Biological and climate emergency is a reality, but there is no justice in how its causes and consequences are divided up between the Global North and the Global South.
The median person in the US consumes 44 million calories per day. The human body requires intake of 2 thousand calories per day. Exo-somatic consumption of energy – for non-metabolic purposes, such as transport or appliances – of the average citizen of the North surpasses several hundred times that of a poor citizen of the South. Think of the number of cars per capita to get a rough idea. Even endosomatic consumption of energy – bodily calorie intake – is still substantially less in the South. Hunger and undernourishment are still a reality for one-seventh of the planet’s human population.
But working households in the North are not to blame for these differences; bio-ignorant capitalism is to blame. And they are suffering its effects, too. We are living in a moment where a prosperous future is a prospect for the very few, as the post-COVID-19 crisis managers might erase in a second the social victories that took decades for social movements to build. This article is an urgent call to seize the moment and do it differently.
