In the distant past, there were enormous injustices between people of different ethnicities, genders, religions, and sexual preferences. With time, more and more of these injustices were addressed and the world has become increasingly fair.

A lot of worthwhile progress happened in the US in the 1960's, but one unfortunate idea emerged: the social justice movement convinced the rest of society that "bigots" should not have free speech, in fact, "bigots" should be punished by any means available until they shut up.

Since the development of social media, this has gotten even worse, as social justice advocates learned to weaponize social media so if anyone said anything they didn't like, a social media mob of thousands of people could be drummed up to send angry emails to the HR or DEI departments of the offender's employer to cause them to lose their livelihood.

In the meantime, the definition of "bigot" has been expanded beyond all recognition. Originally, you had to actively dislike somebody to be considered a "bigot", now the term applies to anyone who disagrees with the world view of social justice advocates in any way, including a parent who doesn't want their 15-year-old daughter's breasts to be surgically removed.

Among social justice advocates, there are so many rules and regulations about what may be said to whom, by whom, and about whom that the whole conversation is completely and utterly divorced from reality and is basically not worth having.

When you're trying to have a discussion, when someone drags social justice into it, the IQ of the debate drops by at least 90 points, as the social justice advocates start accusing anybody who disagrees with them about anything of being "bigots".

The political right has completely rejected the social justice world view, mobilizing behind Donald Trump, who says flagrantly bigoted things all the time to signal that he believes that social justice ideology is a big load of cow dung, and half the voters in the country love it.

The environmental movement, however, is 98% liberal, and liberals almost always are willing to abide by the speech rules desired by the social justice movement. One of the most central rules is that the social justice movement itself is never, ever, to be criticized for any reason. When something may not be criticized, it comes to be regarded as sacred and holy, and the consensus of liberals is that the social justice movement is the noblest and most urgent cause in the history of the human race.

Among liberals, if one is accused of "bigotry" against group X, there is no defense.

• Saying "some of my best friends" are in group X is completely ineffective.  It's a cliche and will be dismissed out of hand.
• If you say "my spouse and kids are in group X", you will just be told that you subconsciously hate your family.
• If you say that "I am from group X" you will be told that you are a self-hating traitor.

So rather than the rule being "don't be a bigot", the rule becomes "don't even be accused of being a bigot, no matter how frivolously".

For a liberal, all of whose friends are liberals, being smeared as a "bigot", however frivolously, can mean losing all friends, career loss -- total ruin.

What this means is that in any conversation among liberals, any social justice warrior present will get anything they want, because the moment they don't, they will start accusing all resistance of being "bigots", for which there is no defense. And what social justice warriors want, most of the time, is to talk about social justice all day long and forget about everything else.

Social justice warriors want to get involved in the environmental movement, and this movement is called Environmental Justice. They use two excuses to establish the relevance of social justice to the cause:

1. Polluting plants tend to land in minority neighborhoods, which they cite as proof of "systemic bigotry". Actually, the way our society solves NIMBY problems is that you locate the objectionable thing, such as a polluting plant, either where there are few people, or the people lack clout, and then out-vote them. This means you put them in neighborhoods with low rates of voting participation and low rates of political campaign contributions -- and most likely, if you control for those two factors, any ethnic or racial discrepancy disappears.
2. They claim that when we lobby politicians, the politicians are such bigots that if the people in an environmental organization are mostly white, the politicians are less likely to listen to them. Maybe some politicians are that stupid, but I think it's natural that people who've been told that they're "priviledged" all their lives will be grateful and want to save the world, while people who've been told that they're "oppressed" all their lives will feel angry and want to wage social justice warfare, seeking revenge.

These two reasons are usually more than enough to convince the liberals in the environmental movement that talking about social justice is a great idea. And once liberals start talking about social justice, they never finish. They forget about saving the planet altogether.

Sometimes the liberals say things like "minorities are the ones most severely impacted by climate change, therefore they should lead the movement.". This is nuts. That's like saying that the American Cancer Society should let dying, terminally ill cancer patients decide which research to invest in, rather than qualified doctors who actually know something about biology.

This is not to say that there have been no historical injustices committed against any demographics. There have been, and things should be done about them. What I am saying is that:

1. They shouldn't be discussed in the climate movement, because they will completely take over the conversation and completely obstruct climate progress.
2. Progress toward addressing injustices done to specific demographics is impossible unless the censorship and cancellations are done away with and it becomes possible to have a conversation that is remotely in touch with reality

There was an Environmental Justice advocate in the Sierra Club, Aaron Mair, and they even made him president of the organization. Watch the following exchange where Ted Cruz goads him into having a scientific debate about climate change:

If you know anything about climate science, most of the questions Cruz is asking are really easy questions. Cruz had probably had a one or two hour briefing on climate skepticism by the fossil fuels lobby. Mair had been president of the Sierra Club for some time and a member of the Sierra Club for many years, and it is clear that he had never attended a half-hour briefing or lecture on climate science in his life. And if you watch the whole video, what you find is that Mair hadn't gone to DC to discuss climate change in general, but rather, his interest was in discussing the impact of climate change on -- you guessed it: minorities.

In 2016, a revenue-neutral carbon tax was on the ballot in Washington State. A revenue-neutral carbon tax would be a great leap forward toward solving climate change, and having one in one state could possibly serve as a model for the whole country.

Under Mair's leadership, the Sierra Club took a position of "do not support" on that carbon tax, the #1 reason given being that the measure did not do enough for "communities of color".

In 2020, just before the pandemic, I went to a weekend climate conference. There were NO sessions, not even optional ones, on:

But three mandatory hours on social justice!!!!!

What was really outrageous was that pretty much all the liberals who attended (which includes nearly everyone who was at the conference) felt that all the social justice talk was just great and we should do more of it.

They failed to notice that we held a whole weekend global wamring where we basically completely forgot about the well-being of the planet.

The problem is that liberals, including liberal environmentalists, think that social justice is more important than the environment, so when someone finds an excuse to change the topic of conversation from saving the planet to social justice, they think it's just great and forget to ever come back.

In February, 2024, there was a small "Climate Museum" in Manhattan in New York City. I went. There was a docent-led tour. The first display was about "redlining". If you're young it has to be explained to you that this was a practice in racial housing discrimination that ended over half a century ago.

Huh??? -- is this really the first thing to bring up about climate change??????

No talk about science or engineering whatsoever. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was never mentioned. A sign said "End Fossil Fuels" with absolutely no talk of what they would be replaced by.

There were references to "slavery" and "colonialism", and a derogatory reference to "capitalism".

There wasn't a single thing in the museum that would convince anyone who had any doubts on the subject. To the contrary, a conservative who denies global warming would have had their prejudices on the subject completely confirmed.

I wanted to grab the docent and shake her and yell at her: "Please get the heck out of the way! You social justice warriors have nothing constructive to offer this conversation!".