Activists hoped Egypt’s COP27 would bring a focus on Africa. They were disappointed – despite the new anti-graft law passed in early 2018 – and even more disappointed to find that the rest of the world paid them no heed. The “globalization” argument was always a lie.
Egypt, after all, is just one of many poor African countries where people are being exploited by local and global elites to provide both profits and jobs for foreign-owned business interests.
But in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate talks, climate protesters used the opportunity to highlight inequality as an issue that needed attention on both sides of the planet.
COP21, held during the United Nation’s 2007 World Climate Conference, drew attention to the issue. More than 1,000 activists from over 50 countries joined in the massive demonstration.
Around the world, the scale of economic exploitation of the global South began to be evident to the media. As Naomi Klein documented in her book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” a wave of “climate catastrophes” began in 2008 and has since risen to include numerous natural disasters in low-lying areas of the world. The scale of this problem dwarfed anything seen in previous human migrations and the slave trade.
But for the most part, most commentators have not focused on the real issue. Klein, for example, refers to the “climate crisis” as if it is an all-encompassing concept. It is not. Climate change is a symptom of systemic and structural issues, and can only be made worse by the actions of individuals who seek to profit from it.
As Naomi Klein explained, the “climate crisis” is simply the economic disruption caused by climate change that can be resolved by addressing the underlying issues and structural impediments that drive it – and by shifting resources to climate adaptation and mitigation.
In other words, the climate crisis is the result of a failure to create an energy economy that is fair to the people of the world. It is a result of the failure to provide equitable access to infrastructure that supports energy production – or access to the energy-rich regions. It is a result of the
