Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Naomi Klein has attempted to link climate, fossil fuels and racism, but in my opinion Naomi’s piece inadvertently embraces the ugly colonialist paternalism which she tries to insist we should reject.
Naomi Klein on the racism that underlies climate change inaction
…
For the past three decades, since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created and climate negotiations began, the refusal of our governments to lower emissions has been accompanied with full awareness of the dangers. And this kind of recklessness would have been functionally impossible without institutional racism, even if only latent. It would have been impossible without orientalism – what Edward Said described in his landmark book of the same name as “disregarding, essentialising, denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region”. It would have been impossible without all the potent tools on offer that allow the powerful to discount the lives of the less powerful. These tools – of ranking the relative value of humans – are what allow the writing off of entire nations and ancient cultures. And they are what allowed for the digging up of all that carbon to begin with.
Why? Because the thing about fossil fuels is that they are so inherently dirty and toxic that they require sacrificial people and places: people whose lungs and bodies can be sacrificed to work in the coalmines, people whose lands and water can be sacrificed to open-pit mining and oil spills. As recently as the 1970s, scientists advising the United States government openly referred to certain parts of the country being designated “national sacrifice areas”. Think of the mountains of Appalachia, blasted off for coalmining – because so-called “mountain-top removal” coalmining is cheaper than digging holes underground. There were theories of othering used to justify the sacrificing of an entire geography: after all, if you are a backwards “hillbilly”, who cares about your hills?
Turning all that coal into electricity required another layer of othering, too: this time for the urban neighbourhoods next door to the power plants and refineries. In North America, these are overwhelmingly communities of colour, black and Latino, forced to carry the toxic burden of our collective addiction to fossil fuels, with markedly higher rates of respiratory illnesses and cancers. It was in fights against this kind of “environmental racism” that the climate justice movement was born.
…
Why do I think Naomi’s opinion piece reeks of colonialist paternalism? The reason is she seems to think she has the right to make decisions on behalf of poor people, especially poor coloured people. In my opinion, if Naomi could, she would somehow shield the disadvantaged from the “burden” of participating in the supply chain of our modern industrial world. She would remove the option of such participation from the people she claims to care about.
But the consequences of such a restriction would be disastrous. Naomi is right that industrialisation is a messy, often ugly process, riddled with exploitation and inequity. But the one thing which is worse than industrialising your economy, is not industrialising your economy. Attempting to deny desperately poor people the opportunity to build a better life, by embracing the same modern economic conveniences we take for granted, in my opinion is an unspeakable crime against humanity. People who work in filthy, third world factories, breathing toxic fumes, enduring unsafe conditions and hideous hours, mostly volunteer for such life, they compete to be accepted for such jobs. Because the alternative, back breaking hand tilling of subsistence farms, at the mercy of weather and disease, is far worse.
Nobody has the right to tell poor people what to do, not even Naomi Klein. If poor people choose of their own free will to participate in the modern world, and in doing so choose to build a better life for their children, they are simply following the path to modernity which our own grandparents and great grandparents walked, whose efforts and sacrifices created the abundance and security which we in the industrialised West take for granted.
What a moron…
Some of these “chattering” types have been in their own little echo chamber WAY too long . . . I doubt this woman knows the first thing about how the real world works. You can make up any alternate universe you like in “theoryland.”
The space between their ears provides the only echo chamber they need.
That’s what happens to red diaper babies. She’s just doesn’t know any better.
Yes, and she ignores the racism inherent in leftist policies. Two for example are the Minimum Wage and Social Security.
The Minimum Wage falls hardest on minorities trying to get that first job where they can learn skills to rise on the wage ladder. (Black teenagers have had the highest unemployment rates in the nation for generations, largely due to the Minimum Wage.)
Under Social Security, blacks who have a 5-year shorter life expectancy than whites collect benefits for 1/3 to 1/2 shorter time, even though they pay in for the same length of time.
But she makes a living – a very good living – chattering this drivel. So, ipso facto, she’s legitimate.
Please do NOT insult morons by likening “Naomi Klein” to them
No not a Moron, she is an white elitist who does not want the third world to develop due to
the fact that she and her ilk go to be with the gnawing fear that somewhere there may be
healthy, happy, prosperous dark skinned people…
ht/Mencken …
“bed” blast it..
Close but McCoy, what these white elitists fear the most is a world of limited resources (which they need to maintain their elite quality of life) being eroded by an exponentially expanding world population and developing and industrializing third world countries. These great unwashed masses are threatening their supply of limited resources and jeopardizing the silver spoon lives of their descendants.
As Marie declared “let them eat cake” Naomi declares “Let them power with solar”
that’s right, they like to know there are wilderness areas inhabited by happy new stone age people where they can take their holidays.
It’s an adaption of a liberal’s favorite trick: “What do you do if you’re losing an argument to a conservative? Call him a racist.”
Naomi “Bobblehead” Klein has simply modified it a bit to read: “What do you do if you’re systematically losing the CAGW argument? Call the system institutionally racist.”
The Democratic Party has always been the party of racism. The Democratic Party was for slavery, KKK, Jim Crow, and segregation. Then they switched from supporting white racists to supporting black racists. The Democrats were unable to abandon the racial spoils system they championed for 200 years. They completely missed Martin Luther King’s dream about judging on the basis of character rather than skin color.
Now the Democrats use terms like affirmative action/quotas, diversity/quotas, and white privilege to justify their institutional racism. There is racism in the way the US government hands out contracts and hires people, race based decisions exist due to precedents set by the supreme court, universities use race to select students and adjust SAT scores, and corporations use race based policies for hiring and promotions.
so succinct, Steve, & so correct!!
The phrase which popped in my head was
What a Nut .
In the same quadrant .
