Posted on 08/08/2023 7:58:00 AM PDT by Borges
“Climate change is racist”. So reads the title of a recent book by British journalist Jeremy Williams. While this title might seem provocative, it’s long been recognised that people of colour suffer disproportionate harms under climate change – and this is likely to worsen in the coming decades.
However, most rich white countries, including Australia, are doing precious little to properly address this inequity. For the most part, they refuse to accept the climate debt they owe to poorer countries and communities.
In so doing, they sentence millions of people to premature death, disability or unnecessary hardship. This includes in Australia, where climate change compounds historical wrongs against First Nations communities in many ways.
This injustice – a type of “atmospheric colonisation” – is a form of deeply entrenched colonial racism that arguably represents the most pressing global equity issue of our time. Several upcoming global talks, including the Pacific Islands Forum this week, offer a chance to urgently elevate climate justice on the global agenda.
The effects of climate change are not borne equally between everyone on the planet, and this problem will only worsen. Black people, people of colour and Indigenous people often face the most dire consequences in a warming world.
For example, research suggests global warming of 2℃ would leave more than half of Africa’s population at risk of undernourishment, due to reduced agricultural production. This is despite Africa having contributed relatively little to greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate injustice also manifests closer to home. The Lowitja Institute, Australia’s national body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research, says climate change:
disrupts cultural and spiritual connections to Country that are central to health and wellbeing. Health services are struggling to operate in extreme weather with increasing demands and a reduced workforce.
All these forces combine to exacerbate already unacceptable levels of ill-health within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations.
Last month, the continued failure on the part of rich white countries to take responsibility for this injustice was on full display at the United Nations climate meetings in Bonn, Germany.
There, governments failed to make any significant progress towards compensation for “loss and damage”. According to Oxfam, loss and damage collectively refers to:
the consequences and harm caused by climate change where adaptation efforts are either overwhelmed or absent.
At Bonn, the G77 (a coalition of 134 developing countries) and China wanted financing for a so-called “loss and damage facility” put on the official agenda at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt in November this year. This facility would comprise a formal body to deliver funding to developing nations to cope with the consequences of climate change.
But the United States and the European Union opposed the move, fearing they would become liable for billions of dollars in damages.
Read more: How racism and classism affect natural ecosystems
Concerns around “loss and damage” have been long plagued global climate negotiations.
In 2013, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was established at COP19. Climate activists hoped it would usher in a new era of climate justice. But almost a decade on, there’s still no clear path to the financing required.
And rich white countries continue to distance themselves from all language of compensation or reparation for both historic and contemporary emissions.
This refusal continues long histories of European racism, including the deeply racialised processes of large-scale extraction that fuelled and sustained the Industrial Revolution from the outset.
Sugar plantations throughout the Caribbean were worked for generations by Africans who were enslaved, generating massive profits for Europeans that were then invested and reinvested in energy-intensive industrial infrastructure. This infrastructure helped fuel the global emissions that remain in the atmosphere today.
British industrialisation would simply not have been possible without the stolen land and uncompensated labour acquired through colonisation and slavery. Compensation for this plunder was never provided.
And today, the emissions it initiated are doubling back on those whose land and labour made them possible.
Climate change at the centre of reparations Calls for reparations for colonialism and slavery have grown rapidly over the past few years – particularly as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and UK.
Some European states have begun to take responsibility and provide redress for colonial theft, violence and displacement.
These efforts are laudable. But there’s an urgent need to focus this sentiment on climate change – and in particular, to supercharge demands for climate reparations.
The Pacific Islands forum this week provides an opportunity for Australia to undertake climate reparation, by committing new finance for the loss and damage incurred by poorer Pacific nations under climate change.
UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston recently said the world risks a new era of “climate apartheid”. In this scenario, tens of millions of people will be impoverished, displaced and hungry, while the rich buy their way out of hardship.
Going into COP27 in November, negotiators from the US, the EU and Australia must prioritise loss and damage finance. Failing to do so will only further solidify climate injustice.
Erin Fitz-Henry is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. Her current research focuses on the rights of nature in Ecuador. She teaches courses in political anthropology, the anthropology of religion, and development studies.
Climate change alarmism is a liberal mental condition much the way their tds is a mental condition- both are an outward expression of their inward insanity
How about it’s time to stop pretending that you can’t make it without whitey’s help and get to work.
Assuming for a moment climate change is man-caused, China and India would be the “colonists”.
These idiots will never give up
Communism under the guise of ecology.
So China is a white colonialist?
“Climate change is white colonisation of the atmosphere. “
Damn, they’re on to us
Is this a self parody by this pundit/author? I suspect we are all so tired of this idiocy, it is hard to justify the aggravation of refuting it, one more time. When I hear this kind of eco wining these days, I ask the spewer of this bilge if they know the children’s story “Chicken Little”? These idiots are living it, and are determined that we will also.
Denying you are a racist .. proves you are racist. You racist!
The only “cure” for “racism” is to get rid of all the white people.
That is the end game.
Genocide is coming if this madness is not stopped.
| # | Stage | Characteristics | Preventative measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Classification | People are divided into "them and us". | "The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend... divisions." |
| 2 | Symbolization | "When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups..." | "To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden as can hate speech." |
| 3 | Discrimination | "Law or cultural power excludes groups from full civil rights: segregation or apartheid laws, denial of voting rights". | "Pass and enforce laws prohibiting discrimination. Full citizenship and voting rights for all groups." |
| 4 | Dehumanization | "One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases." | "Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen." |
| 5 | Organization | "Genocide is always organized... Special army units or militiasare often trained and armed..." | "The U.N. should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations." |
6 we are here | Polarization | "Extremists drive the groups apart... Leaders are arrested and murdered... laws erode fundamental civil rights and liberties." | "Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups... Coups d’état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions." |
| 7 | Preparation | "Mass killing is planned. Victims are identified and separated because of their ethnic or religious identity..." | "At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. Full diplomatic pressure by regional organizations must be invoked, including preparation to intervene to prevent genocide." |
| 8 | Persecution | "Expropriation, forced displacement, ghettos, concentration camps". | "Direct assistance to victim groups, targeted sanctions against persecutors, mobilization of humanitarian assistance or intervention, protection of refugees." |
| 9 | Extermination | "It is 'extermination' to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human". | "At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed international protection." |
| 10 | Denial | "The perpetrators... deny that they committed any crimes..." | "The response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts." |
Asia is the biggest Polluter on the Planet, China and India speaficly.
I should make a collection of the things that are not only racist, but affect the climate...Perhaps a table top book of headlines?
You beat me.
Not the Bee.
So the answer to “white colonialism of the atmosphere” is to allow rich western oligarchs to dictate energy sources and CO2 usage to the third world, and have rich western oligarchs like Bill Gates implement schemes like “blocking the sun” for the whole world.
You are correct. We are seeing the demonization of White people in real time. It won’t be long before it will be “necessary” to do something about this supposed “White” problem.
By the way, never give up your guns.
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