The Climate Crisis Is a Once-in-a-Century Chance to Make Our World More Equitable
The Climate Crisis Is a Once-in-a-Century Chance to Make Our World More Equitable
These remarks are adapted from a speech by Naomi Klein on Monday
at "Now is Not the Time For Small Steps: Solutions to the Climate Crisis
and the Role of Trade Unions" at Salle Olympe de Gouges.
PARIS -- Here is what we know about what to expect from the official climate negotiations.
The
deal that will be unveiled in less than a week -- likely to much
fanfare and self-congratulation from politicians and an overly
deferential press -- will not be enough to keep us safe. In fact, it
will be extraordinarily dangerous.
The targets that the major economies brought to Paris lead us to a future of 3-4 degrees warming
-- those are the Tyndall Centre's numbers -- not 2 degrees, as was
pledged in Copenhagen. Two degrees is how our governments defined
"dangerous warming" in the Copenhagen Accord.
And we also know
from leading climate scientists like James Hansen that 2 degrees is too
high. Indeed we know from lived experience that the amount we've already
warmed the globe is too much. We are already living the era of
dangerous warming. It is already costing many thousands of lives and
livelihoods -- from the Philippines to Bangladesh to Nigeria to New
Orleans to the Marshall Islands.
Speaking about climate change as if
"dangerous" is a place far off in the distance is nothing less than, as
my friend Kumi Naidoo put it yesterday, "subliminal racism." And it's
getting less and less subliminal every day.
The targets that the major economies brought to Paris lead us to a future of 3-4 degrees warming -- not 2 degrees, as was pledged in Copenhagen.
So
we know already that the deal will steamroll over scientific red lines.
We also know, from the paltry levels of financing wealthy countries
have put on the table, that it is going to steamroll over equity red
lines. That wealthy countries will continue to fail to do our fair share
of emission reductions, or to pay our fair share for the impacts of
that failure. And we must pay -- pay so that poorer countries that did
little to create this crisis are compensated for loss and damage and so
that they can leap frog over fossil fuels and go directly to a clean
energy economy.
Which is why, on Dec. 12 at 12 o'clock -- that's
12, 12, 12 -- many activists will be in the streets of Paris, peacefully
demonstrating against the violation of these red lines. We will also be
mourning the lives already lost to climate disruption, in solidarity
with the lives lost to the tragic attacks here in Paris, and enlarging
that circle of mourning.
By taking to the streets, we will be
clearly and unequivocally rejecting the Hollande government's draconian
and opportunistic bans on marches, protests and demonstrations, the
shameful pre-emptive arrests of climate activists and the unprecedented
restrictions on the freedom of speech of civil society within the
summit.
Liberté is not just a word and it does not just apply to
Christmas markets and football matches. Indeed it means nothing if it
does not apply to political dissent and the defense of life on earth.
Speaking about climate change as if 'dangerous' is a place far off in the distance is nothing less than, as my friend Kumi Naidoo put it, 'subliminal racism.'
This
disobedience does not make us insensitive. It does not make us
hooligans. It is our sacred duty -- to those suffering in the present
day and to those who stand to lose so much more if we lose this race
against time for climate justice. And yet as we join together to reject
the dangerous world offering by the governments inside Le Bourget, as
well as by the corporations who finance them, we must also do more than
say "no."
We must also say "yes" -- yes to the world we want. We
need to paint a picture of what life could be like inside those
scientific red lines, life within the limits imposed on us by nature.
And that life needs to be not just better than a future of climate
catastrophe. It needs to be better than the present -- a present of
catastrophic levels of austerity, deepening inequality and rising
racism.
That is our task. Jeremy Corbyn rightly describes the
challenge we face as a crisis of imagination. We must imagine a world
that is both radically different and radically better than the one we
have right now.
So I want to spend some time sharing an experience
we had in my home country, Canada, where a group of us -- 60
organizers, leaders and theorists from movements representing labor,
climate, migrant rights, anti-poverty, food justice, housing rights,
women's rights -- came together to do something we do very rarely.
