Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Open Democracy author Sulaiman Ilyas-Jarrett, racist white people are holding back from committing to climate action, because white people are not suffering the full impact of climate change; though the author also attacks climate activists themselves for being too white.
Why don’t we take climate change seriously? Racism is the answer
If climate change directly affected white Westerners, action would have come quicker.
Sulaiman Ilyas-Jarrett
1 July 2020We have known about climate change for decades. As early as 1992 the threat was sufficiently obvious, and the science sufficiently clear, to justify a UN treaty on the topic. Yet we’ve only even begun to get our act together in the last five or so years. Why?
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Race has justified the systematic exploitation of non-white people and their lands, and continues to disadvantage Black and Brown people through both institutional and individual bias. But it is not the only reason that action on climate change has been slow.
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But we rarely talk about the impact of race. The murder of George Floyd, and the wave of protests it has inspired, reminds us how Black and Brown lives are often less valued by those in positions of power. An injustice that stretches far beyond the policing system.
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The UK has one of the world’s highest historical CO2 emissions, but has borne almost none of the consequences.
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Decolonising climate movements
The climate movement itself has a reputation for being predominantly white. In the West, there is some truth to this, though there are also a range of diverse voices doing fantastic work on the subject. One reason for this is that a lot of Black communities have more immediate struggles to focus on. It can be difficult to focus on the thing that might hurt you tomorrow when there’s something else that might hurt you today.
Another reason may be the lack of representation in the movement, which reinforces the idea that this is a ‘white’ issue. Many people have simply never thought of climate in relation to race, though this is rapidly changing, and many young activists of colour now consider climate a vital issue.
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Read more: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/why-dont-we-take-climate-change-seriously-racism-is-the-answer/
Accusing people opposed to climate action of being racists, without providing evidence to back such a claim, is a pretty nasty thing to do.
Setting aside justifiable outrage at this ugly evidence free generalisation, I was impressed in a purely technical sense at the effort the author made to unify incoherent activist narratives. But you would expect a technically impressive effort from a former Cambridge University Isaac Newton Scholar.
Tell horrible man to go away.
That is all.
The subheading has it correct, but for the wrong reasons:
“If climate change directly affected white Westerners, action would have come quicker.”
Yes, “climate change” *doesn’t* affect “white Westerners”. It also doesn’t affect non-white Westerners, or Easterners, or really anyone else. The scale of warming is small compared to natural variability, and humans are sufficiently adaptable to deal with a large climatic range. If climate change *actually affected people*, things would be different.
Climate change *policies* that seek to make energy more expensive to reduce AGW are promoted largely by countries dominated by “white Westerners”. They can afford the virtue signalling — developing countries can’t. But I don’t think climate activists trying to prevent developing nations from getting affordable energy are actually motivated by racism, as they’re doing their best to sabotage affordable energy at home as well.
No one can safely talk about race. Or at any rate, no one white. You’re either a racist or an antiracist, and antiracism looks suspiciously hostile to white people. Black people are so angry that they are offended by compliments from white people trying to make friends. It’s hopeless. The current hypersensitivity about race is going to force white people to segregate, just to avoid Black anger.
Notice the astonishing double standard when it comes to judging whites and Blacks. It is racist if you extrapolate from Black criminals to Black people. On the other hand, if one homicidal policeman kills a Black man, all white policemen, and by extension all white people who benefit from the justice system, are racist. No one is going to win this argument.
…or one ordinary policeman doing his job restraining a big strong habitual criminal on drugs resisting arrest, who’d just tried to pass a counterfeit bill and then would not give back the stolen article, and who then croaked from heart failure. The characterization of his death as a homicide is exactly why Portland is burning right this minute, and the police can only try to fend off the insurrectionists with pepper spray instead of beating their heads with batons as would happen if rationality was allowed to play any part. So it’s not helping. 🙁
Thank God there are still places one can talk about “race,” an archaic concept that is meaningless unless you consider Caucasians, Africans, Asians etc to be subspecies of Homo sapiens, which seems asinine to me. So I’ll talk about it – briefly.
Real people with real lives don’t care about race, or sexual orientation, much less an expandable catalog of imaginary “genders.” The execrable, utterly amoral news media use these and other invented non-issues to divide us, incite violence among us, and thereby provide still more fodder for their industry, whose main purpose for existence is to sell the crap in their sponsors’ advertisements. They also believe they have a secondary duty, which is to act as kingmakers/regicides and moral arbiters to all of us peons (how’s that for irony?).
