“Let justice roll down like waters”: Reconnecting energy justice to its roots in the civil rights movement

Abstract

The meaning and connotations of the word “justice” as used in environmental justice and much climate justice literature were formed in the US civil rights movement. Its basic narrative is of a brutally oppressed people who took the initiative, defined their own needs, demanded freedom, co-opted the help of higher powers, and plagued their oppressors bravely and increasingly disruptively until the oppressors gave in. These connotations and meaning tend to cling to the word “justice” when used in social-political reform movements of many kinds. Interestingly, today's energy justice literature shows a much wider spectrum of meaning of “justice”. Much of this literature pursues an intellectual quest for the meaning of justice as an abstract imperative, which scholars investigate philosophically and apply to energy-related projects and transitions, to inform policymakers and others of the rights and wrongs of these, albeit often in relation to vulnerable or oppressed peoples. In this essay I trace the roots of the word “justice” in the civil rights movement and its usage in the environmental and climate justice movements, and explore whether energy justice studies could benefit from a greater awareness of this. I also relate this justice narrative to the more basic question, raised by previous authors, of what it means to have moral values and make moral claims.