We must pay -- pay so that poorer countries that did little to create this crisis are compensated for loss and damage and so that they can leap frog over fossil fuels and go directly to a clean energy economy.
And
that is to dream together. To sketch out a future that would respect
both natural limits and human rights and human needs. We came up with a
document called The Leap manifesto
that has now been signed by over 100 Canadian organizations, including
many trade unions, and tens of thousands of Canadians, including Leonard
Cohen and Ellen Page. It has inspired similar manifestos to be written
from Nunuvut to Australia.
At its heart is the argument that if we
take the imperative to rapidly build a post-carbon economy seriously,
we have a once-in-a-century chance to transform our economy to make it
far more equitable, so that it works for many more people. This would be
a clean economy with many more good unionized jobs that pay a living
wage. With better public services that are more equitably distributed.
But
before I get into that optimistic stuff, I want to confess that I
didn't come to climate change by seeing the sunny side of disaster.
Quite the opposite: I come to it by looking at the worst that humans are
capable of in times of crisis -- what I call "disaster capitalism."
My
climate change "wake up" came almost exactly 10 years ago, when
Hurricane Katrina was devastating New Orleans. That experience showed me
that there is this irreconcilable conflict between the reality of
climate change and the so-called free market ideology that has ruled our
world for four decades.
Because we must always remember that what happened in New Orleans was
not just about the weather. It was the collision of heavy weather and
the legacy of four decades of systematic dismantling of the public
sphere, and layered on top of all of it was the reality of systemic
racism at every level.
Once Katrina hit, residents confronted
what Paul Krugman calls the "Can't do state." FEMA seemingly couldn't
find New Orleans for five days. People -- overwhelmingly African
American -- were just abandoned, left on their own.
And then,
after the shock... came "The Shock Doctrine." For right-wing ideologues,
the post-Katrina plan was simple: use the crisis to do away with the
public sphere all together. Public housing. Public school. Public
hospitals. The other thing that Republicans pushed for immediately after
Katrina was to suspend labor standards in the area.
So the
reconstruction of New Orleans became a hotbed of labor abuses,
particularly for migrant workers. This is why the fights for labor
rights and the fight against austerity cannot be separated from the
fight for climate action. The public sphere that the international labor
movement is working so hard to defend is our only defense against the
storms, the floods, the health emergencies.
There is this irreconcilable conflict between the reality of climate change and the so-called free market ideology that has ruled our world for four decades.
And
as we have just been reminded: Europe is not immune. The UK is not
immune. In "This Changes Everything," I have a passage on how the 2013
British floods revealed the incompatibility of austerity and climate
crisis.
In 2012, The Guardian revealed that "nearly 300
flood defense schemes across England [had] been left un-built due to
government budget cuts." David Cameron had gutted the Environment Agency
(EA), which is responsible for dealing with flooding. Since 2009, at
least 1,150 jobs
had been lost at the agency, with as many as 1,700 more on the chopping
block, adding up to approximately a quarter of its total workforce. And
Cameron knew he had been caught out. "Money is no object in this relief
effort. Whatever money is needed for it will be spent."
The
problem with austerity is not just that it interferes with our ability
to defend ourselves from the heavy weather we have already locked in.
It's also that public investments -- in green energy, public transit and
clean rail -- are the only thing that will lower our emissions quickly
enough to prevent catastrophic warming.
That's why in The Leap
manifesto we have these key demands: "We need to invest in our decaying
public infrastructure so that it can withstand increasingly frequent
extreme weather events."
We must always remember that what happened in New Orleans was not just about the weather.
But
we wanted to do more than call for "green jobs" in disaster response
and putting up solar panels. We are also calling for a wave of new
investment in the low-carbon workforce that is already out there. So
another of our demands is this: "We must expand those sectors that are
already low-carbon: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and
public-interest media."