Actually, I consider racism in the eye of the beholder. Those who run around seeing “racism” in everything tend to be the actual racists. Is there racism? Yes, but not to the ludicrous extent racists like Klein perceive. Racists are the ones that SEE all the differences and damn few of the similarities. Most of us know there are differences but don’t see an issue.
True. The real racists are the self appointed race police identifying racists by code words and actions to deflect attention from their own soft bigotry of low expectations as Peggy Noonan so aptly exposed them.
Why doesn’t Naomi Klein ask Photographer Manusz Kubik to try and take another photograph of her and this time hold the damn camera level so the picture is not tipped over.
g
“””””….. For the past three decades, since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created and climate negotiations began, the refusal of our governments to lower emissions has been accompanied with full awareness of the dangers. …..”””””
Say Naomi, how about YOU give some evidence for your assertions.
Governments have NO control over emissions; they don’t do anything anyway. And give us some evidence of any actual danger. You actually have to have a danger, before you can become aware of it.
Who can you name who’s cause of death was human emitted CO2. Or are you referring to some other sort of emissions.
We all want clean air. We don’t give a rats’ about its CO2 content so long as there is enough to grow plants.
g
“We all want clean air. We don’t give a rats’ about its CO2 content so long as there is enough to grow plants.”
+10,000
Naomi’s view seems to be “Let them heat their homes with animal dung”. Does she set an example?
She’s just spewing theatrical rhetoric.
The odd thing is that she appears to be leaning to the right. This could be a subtle hint about her true political beliefs, and a signal that she really doesn’t believe a thing that comes out of her own mouth. Or it could be an indication that she’s juts a large sock-puppet, on the hand of George Soros.
Ah, but from the point of view of any neutral observer, it is obvious that Naomi leans to his left.
She’s overcompensated so her actual lean to the left is not apparent in photos.
Naomi is hanging on by her finger nails and is playing the “race-card”
Look at the economic situation that has developed in Detroit, Flint, Pontiac, Michigan where so many black people are without employment due to the loss of auto industry jobs. CAFE regulations pushed by NGOs. Good people who do good work.
At least one NGO is involved in pressuring a U.S. Marathon Oil company refinery in the Detroit area. Company said to use Canadian crude oil.
When communities lose their tax base then everything else suffers.
Marathon Petroleum Corp.
Crude oils supply: Sweet and sour crude oils including Canadian crude oil.
http://www.marathonpetroleum.com/Operations/Refining_and_Marketing/Refining/Michigan_Refining_Division
Letter to: Marathon Petroleum Corp., Findlay, Ohio, Feb.25, 2015
From: Ceres & Union of Concerned Scientists
“We wrote to you to express concern about the lack of public disclosure of physical risks due to climate change at Marathon Petroleum’s coastal refineries.”
http://ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/02/marathon-petroleum-letter-investors.pdf
She’s in the Twilight Zone!
Twilight Zone
I know it’s ungallant of me to say so but possibly the reason is that time has not been kind to her.
George, It may not be the photographer. I believe that Naomi is well past her tipping point.
George– The seemingly awkward camera angle is actually subtle artistic license to accentuate Naomi’s left-leaning political ideology…
Yep,noticed the problem.Point being is that it’s intentional;makes ya look more interlectual and enquiring.The academic look that makes one stand out and look influential.
I thought everybody knew that the tilty head was a sign of inherent compassion.
She needs to be seen to be leaning to the left.
Her mug shot will be straight…the cops insist on it.
Scoliosis?
I just realized. She had a right leaning photographer.
She’s resting her right elbow on the tall stack of money she’s made doing what she does.
No, no, the best way to demonstrate your opposition to racism is to ensure that Indians die from unfrigerated food, and Chinese lose their provinces to heavy metals mining for the windmills that you force Africa to build by directing the World Bank not to fund coal generation.
So the lungs and bodies of all those that die from wood smoke because they don’t have the same cooking/heating facilities that Naomi has or who die because they cannot store medicines or power the health care machinery that she takes for granted are what! Expendable? “Collateral damage” in the climate wars?
Not exactly noted for self-awareness, these people, are they? Or even for being able to string two logical thoughts together.
Sheesh!
Can she even string one logical thought together?
Absolutely right! Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes with stoves or open fires that burn wood, animal dung, crop waste or coal. Over 4 million people die prematurely from breathing said fires, including 50% of premature deaths of children from these conditions. How dare she say that producing electricity makes things worse for the poor, overall??? http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/
Greg Woods June 25, 2016 at 8:02 am
Naomi… one logical thought? We’ll need cites for that, Greg. You don’t post here without evidence to back up your claims ;o)
Your insight is ‘hammer to the nail’ correct!!!
In her view, any diminution of life from modern convenience is pure evil, but the same from LACK of modern convenience is a big yawn, oh….well, to her and the Commie Greens.
I wonder how many deaths would be caused by horses if we suddenly gave up cars due to accident deaths???
“Naomi’s piece inadvertently embraces the ugly colonialist paternalism which she tries to insist we should reject.”
———————–
There is nothing “inadvertent” about the hardships imposed on people by the statists like Naomi Klein.
Sometimes when a person sees racism around every corner they are really only reflecting the racism in the corners of their mind.
Exactly, most of the ugliness coming form these Eco-Nasties is their self projection.
Their self view poisons all they sense.
One sort of senses their aversion to introspective is a genuine self defence mechanism.
Hows that for a Lew Paper?
There are lots of dangerous jobs, for example:
“Across the United States, construction ranks as the most dangerous industry, representing about 20 percent of all work-related fatalities, according to federal statistics.”
