Story highlights Martin Luther King III: Climate change and pollution that fuels it are civil rights issue, with poor and communities of color bearing brunt

He says Obama administration's setting new limits on carbon pollution from power plants is attempt to redress this inequality

Martin Luther King III is a global human rights activist. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) It was perhaps not fully known that day in 1963, on the crowded steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that my father's audacious dream would reshape the contours of justice and equality in America.

I'm proud of my father, but my pride cannot be fully measured by that snapshot in history. Because contrary to first glance, my father's legacy comes not from his presiding over the final act in the drama of fighting for equal rights -- his legacy is about setting the stage.

Because he knew then the enduring challenge we would still face today: So long as America is an economically and socially divided nation, the project of equality is a project unfinished.

My father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., devoted his life to achieving civil equality in our democracy, but that was only the beginning. The poor and disenfranchised -- too often those in communities of color -- still disproportionately bear society's harms through no fault of their own. That truth has compelled the fight for social justice across the spectrum: labor rights, women's rights -- and yes -- environmental rights.

Because no matter who we are or where we come from, we're all entitled to the basic human rights of clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and healthy land to call home.