People Versus Profits
It’s Earth Month, and the increasing toll of climate disasters is making our peril as living creatures on this planet clearer than ever before. We need to act, and act quickly, if we are to significantly change the trajectory of our rapidly heating world. At the same time, we can’t let our sense of fear and urgency override our good sense about the direction of those actions. Who is making decisions, who is benefiting from those decisions, and are we heading toward the world we want to see? We need to be smart, persistent, and dauntless to ensure that we are not only averting climate catastrophe, but also building healthy, just economies and communities that will let all of us thrive.
Climate change’s effects are increasingly frightening. With drought threatening more than 60 percent of the contiguous US and unprecedented wildfires again ravaging the western states last summer, communities sighed in relief as the weather cooled and fall arrived. But climate change has altered the protection once offered by the change of seasons. Mountainous, snowy Colorado experienced 30,000 evacuations due to the Marshall Fire in December 2021, followed by a blaze near Boulder at the end of March that required an additional 19,000 evacuations.
Finally, responses are also accelerating. The most positive news to date was reported by CNN on March 30: “The world generated a record 10% of its electricity from wind and solar in 2021 and clean sources accounted for 38% of total power supply — even more than coal.” Ember, a climate think tank, found that in 2021 “ten countries generated more than 25% of their power from wind and solar, led by Denmark at 52%,” and 50 countries generated more than 10% of their power from wind and solar. The fastest transformations took place in the Netherlands, Australia, and Vietnam, which transferred “around a tenth of their power from fossil fuels to wind and solar in just the last two years.” These transformations demonstrate that the change we seek is possible.
The challenge and the balancing act that we now experience is this: Enormous shifts are underway, as powerful institutions at long last recognize the towering threat that now looms over everything. Meanwhile, across our country and world, we see the least powerful groups at most risk from climate change. As markets, government policies, and everyday practices shift dramatically, everything hangs in the balance.
When change is in the air, contests for power follow. Today, we see a rush by powerful entities to use this existential crisis to strengthen the power and interests of private capital and the global 1%. We also see labor, environmental justice communities, communities of color, and low and middle income groups recognizing this key opportunity to create a just transition leading to a world where we all flourish and thrive. This is another iteration of the recurring confrontations described by Naomi Klein: powerful interests looking to capitalize on a disaster to seek more power and profit through disaster capitalism, attempting to overpower the disaster collectivism that communities often manifest in the wake of disaster to work to care for each other and emerge into a better world.
The challenge this presents is one of forward momentum and balance. How do we manage to ride the storm while keeping our eyes on the prize of climate survival and an equitable world? How do we leverage the forces of capital to enable the speed and funding we need to make change at scale, without surrendering our vision for an equitable future? How do we fight proposals that sacrifice the public interest to private greed, without losing the battle for a liveable future? Our only choice is to be flexible, passionate, committed, and clear eyed.