“Deaths rose from 1,131 in 2003 to 1,226 in 2006. By comparison, 836 workers died in mining accidents last year, and 447 died in manufacturing. The government reports between six and seven construction deaths per 1,000 workers. ”
Now would she suggest that we do away with construction just because it’s risky? Thought not, just picks on coal because it suits her ends.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=4139502
She might. After all, we should all be living in mud huts.
Her assertion that envrionmentalism is connect to race may be correct—it’s often very rich white progressives who want black, poor third worlders to live in poverty forever and want to keep others from getting rich ever. There is a great deal of racism, but it’s on the side of the environmentalists. They “buy” out poor farmers and turn them into serfs, growing trees for carbon credits. They live the poor mining with 18th century equipment. They are racist ones.
I made my living building or rehabilitating housing and yes, it is extremely dangerous work. But then, so is logging which I don’t see in the list here.
Logging, and fishing, roofing, driving…pretty much anything can be dangerous.
The best way to make such occupations less hazardous is by technology and prosperity in general.
Safety systems and procedures, and regularly scheduled safety training, all cost money, and taking the time to focus on safety issues rather than just getting things done as quickly as possibly is costly as well.
The end result can be higher productivity and profitability, but such considerations as safety and hazard awareness are more likely to be prioritized when a certain level of prosperity has already been achieved.
And the best way to achieve prosperity is with economic growth.
And we all know how the CAGW crowd feels about economic growth.
The climate scientists on her side are more than 97% white, and a large percentage of the victims of their madness are black or brown. Racist.
She is using idiotic lies to promote and legitimize hatred of whites. Racist
She is using the bloody shirt of racism to silence and bully those who disagree with her. Demagogue.
She is dumber than a sack of hammers, but makes a living as a public intellectual. Con artist.
+1
Good summary, Quinn.
That is the typical mindless Liberal MO. Link everything to Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, etc, etc, etc. Liberals shamelessly exploit the fears, vulnerabilities and insecurities of minorities and women, playing them for easily manipulated and controlled fools. The recent example of Loretta Lynch highlights how ignorant liberals truly believe their followers are. This article highlights is classic deceit, deception and lies used by the left. No matter what the issue or event, the tactics are the same, exploit the fears, vulnerabilities and insecurities of minorities and women.
AG Lynch Displays Deceptive Behavior In Response to Questions About Orlando Shooter
http://lawnewz.com/columnists/ag-lynchs-deceptive-behavior-over-issue-of-mistakes-in-orlando-investigation/
This link? Bullshit!
The tilt is characteristic of someone who lies for a living. She artfully couches lies within lies, hoping people won’t notice. But lying eats away at the soul, throwing one off-balance. She is no longer centered. And her soul is black.
Silly botch. Not worth discussing.
When you are a millionaire socialist with a hammer, everything is a (racist, capitalist, etc.) nail.
People who live in Appalachia are a race?
No, they are largely white, so they are really super privileged. People in Appalachia are some of the most denigrated people in the US, but this is considered perfectly acceptable because they are white. Who do leftists think is doing the coal mining in West Virginia? The state is more than 90% white. What do people say about people from Appalachia? Here are some terms: hillbillies, rednecks, rubes, backwards, racists (interesting, since there are not that many “minorities” living in the area), unsophisticated, uneducated, stupid, inbred, white trash. Do not forget the cracks about marrying cousins or even siblings (the latter of which is not true, and the former is true of most family trees, no matter who you are). From what I have observed, most of this nastiness comes from leftist elites, people who consider themselves champions of the downtrodden poor.
A poor white kid from an area where there are few jobs and the jobs that do exist are under attack by “liberal” snobs, he is unimportant. His skin color makes it impossible for him to have challenges or problems. It does not matter that the minute the kid admits his home town/region or speaks with his native accent is the minute people start judging him and applying the above assumptions/epithets. He is still somehow more “privileged” than rich black kids like the Obama girls or Will Smith’s kids.
If Klein and her elitist pals really cared about poor people in the US, they would stop attacking good, well-paying industries and instead try to ensure that working conditions are as safe as possible. If they really cared about the effects of power plants on nearby residents, they would stop opposing the construction of modern coal plants that are designed to be more efficient and minimize efficiency. Why anyone would believe that leaving aging plants that are well past their intended use life (meant to last 50 years but going on 65, etc.) in place is better than building safer and less polluting plants is beyond me. If leftist fools were less stubborn, we could have had cleaner plants for a couple of decades now. Apparently being “principled” and refusing to accept anything less than complete shutdown of current plants with no replacements is more important than actually reducing emissions.
As for this demonization of “dirty, nasty, toxic fossil fuels”, perhaps Klein should take a good hard look at the production of solar panels, especially in developing countries. Those countries do not bother enforcing laws about treating the toxic byproducts (if such laws even exist) or the disposal of such waste. In China, at least one company drives to the fields outside the solar panel factory and dumps the waste right there. The people live nearby, especially those who farm that land, do not appreciate it. Unlike the evil developed countries, such residents have no recourse, unless they are wealthy enough to bribe someone in the government. Even then, it is unlikely anything will be done.
The only thing worse than fossil fuel generated power are the alternatives.
Thank you AllyKat.
Agreed.
Naomi must be completely color blind, even to differences between white/black.
Otherwise she wouldn’t be so absolutely wrong on her fantasized demographics.
That, or Naomi has never seen the neighborhoods near coal mines; or for that matter any kind of mines. Nor has she ever visited refinery locales.
Taking the tops off of coal seams, harvesting the coal and then rebuilding the hillside afterwards is cheaper, cleaner and far safer than sending men down tunnels with heavy industry. Plus after the mine closes, there isn’t the lingering problem of coal shafts and mine drainage; with much of the reclaimed land looking like parks.
Except nuclear is a much better energy source than fossil fuels.
