Naomi Klein, at The Intercept, proposes that the time to talk about climate change and other injustices — from economic austerity to systemic racism and underfunding of social services — that turn disasters like Harvey into human catastrophes is right now, when the costs of inaction are on full public display. If we hesitate, Klein advises, out of out of a desire to not “politicize” a still unfolding human tragedy, we leave the door wide open for further exploitation.
…every time we act as if an unprecedented weather event is hitting us out of the blue, as some sort of Act of God that no one foresaw, reporters are making a highly political decision. It’s a decision to spare feelings and avoid controversy at the expense of telling the truth, however difficult. Because the truth is that these events have long been predicted by climate scientists. Warmer oceans throw up more powerful storms. Higher sea levels mean those storms surge into places they never reached before. Hotter weather leads to extremes of precipitation: long dry periods interrupted by massive snow or rain dumps, rather than the steadier predictable patterns most of us grew up with. The records being broken year after year — whether for drought, storm surges, wildfires or just heat — are happening because the planet is markedly warmer than it has been since record-keeping began.
In an ideal world, Klein concedes, we could put politics on hold until the immediate emergency has passed. Then, when rescue efforts were no longer underway and everyone was safe, we could have a thoughtful public debate about the policy implications of the crisis we just witnessed. But that is not our reality.
We live in a world in which the governing powers have shown themselves all too willing to exploit the diversion of a large scale crisis, and the very fact that so many are focused on life-and-death emergencies, to ram through their most regressive policies, policies that push us further along a road that is rightly understood as a form of “climate apartheid.” We saw it after Hurricane Katrina, when Republicans wasted no time pushing for a fully privatized school system, weakening labor and tax law, increasing oil and gas drilling and refining, and flinging the door open to mercenary companies like Blackwater. Mike Pence was a key architect of that highly cynical project — and we should expect nothing less in Harvey’s wake, now that he and Trump are at the wheel.
The right, Klein makes clear, will begin exploiting Harvey immediately, peddling dire solutions like militarized police, increased oil and gas infrastructure, and privatized services. Consequently, there is a “moral imperative for informed, caring people to name the real root causes behind this crisis — connecting the dots between climate pollution, systemic racism, underfunding of social services, and overfunding of police.” We must “seize the moment to lay out intersectional solutions, ones that dramatically lower emissions while battling all forms of inequality and injustice.”
Klein reminds us that the decision to withdraw from the Paris accord — “an event that will reverberate globally for decades to come” — was in the news for roughly two days. Klein allows that it may feel unseemly to be talking about root causes while people are still trapped in their homes, but concludes that this is the only time there is any media interest whatsoever in talking about climate change. We won’t be having any kind of public policy debate after this emergency subsides, as a long roster of previous disasters reveal:
A little more than a year ago, Fort McMurray, the town at the heart of the Alberta boom in tar sands oil, nearly burned to the ground. For a time, the world was transfixed by the images of vehicles lined up on a single highway, with flames closing in on either side. At the time, we were told that it was insensitive and victim-blaming to talk about how climate change was exacerbating wildfires like this one. Most taboo was making any connection between our warming world and the industry that powers Fort McMurray and employed the majority of the evacuees, which is a particularly high-carbon form of oil. The time wasn’t right; it was a moment for sympathy, aid, and no hard questions. But of course by the time it was deemed appropriate to raise those issues, the media spotlight had long since moved on. And today, as Alberta pushes for at least three new oil pipelines to accommodate its plans to greatly increase tar sands production, that horrific fire and the lessons it could have carried almost never come up.
There is a lesson in the Alberta story for Harvey, Klein warns: the window for providing meaningful context and drawing important conclusions is short and “talking honestly about what is fueling this era of serial disasters — even while they’re playing out in real time — isn’t disrespectful to the people on the front lines. In fact, it is the only way to truly honor their losses, and our last hope for preventing a future littered with countless more victims.”