Capitalism or climate justice

Photo by Gabriel McCallin on Unsplash

a crisis of values

With the royal standard in hand, the admiral is the first in his company to step foot on Guanahani. His eyes devour the riches he believes the island has provided him: the lush trees, diverse fruits, endless water, and the naked bodies of the Lucayan people who happen to be there. He is transfixed by their bodies. They will, he ensures the Crown, make excellent servants. 

As soon as he lands, the admiral calls for his two captains, the fleet secretary, and the royal inspector – he needs witnesses –  and utters the official formula conferring dominion to Fernando and Ysabel. It’s unclear to whom the words were addressed or from whom the lands were received (God, perhaps) but his diary insists that he did say every necessary word. It’s also unclear what consequence a missed syllable or two would have had for royal ownership of the land he renamed “Holy Savior.” Regardless, one must observe all reasonable customs when laying claim to the earth, its riches, and its people. 

Western assumptions about global ownership have changed little since Columbus first touched down on what is now known as the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Centuries of Western colonial domination and the capitalist economic system it helped spawn have driven the world to a climate crisis.

We are at an inflection point. American faith communities now have to choose between remaining faithful to the best of our values on the one hand, and augmenting those values to conform to the values and practices that arise under a capitalist economy. To be clear, this choice was always present, as were minority voices of dissent. However, the climate crisis has made it more glaring. 

Climate Colonialism

Echoing colonial practices of the past, the mad dash for resources has already begun. Wealthy nations, corporations, and individuals are already hoarding resources in the name of climate adaptation. They are creating a climate present and future where the immiseration of large swaths of the world’s poor is collateral damage.

Climate change denialist politicians notwithstanding, the Pentagon has been leading the country’s climate change response since at least the publication of its 2012 “Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap.” Its strategic framework takes as a given the likely, “greater competition for more limited and critical life-sustaining resources like food and water.” The tool chosen to execute a project often determines its trajectory. This could be a job for the State Department, whose budget is less than a tenth the size of the military’s. The task could be seen as one of egalitarian cooperation and diplomacy, with justice done to the world’s poorest countries, who have contributed the fewest greenhouse gas emissions and remain most vulnerable to the effects of the warming climate. 

Instead, colonial powers like the U.S. have continued the old ways both internally and externally. There’s a continuum of surveillance, violence, and resource hoarding and privatization radiating from the interiors of wealthy countries, to their national borders, to the resource-rich lands of countries which have been made poor in what scholars such as Doreen Martinez call climate colonialism. 

Within the borders of the U.S., for instance, this has meant the gobbling up of farmland by private entities. The means of survival which is increasingly stressed, in this case arable land, is also increasingly held in fewer and fewer hands. Currently, 40% of U.S. farmland is owned by people aged 65 and older. When they sell, they are likely to sell to the massive private interests driving up costs rather than to other small and midsized farmers. Forecasters warn that potential small buyers are already being priced out by large corporations and the super rich, including people like Bill Gates, billionaire Microsoft founder and America’s largest individual owner of farmland. 

The border is a Western weapon. The desert along much of the U.S.-Mexico border is an arid moat, weaponized against migrants following their countries’ national resources to the U.S. The violence we see there is also climate policy. People are already fleeing the effects of climate change and are being met with guns and barbed wire. Many Central American migrants, for instance, are themselves climate refugees from the region’s drought-stricken Dry Corridor.

Faith communities are at a crossroad. Our shared, prosocial values – egalitarianism, care for creation, solidarity, special care for the vulnerable, promotion of the common good – are wholly incompatible with the values governing our economy and government. Profit at all costs, ceaseless growth, consumption as a good in itself, and special privileges for the rich are reasserting themselves as the guiding principles of the American climate response. Now is the time to decide if people of faith, especially Christians, will again enable a colonial project, this time with the survival of huge swaths of the world’s population on the line. 

In solidarity,

Dwayne