Environmental Radicalism: Talking About a Revolution

Introduction

In this article, we advocate for a particular form of environmental radicalism that realizes a revolution in ways of thinking, knowing, and acting in human relationships with ourselves, with others—in multiple senses of the that term—and with the earth. In this endeavor, we join many environmental researchers and activists in calling for a fundamental shift in the terms and enactment of the human relationship to the planet and its natural systems. However, we are convinced that to be successful in halting and remediating our present destructive environmental conditions, environmental radicalism must also incorporate a significant, nontrivial paradigmatic shift in human self-development, in human social structures, and in our epistemological foundations for these structures. In this regard, we understand environmental radicalism as both theory and action, equally philosophy and practice.

In doing this work, we have recognized a tendency from both supporters and detractors to remove the literal content from the words radical and revolutionary. Rather, these terms tend to be used as little more than either honorifics or pejoratives. For these reasons, we see our goals in this article as very similar to those aims realized by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in their often-cited paper "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor."¹ Much as Tuck and Yang achieved for the term "decolonize," we aim for our article to highlight the importance of nonmetaphorical understandings of the concept of environmental radicalism.

We recognize that our planetary systems face the growing disastrous consequences of unchecked human influence on climate change, an absence of public will, and the lack of corporate/political integrity to enact the policies that can slow down the climate crisis, thereby creating an existential environmental emergency that is bringing rampant social and ecological injustice along our path to natural systems destruction. We explain in this article that bold action is required to turn away from this path. We develop our interpretation of environmental radicalism by clarifying its relationship to revolution, illuminating some of the ways that environmental radicalism can be undermined by various forms of environmental moderationisms that are incommensurable with attaining the goals of environmental care and repair, and thereby explicating our thesis that environmental radicalism is required to meet contemporary environmental challenges.

We bring together in this article the writing and research we have previously engaged on the necessity for revolution in the advancement of society, and the harms we see in moderationist approaches to social change, especially considering the urgency of current environmental crises.² While engaging in this theoretical and definitional discussion of environmental radicalism we name and clarify undermining moderationist tendencies as "failures to look up," in recognition of the popular 2021 environmental catastrophe film directed by Adam McKay, Don't Look Up.

We are aware that our considerations of environmental radicalism cover a large number of concepts about progressive and reformist environmentalism. Therefore, in this article, we explain the distinct ways we view environmental radicalism and the critical societal transformations that we believe are necessary to successfully realize reductions in environmental and societal devastation by focusing on the theoretical foundations supporting our definition. This article provides ideas for a path toward the ultimate goal of social and environmental healing and liberation.

Environmental Radicalism, Resilience, and Revolution—Definitions

As we were researching and writing the final drafts of this article we were mindful of the necessity required for this project by the social and ecological disturbances that the COVID-19 years have brought to our societies. We are immersed, along with our readers, in grief and disorientation from the unmistakable and escalating consequences of climate change along with the steady drumbeat of various global wars, some with significant, existential nuclear threats. We write this article with the urgency befitting these contemporary times, from our subject positions as a Black female environmental humanist and a white male philosopher—both of us critical race theorists and racial justice activists. We have previously stated about ourselves as scholars that "We are revolutionaries, and we believe liberation requires a profound understanding of the oppressions of white supremacy in service to dismantling unjust systems...