Nobody can honestly claim they don’t see a person’s epidermal melanin, but most of us can claim we don’t give a damn. Like Martin Luther’s dream come true, most of us judge a person by the content of their character – and if that character is garbage, we ought to be allowed to say so, as many brave African-Americans are saying right now, if only the news media were listening. You have to go to Youtube and social media to hear their voices.
Anyway America is in a terrible state and, since American media constantly transmit their propaganda worldwide, people in other countries are obviously jumping on the “hey, let’s turn our own countries into hellholes!” bandwagon as fast as they can. Unless western leaders grow some gonads, this insanity is going to get worse before it gets better. Good luck to all of us.
According to a recent nut case up in NYC, black cops are all Uncle Toms and equally guilty.
Yeah, they would. I fully expect that thousands of white Antifa members feel that way, and would say so publicly. For those with short memories, half the six-person team of cops who took down that thug in Baltimore and took him on his fatal ride were black. Then the news media got hold of the story, portrayed it as “racist cops kill helpless black man” and Baltimore burned. Lots of cops, and judges, and prison guards are black. Apparently, if you’re not a Stalinist trying to usher in the new Workers’ Paradise in the USA, you’re not really black at all, cf. Joe Biden’s comment.
Please God, let Donald Trump hand them their asses! 🙁
White people get more often run over in the snow, hence it is their natural instinct to prefer global warming to return of the little ice age.
True dat. Witness Grandma, who got run over by a reindeer. She was just trying to get home. So tragic!
Racism is the answer, doesn’t matter what the question is today.
In addition to being a moronic Liar on climate, he uses the “racism” issue to try to hide the fact that all of his arguments are simply emotion-based. He is nothing but a two-bit demagogue, and his rhetoric is meant solely to stir emotion.
White privilege is mistaken for Western Civilization Privilege.
If a person living in a Western Civilization enclave subscribes to and lives by long tested Western Norms, the privilege is usually forthcoming.
Norms:
• Work hard
• Show up for work
• Don’t commit crimes
• Respect other people and their property
• Treat other people fairly
• Don’t become addicted
• Get a good education
• Don’t have babies outside a committed relationship
People of different races, religions, and tribes from all over the world emigrate to “the west” and acquire Western Privilege. And there are plenty of white people who were lucky enough to be born in the West who do not live by Western norms, and they often live mediocre lives.
The popular black culture in western settings holds every one of the western norms in disdain…with predictable results.
For blacks especially:
• Obey the police.
• Never fight with the police.
• Don’t try to take a policeman’s weapons.
“…there are plenty of white people who were lucky enough to be born in the West who do not live by Western norms, and they often live mediocre lives.”
Respectfully, FIFY: There are plenty of white people lucky enough to be born here who do not live by western norms, and a very large proportion of them live absolutely terrible lives.
Making lousy choices in life is no respecter of any demographic whatsoever.
Recent black immigrants almost universally do better economically compared to blacks who were born here.
Yup…they missed the opportunity to jump on the multi-generational welfare gravy train, so had no choice.
This is not a new idea, Lisa Jackson was using it in her time at the EPA.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/epa_un_mission.pdf
Lisa Jackson spoke frequently of promoting “environmental justice” and “expanding the conversation of environmentalism.
“Environmental justice is one of my top priorities for my time at the EPA, and it is something we are working to include in each and every initiative and decision the agency makes.”
The Congressional Black Caucas Foundation also got in on the act:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090904141931/http://www.nccecojustice.org/downloads/Climate%20of%20Change.pdf
“African Americans are already disproportionately burdened by the health effects of climate change, including deaths during heat waves and from worsened air pollution. Similarly, unemployment and economic hardship associated with climate change will fall most heavily on the African American community.”
“African Americans are less responsible for climate change than other Americans; historically and at present, African Americans emit less greenhouse gas.”
However, environmental justice goes back further to the time of Al Gore and his EPA Head, Carol Browner:
“In 1994, Clinton issued an executive order, directing that every federal agency make environmental justice part of its mission. In a speech at the April 22, 1994 Earth Day EPA Administrator Carol Browner said:
“Nobody can question that, for far too long, communities across this country–low income, minority communities–have been asked to bear a disproportionate share of our modern industrial life.””
