Climate Justice
Our mission is to promote awareness and action focused on climate change and its impacts on vulnerable human and natural communities. This means recognizing that the communities who contribute the least to climate change are the ones suffering from it the most. This includes our First/American Indian Nations communities and our farm worker communities and we’re working with these communities to engage in genuine and substantive change.
Much of our work to date has been around the impact of the fossil fuel industry, particularly as a result of the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point and ongoing efforts to change our local regulations and policies towards it and expansions and new proposals of pipelines running through Washington. Our current work is in supporting Lummi Nation and other Pacific Northwest Tribes/Nations in protecting the Salish Sea, continuing to address the impacts of climate change on our migrant farm workers here in Washington State, and working with other faith communities in educating ourselves on the many issues of climate change and the actions that we, individually and collectively can take to prevent any further damage to the Earth and those vulnerable communities and restore some of the damage that’s already been done.
These efforts require an understanding of the oppression and the degradation of human groups through slavery, colonization, genocide, institutionalized racism, immigration policies, and the devaluation of our natural communities like our orca, salmon, and herring populations all of which encompass those attitudes and behaviors that are leading to the destruction of the Earth. It also means that, although our consumption of fossil fuels and their byproducts is the predominant source of climate change, it is not the only source. We are open to all ideas and actions that will work to counter human causes of climate change.
We work with a myriad of environmental organizations like RE Sources, Sierra Club, 350.org, Lummi Nation, Transition Whatcom, Earth Ministry, Multifaith Network for Climate Justice, Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth, Faith Action Network and many more.
Our work overlaps heavily with the Native American Connections, Immigration Rights and BUF/C2C Partnership teams. Interested in joining us? Contact Deb Cruz.
Check out the Climate Blog for upcoming events and projects.
Environmental Justice Action Team Charter