Activist Explains Why Climate Change Movement’s ‘Whiteness’ Drove Her To Stop Saving The Earth

The climate change movement’s supposed whiteness drove one young activist to bail on her fellow environmentalists as they try convincing skeptics who believe fears about climate change are exaggerated.

Organizing on behalf of the environment became depressing and soul-sucking to Karin Hermes, who argues that her fellow activists only used her when they needed a non-white person to preach about climate change. The only solution is to “walk away,” she wrote Thursday in a Vice editorial.

“Whenever I would question the whiteness of these spaces and how strategies didn’t take race into account, I would be met with uncomfortable silences,” Hermes wrote. “The last time, at a nationwide movement-building workshop last April, I was asked, ‘Well then, why are you even here?’”

She added: “After four years of helping organize direct actions, speeches, workshops, and countless video calls, I started hiding and declining requests. I was burned out.”

Hermes cited examples of climate activists ignoring what she says are important issues.

Sometimes activists ask her why “whiteness, capitalism, and inequality” have to do with climate change, she noted.

Using so-called die-ins to highlight the urgency of climate change is offensive to black people, Hermes added.

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