The majority of the burden from global warming — both environmental and economic — falls to the lower classes and minorities, author and climate justice activist Wen Stephenson argued in a lecture on Thursday. Stephenson also prescribed a more radical and unified movement to combat climate change.

Drawing on examples including the town of Port Arthur, Texas, Stephenson discussed in his lecture how the air pollution from the oil refineries there had caused respiratory illnesses and other ecological burdens for the people living there, especially those living in the housing projects who could not afford to move. He noted that — as is the case for those in Port Arthur and in poorer areas around the world — if an individual is living in that type of situation, “you’re probably not thinking about some future [environmental] catastrophe; you’re living in one.”

“We owe the developing world … a massive ecological debt,” he added.

Prof. Sabine von Mehring (GRALL) began by introducing Stephenson, briefly discussing his career as a journalist for publications including the Boston Globe and the Nation and as a climate justice activist in their shared hometown of Wayland, Mass.

Stephenson then took the podium, introducing his book, “What We’re Fighting for Now is Each Other,” which came out Oct. 6. Stephenson also emphasized that the book is “just words on paper, and unless they’re translated into actions, they’re really not worth much.”

According to Stephenson, his involvement in the climate justice movement began in 2006 to 2007, when he started taking walks around his neighborhood and to nearby Walden Pond. Five years ago, he wrote an essay, “Walking Home from Walden,” which he says started his exploration of “what climate justice means in the current climate crisis.”

Climate justice, Stephenson argued in his lecture, is the unification of humans in an effort to protect and save other humans in the wake of growing climate change. He then read the audience a portion of Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” noting that Thoreau was not an environmentalist but more of a naturalist who was deeply in love with nature. For Thoreau to love nature, Stephenson elaborated, was for him to “act together” with other humans.

Stephenson likened this unity and radicalism to the climate justice movement, also drawing upon the statistic that 80 percent of the Arctic ice has melted. “The entire stability of the global climate system depends on the stability of the Arctic,” he added.

On the subject of his personal journey while researching and writing the book, Stephenson stated, “the personal narrative arc in this book is really the radicalization of a privileged, white, middle-aged, center-left, mainstream liberal journalist. But I wasn’t radicalized by a long-held ideological commitment. … I was radicalized by the justice, by the science, by the implications of the science.”

He also spoke about how the majority of the fallout from pollution and climate change falls to minorities. “Even in the very near term, what is ‘catastrophic’ depends on where you live and who you are and more often than not, the color of your skin.”

For big oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Texaco, he added, “to deny the science, deceive the public and obstruct any serious response to this catastrophe is to willfully allow the eradication of entire countries and cultures. It is to rob people — starting with the poorest and most vulnerable — of their land and their homes and livelihoods and lives … for profit, for political power. There’s a word for this: they’re crimes. They’re crimes against the earth, and they’re crimes against humanity.”

Stephenson suggested that society respond to this injustice with a “kind of radically transformative social and political movement,” adding that people must first acknowledge that the mainstream environmental movement has failed. “That fight was lost really before it began, because it was started so late,” he added. “There’s nothing left to lose but our humanity.”

Next, Stephenson transitioned to discussing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at Riverside Heights, New York on the subject of the Vietnam War as a “national sin.” Stephenson argued that society should take note of King’s radicalism and apply it to the climate justice movement. The discussion then moved into a question-and-answer session.

Stephenson heard from several other audience members, additionally engaging in a debate with Prof. Lawrence Wangh (BIOL) about whether protecting human life or other organisms’ lives should be the priority of a climate justice movement.

Wangh argued that Stephenson did not consider the importance of keystone and other integral species enough in his call to action, while Stephenson responded that Wangh’s approach “devalued” human lives.

The event was co-sponsored by the Mandel Humanities Center Working Group on Climate Change, Brandeis Climate Justice, Faculty Against the Climate Threat, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and the Center for German and European Studies.