People talk about climate justice as the intersection between race and climate because people of color are more strongly affected by the impacts of c… - Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

being the daughter of a Jamaican and thinking about people all around the world in coastal communities, who depend on the ocean for their food security, for their livelihoods, for their cultures, that if we lose the health of ocean ecosystems, we lose something much, much greater than the way it’s often framed in conservation, as an issue of biodiversity, more technically. And it’s really just — for me, it’s like, as much as I love fish and octopuses and kelp and all these things, it’s really about people, why I do this work.

People of color disproportionately bear climate impacts, from storms to heat waves to pollution. Fossil-fueled power plants and refineries are disproportionately located in black neighborhoods, leading to poor air quality and putting people at higher risk for coronavirus. Such issues are finally being covered in the news media more fully.

there was this moment on a glass-bottom boat (when I was five). And to see a coral reef for the first time, and to see all of these magnificently colored fish swimming around, and to see this literal window into this other world — I was just in awe. And it’s this, like, whole city that’s happening down there, right? It’s not just these little sections where all the fish are the same. It’s this super vibrant and dynamic alternate universe — this ecosystem.