Jackson is now Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. https://www.apple.com/uk/leadership/lisa-jackson/
It just so happens that Al Gore is on the Apple board:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
“Gore is the founder and current chair of The Climate Reality Project, the co-founder and chair of Generation Investment Management and the now-defunct Current TV network, a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc., and a senior adviser to Google.”
hes a fool
funny is he was happy to be IN the Uk?(??) take a white mans scholarship, so thts a bit of a hypocritical problem for a start
and how many dark complecteds are gatecrashing now or moved TO whiteys nations
because their homelands were a shitfight in motion..
and then moan and bitch about whiteys not handing over enough money free housing whatever?
Aus has paid trillions over the yrs to our aboriginals and they still want more!
what land we “took”( as they see it ) has been well and truly paid for and they do sfa with what theyre given except trash it and hold the hand out for more
Dean at a Massachusetts nursing school fired for saying “Everyone’s Life Matters” in an e-mail to a student:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/dean-of-massachusetts-nursing-school-fired-after-saying-everyones-life-matters
I was raised by a couple of Massachusetts liberals who taught me that all forms of racism are bad, and indeed all lives matter. God rest their souls. I still subscribe to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream. While I agree that many black people continue to suffer unjust treatment at the hands of racist criminals, I can’t imagine that Dr. King would approve of the overt anti-white racism that is so prominent today. This is madness that can never help anyone. It has to be the result of agitation by traitors and nefarious foreign actors who hate our country.
The racist criminals that are oppressing black people are for the most part, also blacks.
And what “action” is this climate activist proposing?
$Money$
Always follow the $money$!
Invent some grievance and demand $money$.
$Money$ will never really solve the problem so send more $money$!
It makes you wonder if he knows anything about the climate!
White-shaming is systemic racism.
Yes, it is. And it is so obviously counterproductive for those non-white people that it purportedly benefits that I find it hard to believe that it’s not simply intended to incite chaos in our society. (Traitors and nefarious foreigners actors)
Question:
Are Chinese white?
The whole “Whites are causing all the worlds problems” is so 2019.
Why oppose racism with more racism? The crimes of the CCP are not crimes of all Chinese people any more than the crimes of White Power neo-Nazis are my responsibility. You appear to be painting the oppressed Chinese people of Hong Kong and the imperiled Chinese people of Taiwan, not to mention many innocent mainland Chinese people with a broad brush condemnation of “Chinese” because of the actions of a corrupt government.
Of course I oppose the insanity of blaming all evils on white people. But everyone should be judged by their individual actions, not by their membership in some ethnic group. I’d rather be rejected by my racial group than embrace their tribal hatred of other groups.
He’s partly right. “If climate change affected white people …” the fact is that after 30 years it doesn’t affect anybody except maybe positively. That’s why no one cares.
Question for the Wokes Who Are More Smarter Than Me:
Did Climate Change Cause Racism?
Or Did Racism Cause Climate Change?
Andrew
You left out the third—and most important—question: What exactly do you mean by the term “climate change”?
Why does this guy leave out China, which is producing 30 percent of manmade CO2, more than any other country? And the Chinese at the same time are among the worst racists on this planet. Yellow comes first , of course, then white and black at the bottom. Does this guy live under a rock!?
That’s communist CO2, it only has good affects.
As in all Sociological narratives, the direction of causality is thoroughly ambiguous and left in doubt.
One may thus legitimately propose to Mr. Sulaiman Ilyas-Jarrett, “Why don’t we take today’s manufactured racism seriously? Climate Change™ is the answer”
A climate change crisis: spuriously manufactured in the West.
Spuriously manufactured in the West: a racism crisis.
The operative circle is evident. Manufacture a crisis. Exploit it for money and power.
And that’s why we don’t take Mr. Sulaiman Ilyas-Jarrett seriously.
He’s a crisis battenee, nothing more. It’s been a good living so far, hasn’t it, Mr. Sulaiman Ilyas-Jarrett.
Completely predictable — CAGW is caused by racism. Racism also causes droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes and pandemics.
If everything is racism, nothing is.
They are redefining “racism”, after a success with “marriage” and “free speech”.
The one thing I noticed was the complete lack of any data, just the usual unsubstantiated alarmist claims of rising sea level, increased drought, severe storms, blah, blah, blah all tied up in a pretty bow labeled RACISM. Of course no rational idea of how to even start to fix “the problem”.
And this person is a product of Cambridge? Does he really think anyone will take him seriously?
–“Why don’t we take climate change seriously? Racism is the answer”–
Racism is not the answer.
We live in an Ice Age. And this Ice Age has climate change.
It goes from cold to very cold and back to being cold.
The colder cold Earth is, the more violent weather.
People often confuse climate change with weather- they normally
would be confused, but there is a lot brainwashing “teaching” that
they are the same thing.
