If the coronavirus pandemic provides any indication of our collective ability to respond to shocks, the future of the climate crisis does not look good.
Take India as an example. On March 24, 2020, more than 1.3 billion people found themselves in a lockdown due to Covid-19-with only four hours’ notice. As in many countries, those who can obtain savings or formal employment return to safe homes.
However, for a large part of India’s 40 million migrant workers—many of whom live by word of mouth—the blockade keeps them away from their hometowns and has no income.
Due to the closure of roads and railroads and lack of resources to meet basic needs, many people who keep society running-whether as domestic helpers, drivers, gardeners, street vendors, or daily bets or construction workers-decide to walk hundreds of kilometers to get back there. The village they left behind, in some cases Due to the destructive climate.
Many people died en routeAll over the world, workers in the informal economy have been particularly affected by the crisis, especially women’s over-representation of precarious jobs.
Marginalization
In’developed’ In countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, we continue to see people of color being disproportionately affected by the virus.
They usually live in densely populated working-class communities and work in highly exposed jobs such as frontline nursing and transportation. Blacks and browns find themselves on the front lines Covid-19 impact in countries most prepared for such shocks.
Those regarded as “unproductive”, such as the elderly and the disabled, are sacrificed to serve an economy that sees them as a burden rather than a cherished member of our community.
everywhere, Police over-enforce lockdown measures Those who are the poorest and least able to enter space.
The workers who were sent to the front lines were punished for demanding protective equipment, and were punished for increasingly hostile immigration policies and anti-immigration headlines. In other words: in this global crisis, the most vulnerable and marginalized people pay the highest price.
Transformative
Is it possible to learn from this painful preview? Can we reorganize our ways of working, caring for, moving, resting, and entertaining to prioritize humanity and the planet, especially in times of crisis?
The need to realign and focus these needs has long been the slogan of climate justice advocates around the world.
Activists in the north of the world have recently been reinvigorated by the Green New Deal, aiming to “rebuild better” from the climate crisis, creating green jobs, apprenticeships and retraining programs to stimulate renewable energy generation, improve energy efficiency, and reduce waste , Promote sustainable transportation and change land use.
Renationalize energy, waste, agriculture, and transportation companies to effectively carry out this work, while also addressing fuel poverty by combining clean energy produced by cheaper countries and energy-saving programs, such as improving household insulation. Both are important features.
The Progressive Green New Deal hopes to respond to the climate crisis through transformative political and economic plans.
Transformative
This means large-scale investment in public infrastructure, providing free or cheap green transportation, and shifting from oligarch energy companies to democratic communities or public ownership and investment models.
The Green New Deal framework also focuses on just transitions, ensuring that jobs lost in carbon-intensive industries are transferred to renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors, as well as decent jobs in reforestation or organic agriculture and ecological industries.
To some extent, these developments represent a shift in global northern climate thinking. They previously defined “environment” and climate action as abstract categories separated from the economic and political systems.
This shift is largely due to long overdue lessons learned from the overall approach of the climate justice movement in the global South and indigenous communities.
However, the Green New Deal is largely trapped in the country’s imagination. Activists and politicians in North America and Europe have come up with compelling visions of how such plans can achieve change across the country-but the story of climate change is global, so its solutions must also be global.
loss
If global northern activists seek to decarbonize at a rate that is inconsistent with controlling warming below 1.5°C-this will be a risk for rising seas, heat, water and food pressure, disease transmission, and increasingly frequent and intense storms, wildfires, Drought-often leads to long-term desertification and flooding.
Although record financing of fossil fuel-intensive industries and state subsidies continue to contribute to the increase in emissions, the need to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping the global temperature well below 2°C below pre-industrial levels has never been so Clear.
The difference between the two Paris Agreement figures is also obvious. There is a significant difference in the impact of a 1.5°C increase in the global average surface temperature and a 2°C increase.
exist NASA’s summary of the IPCC special report in October 2018, They pointed out that compared with 1.5°C, due to lack of available water at 2°C, it is estimated that 61 million people will face severe drought. At 1.5°C, the pressure on water resources caused by climate change will be reduced by 50%.
It is estimated that at 1.5°C, the number of people facing increased water insecurity will decrease by 184-270 million.
supply
According to WWF, limiting the temperature rise to 1.5°C will also cause The number of people experiencing regular heat waves has dropped by 1.3 billion, The number of people exposed to abnormal heat waves has decreased by 65 million. In addition, the number of people suffering losses and damages related to sea level rise will decrease by 10 million.
If we continue this way, we will go beyond the limits set by the Paris Agreement. The exact estimates vary, but most people believe that the global average surface temperature will rise by about 4°C by the end of this century.
