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 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.