I think the first time I ever heard the word ‘greenwashing’ was in the late ’80s or maybe early ’90s after I saw a flier from McDonald’s about how they didn’t use beef from the Amazon. I brought the flier home to show my mother, an environmentalist, because I was so proud to show her that even big giant companies were doing good things and that her work was really making a difference.

She looked at it for about three seconds and told me “that’s greenwashing.” She explained the word to me and although I was sad to see my evidence of the mainstream adoption of environmentalism debunked, I realized for the first time that in a lot of ways claiming to “go green” when you’re not can be worse than just doing bad stuff in the first place.

Well, I’ve obviously come a long way since then and you may have already seen one of our “Greenwash of the Week” posts.

You’d think I would be pretty aware of the scope and quantity of greenwashing out there. I thought I was too.

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It’s not a secret. Environmentalism has a bad name with a lot of people – and for lots of good reasons (check the article “Soul of Environmentalism” if you are not on the same page with me on this). The mainstream, majority white environmental movement has a checkered history of ignoring (or working against) the interests of people of color and working class folks. So time and time again when I give presentations to young people in public schools about the work we do, they want to make sure I’m not a “regular environmentalist”- because, as they tell me, environmentalists are racist.

That’s right all you environmentalists out there- youth from urban settings, who have a lot more on their plate than whether or not to recycle, consider environmentalists irrelevant and sometimes racist, or at least clueless about social justice.

RAN has been working to challenge white superiority in the mainstream environmental movement and work in the intersections between environmentalism, environmental justice, climate justice, social justice and human rights… But the youth I met this weekend blow us out of the water with their intersections.

I attended Youth Quest an amazing environmental conference put on by the high school students of TEAM – the youth leadership program of the Headlands Institute. They brought together hundreds of teens from all over the Bay Area. All of the workshops were led by youth. I came as a chaperone to 3 amazing young RAN/ RYSE activists - whose picture I would put up here, but it’s all grainy.

The majority of teens there were involved in organizing for the environment and other issues like immigrant rights, education budget cuts or sexual exploitation of minors.

The theme they chose was “if the Earth wasn’t green, what color would it be?”
They had four different answers in the program. My favorite read:

“If the Earth wasn’t green, what color would it be? might reference the emerging intersections of the environmental, social justice and indigenous rights movements. Perhaps we should be thinking about people of all colors, ages, and backgrounds, and how a wide diversity of people is taking action to bring about social change and protect the environment”

One of the leading groups in attendance was IYEL (Inspiring Young Emerging Leaders). They created a documentary about how the national parks exclude people of color (you can see it on their home page) and developed t-shirts that say “I’m an environmentalist” on the front and “and I heart hip-hop” or “and I don’t hug trees” etc. on the back- in a direct and marvelous attempt to redefine environmentalism for their generation.

So basically, this blog post is a challenge to the adult environmentalists to get our act together and merge our social justice and environmental selves already.

Brrrrrrrrrrringggg! Oh, the dreaded and loved sound of the school bell, reminding us of all the upcoming exams, homework, prep, grades… and taking action to stop climate change. But how you ask? Check out RYSEup.org to get the RYSE (RAN Youth Sustaining the Earth) toolkit, plus all kinds of new RAN global warming lesson plans and activities that will be ready in the next few weeks to start off this school year right. RAN’s new kids action toolkit for elementary school students will be available soon too at RainforestHeroes.com.

We don’t have another school year to wait to engage, educate and inspire our schools to join the climate movement and become not only stellar reducers of greenhouse gas emissions, but places of real dialogue and action.

I just got back from the Brazilian Amazon where I attended a meeting with Indigenous leaders talking about sustainability, climate change and how to stop the threat of oil companies that want to drill in their lands. It was inspiring, and depressing. Climate change is causing the Amazon forest to dry up. It’s the most humid place on Earth- at least it was last time I was there, and now the air is bone dry. The rivers are lower than they have ever been, and the elders told me that the trees are not flowering right. Deborah Yawanawa, a student who is starting a RYSE Chapter at her high school told me,

“It’s hotter here, it’s suffocating hot. It started in the middle of last year. Before the Amazon used to have weather that changed, it was really enjoyable, sometimes cold, sometimes hot, more humid, but not now, it’s all changing now.”

So we are bringing it. And we want you to bring it to your classroom or a classroom near you. Your homework from RAN for this new school year is simple.

Educators: Sign up for the teachers’ enewsletter at www.rainforestheroes.com to receive notification of all the new lesson plans and resources or check back at http://ran.org/new/ryse/educators/ in a few weeks for new lessons.

Middle/ High School Students: Join Deborah, start a RYSE chapter in your school too (www.ryseup.org) and get a RYSE toolkit.

Elementary School Students: check www.rainforestheroes.com in a few weeks to get the new kids action toolkit.