Is there a racist element to global warming? Well, if you consider that the majority of accumulated emissions come from nations of richer ‘whiter’ peoples and that the impacts of climate change will hit nations of poorer ‘non-white’ peoples hardest, then yes.
And so it makes perfect sense that “Black Lives Matter” closed down London City airport. Climate change and race are not separate issues.
Then there is the matter of class.
Piketty and Chancel (pdf) released a report on emissions last year around the same time that Oxfam released their own report on CO2 emissions. Both reports found that the vast majority of emissions are released by a relatively small clique of rich people. They found that the breakdown was true for populations within any given nation as well as for the populations across nations – ie, the global population.
The complete breakdown was that the richest 10% of people release 50% of emissions, the following richest 40% of people release 40% of emissions and the poorest 50% of people release 10% of emissions.
Many reading this are going to, yet again, wring their hands, draw the curtains and cling to familiar comforts. But what about you? You going to get off your chuff?
If you’re in Dunedin, there’s a ‘Protestival for Democracy’ this Saturday at 1 p.m. gathering at the dental school. It seems to have been organised by the group TTP Action Dunedin who recognise that the days of single issue politics are over. This from their face book page (public).
We in Dunedin will be taking part in the national day of action, on the theme of Reclaim Democracy – The People’s Alternatives, with a march and rally in the Octagon on the 10th September 2016.
We demand social and climate justice!
Our community opposes the TPPA, privatization, asset sales and attacks on public services and Treaty rights, exploitation of workers, oil exploration, fracking and continued damage to our environment.
So get out your hobby horse, high horse, bandwagon or whatever. Whether your passion is related to climate change, gender, trade, union rights or housing – whatever – they are all interconnected in a multitude of ways and all feed into almost any major headline statement in a variety of ways. Our job is simply to steer our passion nimbly and appropriately according to the headline of a given day.
Democracy’s an easy one, right? Okay, see you there.
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