The Linear No Threshold theory of radiation damage is as scientifically sound as global warming. LNT makes no allowance for biological processes that repair radiation damage that occurs at a rate below the capacity of the repair mechanism.
Safe radiation levels should be raised by a factor of 1000. This change in radiation safety would make the current regulatory scheme for nuclear completely unnecessary and the cost of nuclear will drop dramatically. Because innovation would be possible, the current technology would be quickly replaced by reactors with inherently safe shutdown systems and passive decay heat removal systems. These reactors are walk away safe. Nuclear is currently the safest form of energy generation and Gen IV reactors are about 1000 times safer than Gen 3 plus such as AP1000.
Recycling converts a waste product into a tremendous energy resource. Pyroprocess recycling does not produce any intermediate or final product suitable for nuclear bombs. Proliferation is primarily a political issue. Commercial power reactors are an extremely expensive inconvenient method of producing fissile material. Production reactors designed specifically to breed fissile material are much cheaper than commercial power reactors. Uranium enrichment using centrifuges is also cheaper and easier to weaponize than plutonium. Spent nuclear fuel from a commercial reactor requires sophisticated chemical processing of highly radioactive material to separate the plutonium from fission products, uranium, and other transuranics.
Sodium fast reactor technology using EBR2 design worked safely for 30 years before the Clinton admin shut it down. The SPRISM design by GE achieved preliminary approval from the NRC in 1994 and was ready to be built in 1998.
Sodium is not corrosive of stainless steel and with electromagnetic pumps with no moving parts, the reactor has no moving parts and no obvious method of aging.
400 tons of uranium ore could be processed into two cores of 5 tons each at 15% enrichment and 390 tons of depleted uranium. If all of this material is shipped to the reactor site, with a small pyroprocess recycling facility, the reactor has fuel for about 400 years with 1 GW output. Because of security of supply, regional enrichment facilities are politically possible as a counter proliferation approach. The waste product is about 1 ton per year and after 400 years the waste has decayed to a form with radioactivity lower than background radiation.
Currently there is about 400 GW of nuclear capacity worldwide. 20,000 GW would be sufficient to provide 3 billion people with the same energy consumption as the US and eliminate fossil fuels. Given 100 MW Small Modular Reactors, 200,000 reactors would be required. This is about 2,500 reactors per year, sufficient to justify manufacturing plant investments leading to further cost reductions.
Since capital accounts for about 60% of the price of nuclear electricity (a lot more with regulatory relief), by reducing the reactor size, capacity expansion can be more closely aligned with demand projections thus reducing capital costs. Reducing the time period from decision to expand to production of electricity (at the most extreme, a reactor would be taken from inventory) would also reduce capital cost. Using Super Critical CO2 Brayton cycle for power conversion will increase thermal efficiency by about 25% and also reduce power conversion capital costs.
Unlike molten salt reactors, SFRs are not a research project. SFRs operate at 550C and do not have much room for an increase due to safety margins. MSR can operate at 650-700C which produces a 4-6% improvement in thermal efficiency. However this gain in thermal efficiency may not be sufficient to overcome the corrosive properties of the MSR coolant. There are proposals to recondition/recycle/throw away MSR reactors after 4-7 years due to corrosion from the molten salt coolant.
If the Uranium Carbonate method of producing hydrogen from water efficiently at 650C works, then the economic rational for MSR is tremendously enhanced. SFR is unlikely to efficiently produce hydrogen.
Without hydrogen production, nuclear can be used to produce baseload electricity and electricity can be used for heating. Lots of natural gas would be available for conversion to methanol and methanol can substitute for oil in the transportation sector. This would have the effect of capping the OPEC price of oil at about $50 per barrel. The Chinese have a major development program to use methanol as a transportation fuel.
This is the woman who held out Venezuela as a model of reformed government…
… & also is throwing quotes from Eddie Saying-it-ain’t-so Said into her proclamation, presuming that guys oxidized aura from
western college kids’ indoctrination clinches her diatribe.
I think Anthony posts such articles just to see me post reply – FFS.
i don’t mean this to be a personal attack but i am honestly concerned about a mental health problem here.
This woman is actually quite insane. She is a full blown Marxist dressed up as an environmentalist…..but then aren’t most of them?
Green IS the new Red
So cliche, yet so apropos.
Minorities poured into the major manufacturing cities of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, etc. because the industries there were destroyed and all the workers moved elsewhere seeking new jobs thanks to free trade, etc. The air in day, Detroit, is nearly perfectly clean now because around 50% of the people and all of the industries have vanished.
Isn’t her starting assumption “the refusal of our governments to lower emissions ….” INCORRECT? The data I see after a brief check is that for example the CO2 emissions of the US are down drastically. And who would asset the US government (Obama) and its agencies (EPA) aren’t trying to lower emissions? Has she checked the EU or the UK recently?
Talk about a “strawman” argument.
“asset” = “assert”
She continues to exhale thus, there is excess CO2.
She’s wrong, the U.S. “has” reduced its emissions. Don’t know where she came up with that. Maybe she was referring to China.
Progressives constantly lie and re-write history. Their dastardly acts and mistakes are frequently blamed upon the opposition. Simple examples:
Democrats (the socialists and communists of America) constantly refer to Republicans (conservatives and ‘right wingers’) as fascists, Nazis, racists and KKKers. But…
1) Who was the most infamous fascist of modern time? Answer: Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
2) Who was the party of slavery, segregation and the Ku Klux Klan? Answer: The Democrat Party. George Wallace and Orval Faubus come to mind. Ironically, Lincoln, who freed the slaves, was a Republican.
That’s the power of Leftwing propagand.
..and her point was
http://www.wvgenweb.org/wvcoal/miners01.jpg
Well, just lok at those workers, covered in “carbon”.
