Want to Fix the Climate Crisis? Start Listening to Black People

The Green New Deal ignited controversy around its release in February 2019 by positioning climate as part of the same systemic social crisis that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement and the ascent of Democratic Socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Less than two years later, this effort—known broadly as the movement for climate justice—is central to the campaign platform of the Democratic nominee for president. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the director of climate policy at the non-profit think tank the Roosevelt Institute, was one of the architects of the Green New Deal. She says that any effort to try to separate social and environmental policy is a willful fiction. “The thing about policy—and particularly climate policy—is that we often talk about systems as very impersonal. But the fact is that systems are legacies just built up on each other. Who made a decision before?” she says. “To actually shape a policy, it’s really important to know why the system looks the way that it does.”

Bloomberg Green talked with Gunn-Wright about the policy underpinnings of the climate justice movement, how that intersects with the Covid-19 pandemic, and why what seemed like a political risk is actually politically necessary. The interview has been condensed and edited.