We live on a water planet. For longer than a million year, Earth has
had a cold ocean. And the cold ocean causes Earth to be in an icebox
climate- or often called an Ice Age. Over millions of years the temperature
of the entire ocean has had average temperature staying in the range of
about 1 to 5 C. Currently our ocean is about 3.5 C.
Life which existed for hundreds of millions of years, has been evolving in much
warmer world than this current Icebox Climate. So in terms of ten of millions of
years, the recent cooling of oceans, has been a significant a global climate change.
Our colder ocean results in more deserts and larger swings in air temperature- and driest regions have largest swings in daily and yearly temperature.
The warmer the ocean, the less dry the world is.
What has the highest average temperature is air temperatures which are warm at night, or has low temperature difference between night time lows and daytime highs. The highest yearly average air temperatures are in the tropics which are not in the desert regions. The dry desert regions can have extremely hot days and cool nights- making their average temperatures lower. Of course there time periods in deserts in which it does rain, and such rainy seasons will have tend to have higher average daily temperatures and with variation of weather can cause both hot days and hot nights.
What causes higher air temperature is the ocean. What causes the world’s higher air temperature is the the tropical ocean. It’s about 40% of the entire earth surface and has average surface air temperature of about 26 C [78.8 F] and quite an uniform temperature {doesn’t change much in a day’s time period of night and day, nor in year’s time period. The tropical ocean is called the world’s heat engine, it not only warms the entire tropical region {the tropical ocean is 80% of surface area of the entire tropical zone {the region within the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn}, warm whole world [including the polar regions}.
The most well known effect of tropical ocean warming the rest of world is the Gulf Stream which make Europe’s average temperature about 10 C warmer. Or Europe average yearly air temperature is about 9 C and it would about 10 C colder without warming effect of the tropical Gulf Stream. But in addition to transporting warmer waters poleward, the tropical ocean warms the entire atmosphere of Earth.
The entire ocean warms Earth, but tropical ocean is always the warmest ocean, and all ocean evaporating constantly, but warmer it is the more it evaporates.
Even cold glaciers are constantly evaporating- but obviously much slower. Anyways the tropics has most of world’s water vapor.
“Water vapor moves heat from the equator toward the poles, distributing heat across the globe. Heat absorbed by water molecules provides the energy for evaporation. That water vapor rises into the atmosphere, carrying the heat up into the atmosphere.”
https://sciencing.com/percentage-water-vapor-atmosphere-19385.html
“The percent of water vapor in the cold Arctic and Antarctic (and highest Alpine regions) may reach as low as 0.2 percent while the warmest tropical air may contain up to 4 percent water vapor.”
So in terms of ppm: 4% = 40,000 ppm and 0.2 percent = 2000 ppm water vapor
400 ppm of CO2 is .04%.
Or what call dry air has a lot water vapor if call 400 ppm a lot of anything.
Mars btw has 210 ppm of water vapor- very dry compare to Earth- they count things the same, with Earth we just count surface air, Mars global air. Or snows mostly CO2 on Mars also water, and water vapor clouds on Mars. Likewise with Venus they say there is only 20 ppm of water vapor, but water vapor in Venus upper atmosphere [small percentage entire atmosphere] is quite a significant factor in Venus atmosphere.
As it’s getting long, I will stop rambling, now.
Just posted the following comment at OpenDemocracy. We’ll see if they leave it up:
We use fossil fuels because they are the most cost-effective source of energy. The higher the percentage of so-called renewables in a region’s or country’s energy portfolio, the higher energy prices are.
It should be completely obvious that higher energy prices impact the poor, and often people of color, the most. This has immediate negative consequences on these people’s lives. Even in wealthy countries that have adopted renewables, poor people are often forced to choose between food and heat in the winter.
Wealthy white climate activists in rich countries are increasingly blocking projects that would bring affordable power to the poorest countries. So we have rich white people dictating to poor brown and black people how they live their lives, and keeping them from advancing. That is the real racism.
Diversity (i.e. color judgments), including: racism, sexism, etc., and exclusion, breeds adversity.
Mr. Jarret doesn’t believe what he’s saying, he is only trying to cause a reaction. It’s like stampeding cattle, scaring the populace and politicians fleeing the direction he wants them to go. That way they can see whom they can intimidate and who will oppose the the Marxist movement. They think at some point they can intimidate enough people they can force acquiescence and take over. Simply tell them you don’t accept the lies and intimidation. STAND your ground and tell the truth.
Where is John Galt?