In his 1967 call for a Poor People’s Campaign, Rev. Dr. King argued that the “evil triplets” of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation could only be dealt with together — that you couldn’t get rid of one without getting rid of the others. Rev. Dr. King’s strategy for confronting these great evils was the united action of the poor, which could unsettle the nation as a whole and lead it forward through a “revolution of values and other things.” Today, faced with a global climate crisis, with the poisonous and polluting effects of the coal, oil, and gas industries, and with all other kinds of environmental injustices, we would add a fourth evil, a fourth enemy of the poor, to Rev. Dr. King’s list: ecological devastation.
On Friday, March 18th at 12:30pm EST, the Kairos Center hosted a free online seminar on “Climate Change, Ecological Devastation, and the Movement for Environmental Justice”. The seminar featured Karen Savage of the Bridge the Gulf Project; Karenna Gore, director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary; and Catherine Flowers of the Equal Justice Initiative, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, and the Center for Earth Ethics. These three leaders bring a wealth of direct experience and deep insight into the ecological crises facing our people, our land, and our planet. Together, they talked us through some of the most pressing ecological threats we’re facing, how communities directly affected are responding, and where we can go from here.
Below, you can listen to an audio recording of the seminar.
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