is shaped by many overlapping identities and privileges. By putting words to those differences, one acknowledges the need for a deeper kind of commitment to fighting racial injustices, especially when it comes to the mainstream environmental movement. That, they say, makes it a separate entity from its predecessor.
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