The climate justice movement focuses on those who suffer most from the climate crisis. Poor countries suffer more than rich countries, and even within rich countries, the poor suffer more than the rich. Nonhuman animals suffer the most, but the climate justice movement often ignores the plight of wildlife. Habitat loss, climate change, animal agriculture, and hunting threaten all wildlife, not just officially endangered species.
It is long past time to seriously address both the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis. Oil and gas corporations, along with the rest of the military-industrial complex, bear primary responsibility for the climate crisis. But corporations, and the politicians who serve them, are too irresponsible to solve the crisis.
Climate Justice for Animals, based in Santa Fe County, New Mexico USA, believe it is time to recognize our enemies and stand up to them. Polling data shows that hunters are at most 11% of the U.S. population (the U.S. Census Bureau puts the number at 4%), yet hunters and trappers, with the support of livestock interests, control state wildlife policy throughout the USA.
It is time for the vast majority of the population, who do not hunt or trap, to take control of wildlife policy. We have adopted as our motto the phrase from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy which has become a rallying cry in the United Kingdom for opposition to the undemocratic policies of their government. We apply the phrase literally to mountain lions (Puma concolor); the image is from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.”
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