This panel will explore the connections between economic inequality, global environmental degradation (including but not limited to climate change), and racial discrimination (in all its varied forms). In doing so, the group will showcase expertise across different geographies and landscapes, with some panelists focusing on Indigenous Nations and rural spaces in the U.S. and others engaged with urban environmental inequality at the international scale. Each panelist will comment on the potential promise and limitations of the Biden Administration’s agenda across these areas. Together, the group will critique received environmental, natural resources, and energy law frameworks, and articulate a forward-looking vision for the emerging field of ‘intersectional environmentalism’, informed by political economy critiques and centered on questions of inequality, racial discrimination, and redistribution.
Presentations:
Maxine Burkett (University of Hawaii Law School), “Root & Branch: Climate Migration, Racial Hierarchy, and the History and Future of Climate Justice“
Ann Eisenberg (University of South Carolina Law School), “Rural Resentment and the Regulatory State”
Sarah Krakoff (University of Colorado Law School), “The Political Economy and Geography of the Green New Deal”
Sharmila Murthy (Suffolk Law School), “Multi-scalar Environmental Justice”
Michalyn Steele (Brigham Young University School of Law), “Indigenous Cultural and Environmental Sovereignty”