We have known about climate change for decades. As early as 1992 the threat was sufficiently obvious, and the science sufficiently clear, to justify a UN treaty on the topic. Yet we’ve only even begun to get our act together in the last five or so years. Why?
As COVID-19 reminds us, global crises tend to amplify existing inequalities in society. The same is true of climate change. Its impacts have been felt disproportionately by people of colour, both in developing countries and minority communities within wealthy nations.
For many in these communities climate change has devastating effects. It intensifies floods in south Asia, drought in southern Africa, and extreme tropical storms from Mozambique to the Caribbean. And then there’s the pacific islands, literally swallowed by rising seas. But the fact that these have mostly impacted poor people of colour, not wealthy white westerners, has hindered global action.
Race has justified the systematic exploitation of non-white people and their lands, and continues to disadvantage Black and Brown people through both institutional and individual bias. But it is not the only reason that action on climate change has been slow.
Class, wealth, gender and the legacies of empire have all played a role. As have the lobbying of vested interests, an economic ideology that discouraged government intervention, and even psychological factors that make it hard for humans to process a crisis of this scale.
But we rarely talk about the impact of race. The murder of George Floyd, and the wave of protests it has inspired, reminds us how Black and Brown lives are often less valued by those in positions of power. An injustice that stretches far beyond the policing system.
Part of the recent surge in interest in climate across developed countries has been because now we are beginning to feel its effects. Directly, through the unseasonable heat of recent years, and indirectly, through images in the media of bushfires in Australia or devastating storms in the US.
Yet these kinds of climate events have been happening for decades in developing countries. While new calls for climate action are always welcome, perhaps if we genuinely valued Black lives as we value those of white Westerners it wouldn’t have taken so long.
Some will argue it’s natural to respond more strongly when disasters are closer to home. There is certainly some truth to this. Yet even within wealthy countries, official responses to climate events are often weaker when the victims are people of colour. One need only look at Katrina, or more recently Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where the federal response was quantitatively poorer than for other storms of equal severity. And when storms hit cities with high diversity, such as hurricane Sandy in New York, the impacts are unfairly distributed across race and class.
In the UK, such inequities are less clear, probably because we experience less dramatic climate events. However, if the unequal impacts of other crises are anything to go by, it’s only a matter of time. Recent government figures have highlighted how BAME Brits are disproportionately affected by COVID, and independent studies have shown harmful air pollution is most concentrated in ethnically diverse areas. This brings yet another harrowing meaning to the words “I can’t breathe”.
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