MLK Would Have Been an Environmental Leader, Too

Insights + Opinion


“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words and actions continue to resonate on the 90th anniversary of his birth.


Environmentalism isn’t just about saving the whales and saying no to plastics—it’s also about ensuring clean water, air and land for all.

Atmospheric sciences professor Marshall Shepherd argues in a


The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Assessment released a

“Those in poverty had 1.35 times higher burden than did the overall population,” the report said, “and non-Whites had 1.28 times higher burden. Blacks, specifically, had 1.54 times higher burden than did the overall population.”

Additionally, the most recent
U.S. National Climate Assessment found that these communities will suffer the most from Earth’s rapidly rising temperatures.


Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and lead-struck Flint, Michigan, for instance, brought the issue of “environmental racism” to the forefront. The term is used to describe how poverty and segregation has forced many black citizens and other racial minorities to live in heavily industrialized and polluted areas with dilapidated or aging civil infrastructure—factors that could lead to poor health outcomes, compromised education, loss of livelihoods and even loss of life, according to the NAACP.

That’s why our some of our elected leaders are pushing the “Green New Deal” to update the nation’s infrastructure and to transition the country’s grid away from polluting fossil fuels to renewable energy.

“By moving to 100 percent clean energy and putting justice first, we can limit global warming while creating green-collar jobs in every community, and building a healthier, more sustainable, more equitable society,” Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va) and Reverend Leo Woodbury, a pastor of Kingdom Living Temple, wrote in a joint
op-ed for The Hill.


Citing the immemorial words of Dr. King, they concluded: “All life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of identity. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

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