We Can’t Address Climate Without Addressing Food Inequity

Communities of color are at the center of balance for bringing our species back into harmony with the planet

Evan Shamoon
Published in
7 min readJul 28, 2020

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Illustration of many species of flowers arranged on a white background in the shape of human lungs.
Credit: Aum via Rawpixel

Recent events have underscored the fact that we are at a necessary societal crossroads. This is a crucial moment for reshaping our systems to ensure social and environmental justice. Racist policing and incarceration practices, grotesque levels of economic inequality, a massive global health crisis, and rampant environmental degradation—these are all deeply intertwined structural problems, and our existing institutions are failing to solve them.

We cannot afford to “wait to see” if these shifts actually happen; the survival of nearly all species on this planet, including our own, depends on it. We are rapidly moving towards a 2.7°F rise in global temperatures, which a consensus of the scientific community believes would be catastrophic and irreversible. This is not hyperbole or hysteria, but simply a mundane fact regarding human civilization in 2020.

We must seize this opportunity to dismantle the animal agriculture industry’s stranglehold on both our planet’s resources and our collective health, particularly in our…

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Evan Shamoon
Tenderly

Animal person. Word+sound+image generator. Writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Laika, Wired & many others. giantmecha.com // vimeo.com/giantmecha