If you’re confused as to what the title is referring to, let’s revisit one of the most talked about moments from Hurricane Kartina footage, Kanye West style:
Don’t run away yet – my post is a bit more informative than Kanye was. I’m not trying to say that greenhouse gasses hate black people. But I have found some information that will make you feel pretty shocked – at least, it should. Hurricane Katrina may not have been a direct cause of global warming, but it was a well documented time where a natural disaster and racial issues were well intertwined.
It may seem strange to relate something such as a climate change to any ‘isms’ other than environmentalism, but it’s pretty easy to see it is inextricably linked to imperialism, colonialism and racism. Here are some things to think about:
- Australia, the US and Canada produce the most carbon emissions per capita.
- China and India, placing 1st and 4th place in carbon emission by country, do not even rank in the top 10 countries of carbon emissions per capita.
Interesting. Australia, the US and Canada are pretty dirty. Makes sense that they were key players in the industrial revolution and were “First World” nations – they had the resources that created carbon emissions before most. Now let’s think about where these First World countries outsource their work. Take a look at the majority of products in your house, or probably the tag on your sweater – does it say that it was made in India or China? Remember that outsourcing is not commonly attributed in carbon footprints. This is called carbon emission outsourcing; where developed countries produce their emissions elsewhere – namely in developing countries – and we consume the products, but the carbon emissions weren’t made on our turf. For instance, the US outsources about 11% of their total carbon emissions ; the majority of that to the developing world.
This is a climate change course, not a humanities course, so I won’t dwell on the many underlying issues of why developing countries are primarily people of colour. But what I do want to talk about is how climate change will affect these bodies of colour. As we sit in a white, privileged, North American society, we worry about how climate change will hurt us. But we also fail to see – or just ignore- how it is already affecting people that are outside of our borders.
Let’s take a look at Australia. In 2007, people of Tuvalu were displaced from theirnative land due to climate change, making them the worlds first (noted) climate refugees , essentially due to the drowning country because of high sea levels. Australia initially denied their migration because it would only produce more carbon emissions. Right.
Let’s be real – once again I won’t go into details of systemic/institutionalized racism, but take a second and think about who represents the people that own and facilitate these pollutive industries. Did indigenous people come to mind? No, probably not. However, despite them not being at all largely responsible for these carbon emissions, they will be hit the hardest – as well as other marginalized bodies and people of colour who deal with displacement, poor resources and poverty on this earth – which, when we speak of indigenous people, was really theirs. Due to droughts and unusually dry winters over the past years, indigenous people of North America have had to deal with a loss of agriculture, erosion and loss of native plants/grass due to high temperatures, and natural disasters further isolate their communities (If you want to read more about this, you can see the climate change effects on indigenous people here .)
We can start to see how many of the people on this earth who contribute the least to climate change are going to be the people who are hit the hardest – and it doesn’t just ‘happen’ to be people of colour. This is a result of racially organized capitalist production and “strategic” social systems.
Don’t get me wrong – no one can escape climate change. But it sure is clear of who it’s going to capture first. So when you think about climate change, don’t forget to include some climate justice in there. The earth won’t be the earth we know if it ends up only being for some of us.
-Kamilah