A letter to the editor by Patti Lynn, Lidy Nacpil and May Boeve for The New York Times Magazine.
RE: LOSING EARTH
Nathaniel Rich wrote about the decade we almost stopped climate change.
Although we admire James Hansen and Rafe Pomerance’s important work, focusing on only a few white, male climate advocates based in the United States during a particular time decades ago is simplistic. It’s disrespectful to the thousands of others who have made this fight their life’s work and implies that these men were our best, and last, shot at saving humanity.
We must acknowledge and join forces with indigenous leaders, communities of color, women and young people in the United States and throughout the world who have led the climate-justice movement for decades. To ignore this diverse coalition’s extraordinary contributions is to also ignore the enormous victories they have achieved time and again against big polluters. These successes draw hope from our past and propel us in our present to help write a more just, viable future.
Patti Lynn, executive director of Corporate Accountability; Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development in the Philippines; and May Boeve, executive director of 350.org.
This letter originally appeared in the August 19 issue of The New York Times Magazine.