… on her head.
That photo was obviously cropped to hide the man holding a gun, forcing those happy workers to mine coal. They’d much rather have been home watching their children starve than making good incomes doing a man’s work.
She’s actually against work! She’s consistent, as she has never done any. She thinks it’s beneath the dignity of any human being to produce or add value. In her urban intellectual milieu it’s unnecessary and crude. This is the new elite who live on the government teat and know what’s best for us.
“Racist” is just Naomi Klein’s favorite insult, with no more real meaning than a five year old calling something or someone “stupid”. To her, all wogs are in their proper place as starving subsistence farmers, and she regards nearly everyone as a wog.
Wrong. “Sexist” is her favorite. But you were close.
Emotion rules; reason is a distant second.
Naomi Klein – at “strutting her stuff” as proof of her qualifications for being hired as the “top” PR agitprop’ist for authoring all of the “yellow journalism” for Hillary iffen she is selected as the next POTUS.
“DUH”, ignorance can be fixed, ….. but Naomi’s stupidity is permanent.
Those “green n’ rocky” hills in Appalachian “coal country” aren’t much good for anything other than “taking a picture of” for calendar art ….. or for all of the left liberal “greeny” flatlanders to view on their I-phones and I-pads while they “OOH” and ”AAH” about how greeny green those hills are.
That “mountain-top removal” coalmining is the greatest thing that has ever happened in Appalachian “coal country” because it creates “flatland” suitable for development at no cost to the developer. Such as this MTR site, to wit:
A reclaimed MTR site near Clarksburg, WV.
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/21/eastpointemall.jpg
And that Shopping Mall has now expanded to more than twice the size “pictured”.
Very few people now days are even aware of “the FACT” that the construction of Yeager Airport, which provides air service for a majority of West Virginians ….. as well as for the Capital City of Charleston, WV, …. only became a reality as a result of an extremely costly “mountain-top removal” construction in early 1950.
The MTR site officially known as Yeager Airport, Charleston, WV.
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/CH/20150312/DM05/150319672/EP/1/4/EP-150319672.jpg
And those steep greeny green hillsides can be extremely dangerous, as noted by all News media this past week, ….. when excessive rainfall caused Flash Flooding that resulted in several dead people and tens of millions of dollars in property damage.
Too bad that a few dozen of those greeny “tree-huggers” were not in “coal country” this past week a protesting MTR …… because Mother Nature would have given them a free “muddy water tour” down the creek in a “flash”.
National Sacrifice Areas
Originally this term seems to have been invented by the loony left to refer to areas where nuclear testing took place after World War II. The only government documents it seems to appear in are very old transcripts of loony left testimony before Congress about nuclear energy — where it was claimed that the land around nuclear power plants would become “national sacrifice areas”.
Naomi Klein’s statement — “as recently as the 1970’s, scientists advising the US government openly referred to certain parts of the country being designated national sacrifice areas” — thus originates from her own “tribe of loonies” She is a loony quoting loonies.
It would have been honest of her to say that phrase as used in that old testimony referred to areas around proposed nuclear power plants but she does not do that. Cherry picking her words she wrote “a misleading truth” — which is how the experts lie. (See Hillary Clinton)
The phrase “national sacrifice areas” in reference to nuclear power plants and “death trains” in reference to coal carriers come from the same loony mindset. (See James Hansen’s testimonies before Congress.)
Eugene WR Gallun
It simply cannot be accepted by people like this that people make the best choices available to them. The slums that Dickens hated and wrote about resulted from people fleeing the even worse life on farms. If it was 12 hour days in a factory, it was 14 hr days on the farm, at lower wages. This horror over “dirty” fossil fuels is so phony–how dirty is her town? Does she have to wear a mask? Has she never driven by an oil well quietly pumping away with no smell or smoke? Does she think the plume of steam from a nuclear plant is smoke, as many activists seem to think?
Developing countries go through a period of worsening city pollution but then start to clean it up–and one must always ask “compared to what”? In the village these people came from they cooked on wood fires and got lung disease and had no lights at night. The city is a vast improvement. It is simple snobbery. And it is not hypothetical, because these people have convinced the World Bank and others to not loan money to build power plants in Africa and are trying to stop the introduction of modern crops and tractors–treat them like zoo animals, preserved in their “harmony with nature” whether the Africans want it or not. It is the same people who are rushing to visit Cuba before it is “spoiled” by development. racist racist racist.
The two Naomi’s are two of the most foolish women on the planet. (Klein and Oreskis).
Why anyone listens to anything they have to say is beyond my mere understanding of the uber left.
The anti Capitalist Dreamers of the last Century have been assigned to its’ dust bin.
I suppose the land fill of bad ideas will occasionally be recycled.
However, it’s still a broken record and their “ideas” have not, nor will they ever succeed.
Their personal Valhalla – aka Brussels and the EU are falling apart before their eyes. Doubling down I suppose is their first line of defense.
When the climate narrative is looked back upon by future historians, the Naomi’s will be seen to be the penultimate “Lysenko-istas”.
The world cannot be rid of their foolishness soon enough.
Her victims are actually the greatest benefactors from affordable, reliable energy……..which only fossil fuels can provide.
She mentions the IPCC and the need to lower emissions(of CO2).
She should stick with real pollution………if only she could tell what is pollution and what is not pollution.
CO2 is a tremendously beneficial gas which is massively increasing crop yields and world food production, making food more abundant and cheaper, especially important for the poor………..of all races.
“As recently as the 1970s, scientists advising the United States government openly referred to certain parts of the country being designated “national sacrifice areas”.
So what happened since then if she had to go back 4 decades to use this reference?
Maybe she’s never heard of devices like the catalytic convertor or air pollution scrubbers that were not being widely used until the 1970’s and after(which is why she had to go back 40 years).
