Here’s the proof that environmental activism and feminism go hand in hand

On my 22nd birthday, my dad gave me a present: the book, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, details 100 solutions to curb climate change and ranks them according to the total amount of greenhouse gases they could potentially effectively avoid or remove from the atmosphere. I expected this book would offer new insights into straightforward environmental science topics, like reforestation, energy storage, and green transportation. Upon reading it, however, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover the book contains an ecofeminist manifesto.

The solutions tied for sixth and seventh on Drawdown’s list are educating girls and family planning. Yes, this book, the culmination of over 70 scientists’ research, provides peer-reviewed evidence that feminist policies are extremely effective solutions to the mega-issue of climate change.

Educating girls and family planning both have major potential for carbon reduction because both have a similar essential effect: a reduction in population growth. Humans are the primary cause of climate change, thanks to our carbon footprint, which is fundamentally a measurement of consumption. The average American’s annual carbon footprint is about 20 metric tons — a number that is the total of things like what we eat and wear, how we move, and beyond. Reducing our consumption helps reduce our carbon footprint, but limiting the number of people who consume resources in the first place is paramount. Thus, reducing population growth is essential for curbing global warming.

Together, the impact of both educating girls and family planning outranks the number one initiative, which is refrigeration, significantly. Considering these two approaches as one makes sense because the two solutions were originally measured together. According to Drawdown, the exact dynamic between them is impossible to determine, so researchers aggregated their potential effect, then divided the total equally between the two solutions (which is what caused them to be tied in the ranking). Basically, if we implemented the education of girls and family planning, we’d have not only the number one solution to climate change but also a major solution to women’s struggle for equality.

To be clear — and as the book's senior writer, Katharine Wilkinson writes — family planning is not “about those in rich countries, where emissions are highest, telling people elsewhere to stop having children.” That approach, Wilkinsonwarns, falls in line with countless historical examples of forced sterilizations, in the United States and elsewhere, which were backed by the racist ethos of eugenics and meant to reduce “undesirable populations.” Without radical social change centering marginalized people, therefore, efforts to address climate change risk becoming simply a “greened” imperialism.

White supremacy, like patriarchy, is inextricable from our current climate crisis. While climate change is disproportionately fueled by the most privileged people in the world — for example, the U.S.’ annual emissions per capita are about 20 times those of Senegal — the effects of it are disproportionately felt by the least privileged. In Miami, for example, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods are being displaced by wealthy residents fleeing once-desirable flooding coastlines. Trends like these are exactly why in 1991, the People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit established the Principles of Environmental Justice, which connect political, economic, and cultural oppression of people of color through colonization to environmental degradation and which call for ethical and equitable environmental action.

If addressing gender inequality is one of the most important ways we can drive down emissions, we have yet another pressing reason why we must consider feminism a political and social priority. Systems of oppression that serve as barriers to education and bodily autonomy, like patriarchy and white supremacy, are fueled by and fuel climate change. Dismantling those systems, therefore, is radical environmentalism. And after the latest devastating government report on climate change was released last year, it’s clear that a “radical” approach is necessary.

Of course, feminist scholars have been making the connection between climate change and feminism for decades. Drawdown merely offers some sharp new teeth to these arguments, encouraging us all to be better ecofeminists. As Wilkinson argues, “When family planning focuses on healthcare provision and meeting women’s expressed needs, empowerment, equality, and well-being are the result; the benefits to the planet are side effects.”