Climate Colonialism: Difference between revisions
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<Blockquote>The COP26 can be seen as one of the theaters of climate colonialism (led mainly by corporations, powerful governments, and elites), yet simultaneously as a site of decolonial, anti-colonial, anti-racist, and feminist politics (led primarily by activists, youth, Indigenous groups, academics, unions). Ernstson and Swyngedouw (2019) termed the depoliticizing technocratic discourse that coexists with obscene capitalist accumulation and waste as the Anthropo-obscene (critiquing the totalizing banner of Anthropocene that homogenizes an undifferentiated humanity that does not exist). International climate negotiations falter in addressing climate change without meaningfully reducing fossil fuel dependency, growth models, and hyper-consumption, along with the systems that undergird them across scales. Rather, these spaces become spectacles, one of performance, that erases historical and spatial geopolitics and power relations. A performance of diversion, delay, co-optation, and performativity without substance is repeated almost annually. Nonetheless, these are also spaces of opportunities to challenge the system, to utter necessary words for more people to hear, collectivize among young and old activists, learn from different positionalities, create new openings and possibilities of alliances – in other words, a repoliticization of climate instead of the depoliticized techno-economist utopias that never deliver. The global theaters of climate negotiations showcase politics and the political, whether subaltern or suburban, where there are both reifications and ruptures in what politics is and what constitutes its pathways. Sense of despair, suffocation, stagnation, abandonment, and regression co-exist with that of revolutionary potentiality, alternative possibilities, collectivizing, worldmaking, and critical hope. | <Blockquote>The COP26 can be seen as one of the theaters of climate colonialism (led mainly by corporations, powerful governments, and elites), yet simultaneously as a site of decolonial, anti-colonial, anti-racist, and feminist politics (led primarily by activists, youth, Indigenous groups, academics, unions). Ernstson and Swyngedouw (2019) termed the depoliticizing technocratic discourse that coexists with obscene capitalist accumulation and waste as the Anthropo-obscene (critiquing the totalizing banner of Anthropocene that homogenizes an undifferentiated humanity that does not exist). International climate negotiations falter in addressing climate change without meaningfully reducing fossil fuel dependency, growth models, and hyper-consumption, along with the systems that undergird them across scales. Rather, these spaces become spectacles, one of performance, that erases historical and spatial geopolitics and power relations. A performance of diversion, delay, co-optation, and performativity without substance is repeated almost annually. Nonetheless, these are also spaces of opportunities to challenge the system, to utter necessary words for more people to hear, collectivize among young and old activists, learn from different positionalities, create new openings and possibilities of alliances – in other words, a repoliticization of climate instead of the depoliticized techno-economist utopias that never deliver. The global theaters of climate negotiations showcase politics and the political, whether subaltern or suburban, where there are both reifications and ruptures in what politics is and what constitutes its pathways. Sense of despair, suffocation, stagnation, abandonment, and regression co-exist with that of revolutionary potentiality, alternative possibilities, collectivizing, worldmaking, and critical hope.<Ref name = "Sultana"></Ref></Blockquote> | ||
<Blockquote>From heads of state to local activists, colonial tactics were identified and openly called out during and after the COP26. As many dejected climate activists, delegates, and youth from the Global South left the COP26, a sense of injustice and climate delay was articulated by many, expressing grief, anger, sadness, and futility. While some framed it in terms of climate justice failures, others were more direct in calling out colonial and racial tactics of control and disposal of marginalized communities across the Global South and elsewhere. This sense of necropolitics at a global theater such as the COP was criticized more so than in the past, where refusal to ‘make nice’ was unmistakable. The varied resistance and oppositional tactics were also captured in mainstream media outlets. The sense of urgency with which more constituents across borders argued for better and more effectual outcomes was on display. While such concerns have been expressed at many COPs before, the rage was more profound. Ironically, over a decade ago at the 2009 COP, Klein (2009) reported “And unless we pay our climate debt, and quickly, we may well find ourselves living in a world of climate rage.” This rage was deemed righteous in the claims by historically-oppressed countries for justice, reparations, and equity over several preceding COPs. But now the rage has gone global. Yet, it is not equivalent everywhere nor experienced in the same registers.<Ref name = "Sultana">Farhana Sultana, The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality, Political Geography, Volume 99, 2022, 102638, ISSN 0962-6298, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102638.