There is still pollution in our world and she mentioned a couple of legit sources but on most of her facts, she is confused and has much of it completely wrong.
My review of Klein’s latest book ,”This Changes Everything”, was published in Energy & Environment, Vol 26, No 8 (2015) pp 1469-1472
Martin, your review is behind a paywall. How about a summary here?
She says: “Turning all that coal into electricity required another layer of othering, too: this time for the urban neighbourhoods next door to the power plants and refineries.”
A lot of poor communities fight to get these facilities for the jobs and tax base. Klein would deny them that option.
For the past three decades… the refusal of our governments to lower emissions has been accompanied with full awareness of the dangers.
Crying “wolf” for three decades does not bring “awareness of the dangers.” It only proves to everyone that you’re delusional and shouldn’t be trusted or listened to.
People who take race and white-privilege courses at universities are taught how to see race in everything, even climate. That only makes race relations worse. Of course their goal is not to improve race relations but to create discrimination and intolerance for whites and conservatives. Their love of diversity only runs skin deep. When it comes to the real benefits of diversity — diversity of thought and experience — universities have no tolerance for it. If you actually bring a different opinion or perspective, you will be found in violation of university safe zones and asked to leave.
What a moron she is.
She is just another worthless elitist with white guilt syndrome.
Guilty white liberals are a bigger threat than Isis as they refuse to acknowledge that Islam is at war with the west.
The racists are the people like Klein who rechristened Carbon Dioxide – a basically harmless, yet life-giving element – into Carbon – a ‘nasty, black’ compound which they hoped, subliminally, would frighten people.
One compound word: Pseudo-Intellectual. (See here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pseudointellectual ) My definition is easier, anyone that tells in directly or indirectly that they are an “intellectual”. Note: I’ve NOT run into a single ENGINEER in my LIFE who made that claim. (To busy making life easy for the P-I’s)
“There were theories of othering used to justify the sacrificing of an entire geography: after all, if you are a backwards “hillbilly”, who cares about your hills?”
Who, specifically, offered up these theories of othering? Who specifically, used them to justify things? What “entire geography” was sacrificed?
A bigot is just someone who thinks or believes that they are smarter/better/ more credible than someone else based on some superficial difference that exists between themselves and the “other” person. Insinuating that you have the ability to read minds (because you have zero evidence to back up your statements) that other people are bigots towards “hillbillies” in order to make your position on mining appear to be smarter/ better just makes you a magical thinker as well as a bigot! You are just “othering” everyone who doesn’t think or believe what you do. After all, if you’re just a backwards conservative, skeptic, insert differentiating term here, who cares about your opinions, information, facts?
Right Naomi?
Just ONCE I’d like to see her call out some type of behavior without engaging in the exact same behavior (or worse) while she’s doing it. Maybe she just assumes everyone is too backward to recognize hypocrisy when HER SIDE engages in it…..
Sometimes a “woman to woman talk” can be brutal. You go girl!
Klein’s quoting of Edward Said say every thing about her world view.
Ibn Warraq wrote a devastating critique of Edward Said’s thoroughly dishonest Orientalism. Edward Said, like Noam Chomsky, was an anti-intellectual. He used the format of scholarship to construct politically expedient lies.
Noami Klein’s absurd claim of racism is one of the never ending CAGW propaganda talking points. Propaganda divides us and makes it more difficult to even understand what the real problems are. It is unbelievable how much economic damage has occurred as an unintentional consequence of the CAGW fiasco.
The real problems for developing countries are in sufficient electrical power generation and electrical infrastructure, lack of roads, and comically corrupt governments.
Klein should be advocating for funding for new coal plants for Africa, road construction, and family planning using funds that are currently being allocated for green scams that do not work to address the CAGW problem that does not exist.
http://www.infrastructureafrica.org/key-msg/sector/africa%E2%80%99s-chronic-power-problems-have-escalated-crisis-affecting-30-countries-crisis–1
http://africasacountry.com/2016/06/african-economies-and-the-lack-of-a-targeted-industrial-policy/
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/60-africans-without-power-will-build-coal-fired-power-plants/
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/jan/11/population-growth-in-africa-grasping-the-scale-of-the-challenge
http://static1.techinsider.io/image/55d248522acae7c7018c0c38-1200-900/regional-population-projections-centered-legend.png
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/global-population-will-soar-to-112bn-by-2100-with-africa-accounting-for-much-of-the-growth-says-un-10448880.html
Where is the food going to come from?
This is core progressive doctrine. Other people are not qualified to make their own choices, they need experts to do it for them. It’s the worst sort of paternalistic oppression.
You can’t judge a kook by its cover.
But I admit she’s cute. I’m sure she’s a nice person if you just look from the right angle (which is from left, of course).
“You can’t judge a kook by its cover.”
With people like her, we don’t have to. She opens her mouth and lets us all know what’s under the cover. 🙂
Klein is the very model of a modern major Marxist, She spouts knee-jerk socialism, utterly oblivious to or uncaring of the damage it has wrought over the last century. “Ideology over humanity” ought to be her catch phrase.
curses on you rabbit….cannot get that stupid song out of my head now! 🙂
There’s a simple way to get that song out. Repeat after me…
This is a story
Of a lovely lady
Who was bring up three very lovely girls
You. Must. Die. :p
Her chosen political philosophy doesn’t work. But don’t take my word for it!
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/27861/
The author has forgotten that she is writing about the United States, still nominally a free country. We are free to move, if we don’t like it where we are. We’re also free to move to where we can find work, such as a mine, a logging operation, or whatever else looks like a potential jobsite. For her to decide that other people should not have their choice of where to live or what to do is sheer arrogance. Her priority of getting rid of fossil fuels conflicts directly with the mountaineers’ priority of living in a place they love and pursuing productive work. She is outnumbered . . .