This may make most of the equatorial belt uninhabitable for most of the year, and the Sahara Desert will spread to Southern and Central Europe. Two-thirds of the glaciers that feed Asia’s many rivers will disappear.
Existing policies limit warming to 2.8°C, but there is no court responsible for allowing states to implement their policies, and their commitments and goals are not binding.
Although ambitious decarbonization is necessary, many of the demands raised by the North, such as those surrounding renewable transportation, will have a major impact on supply chains and environmental sustainability around the world.
vitality
At the expense of the basic needs of most people in the global South, the introduction of green energy into the global North runs counter to the concept of the Global Green New Deal.
Ignoring the interdependent nature of the climate crisis and its response measures may usher in a new era of “green colonialism.”
We cannot accept a “progressive” model that relies on the exploitation of workers who mine minerals and metals for renewable energy generation, or allows the continued concentration of land ownership and use rights in the hands of a few people.
We cannot replace a fossil fuel-centric economy-a country like Nigeria can 86% of export revenue comes from oil and gas And two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line-using green energy to maintain the same dynamics of who has the right to get what.
Doing so will not only miss the opportunity for reconstruction, but also miss the opportunity for reconstruction again Knowing that another world is possible; a world in which clean energy, food, water, housing, transportation, care and health needs are universally met without exception.
Anti-colonialism
Our understanding and mobilization methods of the Green New Deal need to be changed. This includes how we formulate our campaign, our policy recommendations, and our vision for change in the coming years. This means calling for climate justice in the global understanding of responsibility, accountability and compensation.
This book brings together the knowledge of climate activists from all over the world to provide an alternative framework for the Green New Deal—a framework rooted in the principles of global justice and understanding of the interdependent nature of problems and their solutions.
It goes beyond the abstract clichés of “internationalism”, but uses case studies of specific policies and campaign frameworks from all over the world to inspire further action; it challenges those who work under the framework of the Green New Deal to think beyond national boundaries.
We reject the false and imaginary solutions proposed by the political and financial elites. They only perpetuate the energy system based on extractivism and neocolonialism.On the contrary, this publication upholds The Seventeen Principles of Environmental Justice at the 1991 Transnational Environmental Leadership Summit of Colored People, And since then, the climate justice leadership in the global South has been the majority.
The vision of this publication is to seek to limit warming to 1.5°C Higher than pre-industrial level. This vision also gives communities on the front lines of climate change the resources they need to address the consequences of our already warming world. It looks at ways to escape the climate crisis, which are rooted in the principles of democratic ownership, gender justice, anti-racism and anti-colonialism.
policy
At its core is a remediation framework that puts the responsibility on the historical emitters of the global north and allows them to take a fair share in the struggle for a sustainable world. This means striving for zero carbon by 2030, expanding climate financing, welcoming immigrants, rethinking land acquisition, distribution and food justice, and providing resources, expertise and patent exemptions to countries that need clean technology.
Frames alone cannot challenge Rio Tinto’s increase in mining in Australia or India’s elephant sanctuaries. They cannot prevent the global deepening of institutionalization and forced austerity and privatization, which keeps us away from ensuring universal social protection.
They cannot provide countries with fiscal and policy space to prioritize people and the planet, or stop their continued dependence on fossil fuels. They cannot completely reform the extractive trade agreement so that the majority of unstable workers in the global South can make things for the few of us in the global North.
They cannot improve our collective ability to respond to global pandemics, climate change, or economic recession in a way that does not require the most irresponsible to pay the most. What we hope this framework can do is to propose a broad set of principles and red lines in which we can work together and take action. Those who read this publication have the responsibility to initiate campaigns and policy actions to make our world a better place.
imagine
Our 1.1°C world has disproportionately harmed those who are least responsible. The few richest people in the north of the world bear the greatest responsibility to repair these effects and prevent uncontrollable warming in the future.
If current national commitments and climate action ambitions are realized, the global average surface temperature will still rise by about 2.8°C. For now, even these inadequate goals are unlikely to be achieved because they rely on future carbon capture technologies. These technologies are impractical at best, and at worst, they will be through resource extraction and waste dumping. Continue to cause environmental racism.
At the same time, the resources to adapt and repair the harmful effects of historical emissions that are already in operation are hidden from those who need help most. To make matters worse, when climate, humanitarian, and development financing are squeezed, available funds are often redistributed to those who cause problems through subsidies from fossil fuels and agricultural companies.
Coping with climate collapse requires a global perspective to address the root cause of how we got here.
These authors
Harpreet Kaur and Dalia Gebrail are curators and editors View Global Green New Deal.