Environmentalists don't usually mention it
but teaching and caring for kids doesn't burn much carbon. Nor does
caring for the sick. When we care for each other, we care for the
planet. So it makes no sense that these are the very sectors under
relentless attack by cost-cutting politicians.
Which is why we
felt that it was absolutely crucial to say something else in the Leap:
That austerity is a manufactured crisis. That the money we need is out
there -- we just have to get at it. And we know exactly how to do it: An
end to fossil fuel subsidies.
Financial transaction taxes. Increased royalties on fossil fuel extraction. Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending.
Financial transaction taxes. Increased royalties on fossil fuel extraction. Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending.
This process is
partly inspired by a terrific Climate Justice group in the Bay Area
called Movement Generation. At an event we did together, one of their
organizers, Quinton Sankofa, said something that should guide us:
"Transition is inevitable. Justice is not."
The fights for labor rights and the fight against austerity cannot be separated from the fight for climate action.
What
that means is that if we want the response to climate change to be fair
and equitable, then we are going to need to fight to make sure that it
is. If we want climate jobs to be safe, unionized jobs that pay living
wage, then we need to fight to make that happen.
And we know
climate change is not the only crisis we face. We also face a crisis of
joblessness. Of inequality. Of racial and gender injustice. Of social
exclusion. We face a crisis in the abuse and mistreatment of workers,
especially immigrant workers and workers of color, women most of all.
So
when we talk about climate solutions in this context, it cannot just be
about emission reduction targets. Neither can it be about saying:
"Climate change is so big, and so urgent, and time is so short, that it
should trump everything else."
It has to be about designing and
then fighting for integrated solutions, ones that radically bring down
emissions, while simultaneously building more just economies and
democracies based on true equality.
The 2013 British floods also revealed the incompatibility of austerity and climate crisis.
We even have some powerful examples that this can work:
Take Germany. Germany's energy transition has created 400,000 jobs
in a decade and not just cleaned up energy but made it fairer -- so
that energy systems are owned and controlled by hundreds and hundreds of
municipalities and energy co-operatives.
Little known fact: one
of the things that allowed this to happen is that Germans have reversed
energy privatizations in hundreds of cities and towns. That's why one of
the key demands of The Leap manifesto is for Energy Democracy -- that
communities should own and control their own renewable energy projects.
But
we have to go further than Energy Democracy. We need Energy Justice.
Energy Reparations. Which is why The Leap states that: "Indigenous
peoples and others on the frontlines of industrial activity should be
first to receive public support for their own clean energy projects."
As
you can see, climate change offers a powerful argument against
privatizations, against austerity -- and the same goes for corporate
trade deals. Germany has been challenged for its visionary energy
transition under an investor-state clause. It is being sued for 4.7 billion euros by the Swedish energy giant Vantenfall. This is scandalous, and there are many trade challenges like it.
We must expand those sectors that are already low-carbon: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and public-interest media.
Which
is why this is another one of The Leap's key demands: "We call for an
end to all trade deals that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local
economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive
projects." We certainly shouldn't be signing new ones like the TTIP and
the TPP.
Another piece of common ground we found had to do with
the rights of migrants and refugees. We know that climate change is a
driver of conflict and migration already and that this is only going to
get more severe.
So the manifesto calls for full rights for all
workers, regardless of status, as well as to an opening of borders to
many more migrants and refugees, acknowledging our role in the wars,
trade deals and climate disasters that are collectively driving so many
people from their lands.
Now I realize all this sounds like a lot
to take on -- but that is the whole point of the Leap project. It's
premised on the fact that we have gone so far off course, and time is so
short, that we aren't going to get to where we need to go with baby
steps.
Communities should own and control their own renewable energy projects.
We
have to go for it, on all fronts, and tell a coherent story about how
all of our issues are connected by a different set of values about how
we should treat one another and the natural world that is the source of
all life.
Friends, time is not just short. We have run out of time. This is our historical moment.
Let us not disappoint. The stakes are simply too high.
Now is not the time for small steps.
Now is the time for boldness.
Now is the time to leap.
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