I knew that Klein was a delusional liar, but she is [pruned] to boot.
Maybe the two are linked?
Perhaps she needs to be [pruned]?
(sorry, saw a potential joke set up by the mod, took the shot)
I’d bet ear diamond earrings would provide an entire African village with clean water for a year … ignorant and arrogant is not the best way to live your life …
Eric hit the nail on the head. Liberals never seem to consider the long-term consequences of their policies. Just listen to Michael Crichton speak about the inspiration for his book, the State of Fear, and specifically about the mismanagement of Yellowstone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOu8akBowTg
I wonder if she locks her doors at night….or lives in a gated/secure community. Isn’t that “othering”? To assume that “others” mean you harm, or want to take your stuff..which justifies you locking your doors? Since she makes her living writing books about “others”….does that make her a Major Mother Otherer?
She is NOT right in the head! She was a spoiled brat troubled teenager who treated her parents badly until her mother died of a terminal disease. She somehow ended up at a college where the Lepine massacre occurred. Some suggest she was the one responsible for unhinging Lepine against all the other female students. Her attempt to complete a couple of degree failed but eventually she completed one degree in an obscure 3rd rate college. Much of her difficulty with learning traces back to a complete lack of interest and aptitude in the elementary pure sciences….
The pure sciences are the critical first rung on the infinite science ladder. Skipping over that rung so as to reach the climate change rung means the fundamentals were never understood….. And who could possible fully understand the infinite complexities of climate science even with a complete understanding of the pure sciences….
She is an energy of science illiterate……opposes all rational energy alternatives. But at the end of the day she only used the green energy bandwagon for her main purpose which has always been anti-establishment, anti-global capitalism…. and she is quite willing to move us into a century of anarchy to get there….
Naomi is one of the “I got mine, now screw everyone else” anti-capitalist.
“Because the thing about fossil fuels is that they are so inherently dirty and toxic that they require sacrificial people and places: people whose lungs and bodies can be sacrificed to work in the coalmines, people whose lands and water can be sacrificed to open-pit mining and oil spills.”
What’s Naomi doing about all that Asian racism forcing us Aussies to extract all that coal and natural gas for them is what this poor oppressed Aussie wants to know. Is there some sort of RICO Act redress or some such we can get in the Hague about it? What about the International Human Rights Commission for poor oppressed peoples like us Naomi? They’re buying off our elites with cheap trinkets like iphones and flat-screen tellys and stuff while they plunder and pillage our lands and oppress the poor masses like me.
They’re even nicking the formula from the babies’ bottles-
http://www.news.com.au/national/chinese-threaten-supply-of-baby-formula-in-australia/story-fncynjr2-1226547242828
and the kiddies’ breakfast cereal-
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/eat/why-chinese-online-shoppers-are-paying-50-for-a-box-of-weetbix/news-story/0387c11a15b1b073d3c3cf2a3fa82aa5
When will our oppression ever end Naomi?
Hey Naomi, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and actually show us what a committed humanitariam you are by closing your laptop and not cosuming the electricity produced by impoverished, oil-soaked black and hispanic communities to write this thought bubble?
To elaborate for those non-Canadian:
I understand Naomi Klein is related (by marriage?) to the ‘left-wing Lewis clan’. If that refers to Stephen Lewis, passionate NDP activist, she is “bird of a feather” or — a willing victim — brainwashed by the clan. (Given the bulk of her utterings, I’d vote for the latter hypothesis a la ‘Stepford Wives’ movie.) Classic ultra-left-wing by my assessment, who never lost a single opportunity for advancing the Extreme Socialist Agenda. Going semi-hysterically & passionately overboard for what he believed was his trademark. Interpreting every issue in the World and its resolution thro’ a lens of simplistic, extreme palliatives, according to his beliefs, was a (thoro’ly boring!) hallmark.
And so Naomi?
I’d suggest the views of both are supremely irrelevant to real-politik and societal needs for moving forward.
Naomi Klein numbers high among the pantheon of Totally Irrelevant to the realities of this World — as was Stephen Lewis (except for his laudable works for countering the effects of AIDS in Africa, for which I give him all credit). Would that Naomi Klein were to apply herself to being less of a waste of space, and — somewhere, perhaps — intellect?
“this time for the urban neighbourhoods next door to the power plants and refineries.”
Clearly, not a person who knows where power plants and refineries are located these days.
I live in a Midwestern city of almost 1.5 million people. The nearest coal fired power plant is about 70 miles away, in the boondocks. The locals over there would be very upset to loose it as the property taxes on the plant pay for their schools and roads. And, it is not “dirty”..
Someone from Pennsylvania and Appalachia please check in — my understanding is that the vast majority of coal miners in that part of the country have traditionally been white.
My family came from coal country in Northeastern PA. To the best of my knowledge the region in those days held a lot of Poles, Italians, Greeks, Germans…. In fact I believe it has only been about the last 20 years that large numbers of other ethnicities have begun to flood into the region.
Don’t forget the Welsh. My paternal grandfather died in a Pa. coal mine accident.
Kip Hansen said:
Kip, West Virginia is in the center or central Appalachia and I was one of the first few posters, as well a real live honest-to-goodness born-n-bred Hillbilly that already “checked-in” when I posted this.
Maybe you overlooked my post or just considered it “crapolla” of little to no importance.
Kip Hansen also said:
Kip, …. IMHO, …. that was a dastardly racist slur directed at WV’ans in general and Hillbillies in particular ……. or was it just “mimicry” of what you were mis-nurtured to believe about us Hillbillies.
