The Picture Show: How We End Climate Imperialism on Patreon

Imperialism, Climate Debt and Positive Justice

 

 

If the battle against PragerU has taught us anything, it’s that you really can’t learn anything but reactionary propaganda in five minutes on YouTube. But my question is, can you learn something actually useful in ten spare minutes on YouTube? In today’s video by Our Changing Climate we find out the answer is “yes, you can!” Titled “How We End Climate Imperialism,” this video focuses on climate crisis as a fallout from Pig Empire extractivism, and how to restore a positive justice in the face of this climate imperialism; or perhaps more accurately, climate colonialism. So in other words, it’s about how to achieve the exact opposite of the ecofascist framework I recently wrote about in Nina-Bytes on Media Madness.

Look, every school-aged child in the Pig Empire knows there is no such thing as a fallback position when it comes to preserving our shared ecosystem. In light of both the global nature of the problem, and capitalism’s inseparable relationship with climate crisis, it seems pretty obvious to me that the solution to these calamities will be both socialist and internationalist in nature. This means that on a state-level, we really are all in this together, even if the atomizing effects of capitalism and class war render such platitudes hollow on an individual basis. Yet can anyone in the Pig Empire reading this truly argue that colonizer nations in the Global North are acting like it?

The hard truth here is that right now, the folks suffering the most severe consequences of climate crisis, are also the folks least responsible for the problem. Take for example, the region of Sub-Saharan Africa. As our video highlights, this area contains roughly fifteen percent of the world’s population, while producing only two percent of the energy-related emissions driving climate crisis. Despite this, the region is currently shouldering a massive fifty percent of global adaptation costs in the face of man-made climate chaos. Given this disparity, how should Africans feel about fancy international conferences full of fiery rhetoric about collective responsibilities?

Furthermore, thanks to the legacy of colonialism and modern capitalist exploitation, these nations are typically the ones who can least afford to fight back against carbon emissions; when eighty percent of fossil fuel reserves reside outside of the imperial core, calls to “keep it in the group” pretty much equate to economic suicide for the Global South under a market-based economic system. If technocratic capitalist solutions offer little hope for colonizer nations, what value can they have for those on whose hyper-exploitation its foundations rest? Put simply, this is malevolent injustice on the highest order; and it represents a very real barrier to bringing humanity together as a species to address climate crisis and save life on Earth.

So how to we address these twin problems in a way that enacts a positive form of justice, while still getting us over the fossil fuel hump as a species? How do we quantify, or qualify what that sort of justice might look like? Well as “How We End Climate Imperialism” helpfully informs us, it turns out a concept called “Climate Debt” was constructed for just this purpose. Foundationally, Climate Debt is a call for, and a calculation of, reparations owed from the imperial core, to countries still suffering from the legacy of colonization, to prevent, mitigate, or otherwise deal with the fallout from climate chaos.

Following the logical idea that those most responsible for climate catastrophe, should bear a higher cost to combat it, this debt, and the measures required to address it, goes beyond simple cash money payments to mitigate the fallout from climate chaos. It includes higher emission cuts for colonizer nations that historically benefited from colonial extractivism, the patent-free transfer of clean energy technology to the developing world, and a humanitarian requirement for developed polluter nations to open their borders to a larger number of the climate refugees carbon-spewing capitalists are creating while they profit from the energy consumption that causes climate catastrophe.

Originally formulated by environmental NGOs, and most famously championed by none other than Fidel Castro himself at the 1992 Kyoto climate conference, Climate Debt looks to address the reality that countries in the imperial core have benefited from the plunder of not only the Global South, but our collective ecosystem in extremely real, material ways and therefore owe a greater debt to humanity and deserve a more burdensome role in stopping climate catastrophe. This is a cracking idea, that has a far greater chance of success than hairbrained carbon capture schemes, or giving fossil fuel corporations responsible for climate catastrophe tax credits to “go green.”

All of which really only leaves us one question that is unfortunately left unanswered by “How We End Climate Imperialism.” Namely, how are we going to pay for all of this? Thankfully however, it turns out we know which Pig Empire institutions, private corporations, and rich maggot billionaires are responsible for murdering the earth to make a quick buck. As the late Utah Phillips would remind us, those folks have names, addresses, and presumably assets that could be seized as part of an effort to provide restorative justice; both to the colonized, and future generations of humanity on our shared world.

At the end of the day, if colonialism, militarization, and nationalism are the vehicles that brought us to the edge of climate catastrophe, it only stands to reason that decolonization, demilitarization, and international solidarity represent the path back out of hell. That’s what justice looks like, and that’s how we save our shared ecosystem. The only question remaining at this point is, will we have the courage to see that justice through? Let’s hope so, because the future of humanity may well depend on it.

 

• nina illingworth

 

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”