</Ref></Blockquote> | <Blockquote>From heads of state to local activists, colonial tactics were identified and openly called out during and after the COP26. As many dejected climate activists, delegates, and youth from the Global South left the COP26, a sense of injustice and climate delay was articulated by many, expressing grief, anger, sadness, and futility. While some framed it in terms of climate justice failures, others were more direct in calling out colonial and racial tactics of control and disposal of marginalized communities across the Global South and elsewhere. This sense of necropolitics at a global theater such as the COP was criticized more so than in the past, where refusal to ‘make nice’ was unmistakable. The varied resistance and oppositional tactics were also captured in mainstream media outlets. The sense of urgency with which more constituents across borders argued for better and more effectual outcomes was on display. While such concerns have been expressed at many COPs before, the rage was more profound. Ironically, over a decade ago at the 2009 COP, Klein (2009) reported “And unless we pay our climate debt, and quickly, we may well find ourselves living in a world of climate rage.” This rage was deemed righteous in the claims by historically-oppressed countries for justice, reparations, and equity over several preceding COPs. But now the rage has gone global. Yet, it is not equivalent everywhere nor experienced in the same registers.<Ref name = "Sultana">Farhana Sultana, The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality, Political Geography, Volume 99, 2022, 102638, ISSN 0962-6298, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102638.</Ref></Blockquote> | ||
Revision as of 17:20, 19 August 2023
COP26
The COP26 can be seen as one of the theaters of climate colonialism (led mainly by corporations, powerful governments, and elites), yet simultaneously as a site of decolonial, anti-colonial, anti-racist, and feminist politics (led primarily by activists, youth, Indigenous groups, academics, unions). Ernstson and Swyngedouw (2019) termed the depoliticizing technocratic discourse that coexists with obscene capitalist accumulation and waste as the Anthropo-obscene (critiquing the totalizing banner of Anthropocene that homogenizes an undifferentiated humanity that does not exist). International climate negotiations falter in addressing climate change without meaningfully reducing fossil fuel dependency, growth models, and hyper-consumption, along with the systems that undergird them across scales. Rather, these spaces become spectacles, one of performance, that erases historical and spatial geopolitics and power relations. A performance of diversion, delay, co-optation, and performativity without substance is repeated almost annually. Nonetheless, these are also spaces of opportunities to challenge the system, to utter necessary words for more people to hear, collectivize among young and old activists, learn from different positionalities, create new openings and possibilities of alliances – in other words, a repoliticization of climate instead of the depoliticized techno-economist utopias that never deliver. The global theaters of climate negotiations showcase politics and the political, whether subaltern or suburban, where there are both reifications and ruptures in what politics is and what constitutes its pathways. Sense of despair, suffocation, stagnation, abandonment, and regression co-exist with that of revolutionary potentiality, alternative possibilities, collectivizing, worldmaking, and critical hope.[1]
From heads of state to local activists, colonial tactics were identified and openly called out during and after the COP26. As many dejected climate activists, delegates, and youth from the Global South left the COP26, a sense of injustice and climate delay was articulated by many, expressing grief, anger, sadness, and futility. While some framed it in terms of climate justice failures, others were more direct in calling out colonial and racial tactics of control and disposal of marginalized communities across the Global South and elsewhere. This sense of necropolitics at a global theater such as the COP was criticized more so than in the past, where refusal to ‘make nice’ was unmistakable. The varied resistance and oppositional tactics were also captured in mainstream media outlets. The sense of urgency with which more constituents across borders argued for better and more effectual outcomes was on display. While such concerns have been expressed at many COPs before, the rage was more profound. Ironically, over a decade ago at the 2009 COP, Klein (2009) reported “And unless we pay our climate debt, and quickly, we may well find ourselves living in a world of climate rage.” This rage was deemed righteous in the claims by historically-oppressed countries for justice, reparations, and equity over several preceding COPs. But now the rage has gone global. Yet, it is not equivalent everywhere nor experienced in the same registers.[1]
People's Summit for Climate Justice
A leading climate justice activist from the UK, Asad Rehman, said at the closing of COP26 “The rich have refused to do their fair share, more empty words on climate finance. You have turned your backs on the poorest who face a crisis of COVID, economic and climate apartheid because of the actions of the richest. It is immoral for the rich to talk about the future of their children and grandchildren when the children of the Global South are dying now.” Such scathing criticism was similarly paralleled by many scholar-activists who pointed out the failures to tackle loss and damage that disproportionately impacted the post-colonial coastal and small island nation-states. After the COP26, Ugandan youth climate activist Vanessa Nakate expressed her frustration, “We cannot adapt to starvation. We cannot adapt to extinction. We cannot eat coal. We cannot drink oil. We will not give up.”[1]
No More 'blah blah blah'
Carbon Offsetting
Carbon Credits
Solutions
Food Sovereignty | Defund The Pentagon | Decolonization | Land Back
Necro-Politics
Cited
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Farhana Sultana, The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality, Political Geography, Volume 99, 2022, 102638, ISSN 0962-6298, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102638.