“Traditionally”, during the past 200 years, very few non-whites immigrated into the hills of Appalachia looking for a good paying job ….. simply because …. “you worked hard or you went hungry” …… so you had to work hard for yourself at growing the food to feed your family ….. and/or …. you worked at logging, timbering, glass making, natural gas drilling, railroading and/or coal mining which was and still is dangerous “hard work”.
And traditionally, the aforementioned job “types” were not applicable for the use of “slave labor” … so, all readers of this post should rid their mind of that racist thought.
The Cult of Calamitous Climate, of which this empty headed canadian parasite is a member, is Eugenics Reborn.
Every accusation they make as to the motives of those who doubt their cause, is most revealing as a window into their miserable frightened world.
It is not an accident that the cost of this mass hysteria over weather is disproportionally born by the worlds poor.
Who are mostly brown people.
Just as here in Canada one of the “success ” policy stories of our Liberal Party is the Apartheid System imposed on our native peoples.
It takes government control of a childs education to produce a voting public as dumb as we have become.
Classic help from a government of parasites.
We are here to help you…
Into poverty, deprivation and oblivion.
You almost certainly know that the Chinese who are neither sensitive nor politically correct are slowly recolonializing Africa. And wherever they are the Chinese military is also there. The Chinese interest is in minerals.
The workers are black but the managers are Chinese. When the workers throw a tantrum they quickly learn that the Chinese don’t accommodate much.
Hmm, CAGW and [class] diversity. Well, it may not be a one-to-one relationship, but both are promoted by the same factions. There’s that.
Naomi started this year in Rochester then off to New Brunswick, then Sherbrooke Quebec, then Ontario, then off to Los Angeles, then Reno, then up to Oregon, British Columbia, then across to Baltimore, then up to Boston, then across to Chicago, off to Colorado, then up to Calgary, across to Vancouver, back to Chicago, down to Kentucky, then up to Toronto, down to Michigan, then back across to Vancouver, Winnipeg next, back to Reno Nevada, then across to London, then Dublin, back to Calgary, across to Toronto, then Ottawa, back to Chicago … whew — what a fossil-fuel-hating gal has to do just to make a living.
http://thischangeseverything.org/events/action~agenda/page_offset~-1/time_limit~1470931199/cat_ids~6,13,10,12/request_format~html/
In most cases, the poor moved near the industrial areas after the plants were built because the land was cheap, not the other way around. This author is an idiot.
Will someone please get my whip, it’s hanging up beside my hat, I think Naomi needs to be punished for this, so I’ll just have to take one for the team and volunteer my spare time in a strict professional education plan… (wink)
That is not true in in the St. Louis Mo. region if you check the demographics.
Wood River, IL, where the refinery was at one time the world’s largest, was completely white until the late seventies and has a racially balanced population even now, of middle class families, thanks to new controls over emissions added constantly.
The operating coal power plants in the region are far from any urban areas and actually, Ameren’s Portage de Sioux, MO plant is closer to flourishing riverlands and rich folk’s getaways and marinas (with no complaints I’ve heard). All through the region the only inner-city air quality issues are smog from all the old cars still being used.
I would like to see how she arrived at her assumption.
Idiotsyncratic
Methinks she doth PROJECT too much.
Funny how Klein sees the entire Earth as warming, but only sees whites as racists. Anti-racism is just a code word for anti-white.
She might not realize that the measurable warming has been in the NH at middle-to-high latitudes. Not that many “people of colour” (gotta love that euro spelling).
Oops, I forgot the Asian and Eskimo populations at the high latitudes! my bad.
Hey….white is a color too!!!
Come to think of it, folks in Asia aren’t that concerned about CO2 emissions either. So maybe that plays into her racism thing… if she can spin something.
She is a far left radical. She among other celebrities ( Who got rich under the capitalist system) created what they call the Leap Manifesto with the goal of de-industrializing Canada. The ideas are beyond nutso. Her ideas are dangerous.
https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/
For some people, “getting yours and preventing others from getting theirs” is a lifelong ambition.
There IS a link between racism and climate, and Naomi provides it.
I bet her “social” activities and green movies are financed by the Rockefeller Bros or family. You know the ones who used to own Exxon and Mobil. I’ve found they pop up in just about all activities like Naomi Klein’s.
Read my blog
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
cheers
Roger
Naomi Klein: Trying to link Climate and Racism
Desperation is this last ditch available to a fool.
This is why democracy was invented, to get through to these self-serving numbskulls that most of their utopian ideals have nothing to do with living in the real world.
test log in
I would love for African and south American, Asian countries to have the same access to cheap solid, regular electricity and other energy resources that the developed world has.
Am I racist ???????
“Am I racist ???????”
No you’re just a neo-colonialist patronising fascist imposing your particular cultural values on other cultures instead of the EU, IPCC, UN elites telling them they need to go without their dirty wood, dung, kerosene, etc cooking fires in order to save the planet for…err…no wait a minute…
Laughable. Burning carbon creates CO2, which is airborne plant fertilizer. This helps people around the world, especially the very poor, to grow more food than they otherwise would be able to produce. So this actually helps the most poor demographic in the world, the poor in Africa. The conclusion Naomi has drawn is inconsistent with the glaring facts.
Just like all the other celebrities who have cabbaged on to the climate change religion, Ms klein seeks to further her public image with the media controlled segment of the population and draw attention to herself, so that public appearances will be as profitable as possible.
I have not read through completely, but did want to add this one tidbit. I recently asked an Hillary voter who passed the civil rights, republicans or democrats. As most of us well know, she said Democrat’s. I made sure she new she was being lied too.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/10/politics/civil-rights-act-interesting-facts/
Typical. Standard operating procedure. Race-baiting has become a joker’s wild card – use it for anything.
It’s pretty low.