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
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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.
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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.
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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….