From reduction to regeneration: Environmental justice and ecological unity in the IRA era

Abstract

The US Inflation Reduction Act allocates billions of dollars for environmental justice (EJ) programs and initiatives. Yet the IRA's approach to EJ reproduces a reductive environmentalism rooted in the extractivist growth paradigm that the EJ movement opposes. This reductive environmentalism is centered narrowly on the numerical reduction of carbon, costs, pollutants, and economic inequality. I contend that these modes of reduction are integral to the maintenance of racial capitalism—the structural catalyst of environmental injustice. Specifically, racial capitalism at once reduces the interdependencies of life to an “environment” that certain humans can extract from, reduces other humans' communities to extractive zones, and impels all humans to reduce costs to sustain this extractivist system. These modes of reduction give form to the non-profit carbon mitigation projects championed by both the EJ movement and the IRA—initiatives that narrowly render justice in terms of abating disparate vulnerability. Looking critically at community-based solar energy campaigns, solar energy supply chains, and solar workers' experience with the environment, I call on the EJ movement to shift from the reductive framework at the heart of the IRA to a regenerative framework aligned with the movement's “ecological unity” principle. Specifically, I show how the ecological unity principle can uproot reductive environmentalism through a case study on a solar-powered community composting project led by young people of color. I argue that this project offers a guidepost for how the EJ movement can effectively leverage renewable energy investments in ways that are better aligned with the movement's long-standing principles.