A reckoning for the Global North
Speaking truth to power: 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8a, 8aFR, 8b, 8c, 8d, 8e, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15a & 16
This is a follow-on to Build your own climate bomb. As mentioned, the saddest thing about tackling the Climate Emergency (CE) is that we’re simply incapable of either learning lessons from the past or of taking heed of the current humanitarian emergency (Salon). Follow Part 2 in this series that doesn’t seem to want to stop (see all series recap here & especially the index at the bottom).
Cambridge UK Quakers just screened Eating our way to Extinction (YouTube), a must-see wake-up call on a key driver no-one talks about: the agro-food industry. It crystallised for me what is missing in the broader narrative of tackling CE, inspired by my travels as a youth (slide collection on Flickr) and thoughts on post-Colonialism (mini-series starting here).
The banner slide is the Global South that the Global North doesn’t want to see: a world with decent infrastructure — road in the foreground and buildings in the distance — but under constant change — roadworks at right — and under strain — roadside market with pop-up residences in the ditch — but most importantly, unsustainable — child fetching water from far away.
We were in Taiwan the summer of ’65, in ‘the wet’ (monsoon season) with constant rain. This was in one of two three-month trips thru SE Asia, returning from Australia mid- and end-four year expatriation from France in the mid-’60s. We visited countries by booking a rental car with driver and guide and staying in hostels — my dad did the logistics, my mum did the research— and while admittedly tourists, we saw ‘the other side’ of SE Asia: not of hotels and bus tours but of grittiness and poverty… even though we were privileged as only passing thru and with lots of info to hand!
The monsoon season also exposed the variability and the vagaries of weather in SE Asia. As a pre-teen, I mostly recorded in my mind only to understand much later — thru earlier education as a geologist, and later activism around CE— what all my observations meant: to put it in a nutshell, SE Asia has experienced CE thru the millennia; let me explain.
To the East & South is a geologically active area bordering the largest ocean (Pacific) with volcanic island arcs. To the West & North is the largest continent (Asia) with mountain chains and high plateaux. In between live an enormous proportion of the world population (below) clinging to mountain sides, coastal plains and river deltas: only in mainland India & China are vast fertile plains we’re familiar with in the Global North… And all this in an area historically prone to hurricanes, cyclones or typhoons!
Wikipedia: The Valeriepieris circle[1][2][3] is a South China Sea-centered circular region on the world map that is about 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi) in radius (roughly 6.7% of the Earth’s total surface area) and contains more than half the world’s population.[1]
This area is also the locus of monsoons (Wikipedia) driven by a combination of trade winds and the differing temperature regimes (continents heat up and cool down faster than oceans) to put it very simplistically. What that means there are yearly alternating wet and dry seasons that have driven precipitation and temperature regimes that are largely unknown elsewhere — especially in the Global North developed in temperate wide open fertile agricultural areas — and that are highly variable and unstable… and will be even more so with CE!
The point I’m making this that climate regime influence the agro-economics for millennia, adapting to more adverse conditions in the Global South than in the Global North. This is very simplistic and I won’t go into the science, but very briefly: Agriculture leaned towards planting crops rather than raising animals; why?
- monsoons mean there is great variability among seasons: rainy summers and dry winters, with the switchover bringing in heat for a short period before ‘the rains came’ (longer recently, extending beyond what nature can sustain in fact)
- if your fields are taken out by flood, hurricane or landslide, then you repair and replant the next season. If your herd is swept away, then it takes a generation — shorter than humans for cattle even shorter for sheep never mind farm yard animals, but not the next season— to rebuild your flock
- populations worked out over millennia that crops are far more efficient food production than animals, made necessary by the sheer population vs. arable land ratio — no vast plains and forested areas to adapt and clear for agriculture as in the Global North
- and where there is arable land, its relative scarcity put serious constraints on choosing where to plant crops & raise animals first, or eventually build cities & transport infrastructure
- even the people are smaller as being a more efficient from limited food resources and available space — probably unscientific and simply based on personal observation— are vegetarian diets not less efficient and produce less calories, so people are smaller as a result?
That in and of itself is not an issue. The issue is who influences whom among the Global North vs the Global South. Enter two factors:
- the post-Colonial cultural imperialism remains: the “the West” / former (or present?) colonists / Global North are still seen as the vanguards of ‘civilisation’; even the renewed nationalism and cultural self-awareness in the Global South pits the indigenous people against city / industrial / agricultural populations moulded on colonialist infrastructure
- there is no countervailing political regimes against recently predominant Capitalism that morphed into either neo-Conservatism or demagoguery inside and outside of democratic regimes. Communism however flawed did try and put people first, and there were socialist regimes in between that tried to rein in Capitalism (see here, here and here even though not the main theme). But with no socio-cultural competition there are no checks-and-balances against Capitalism
As a result, the Global South’s ambition is to mimic the Global North, the supposed success stories, rather than develop their own narrative. This is very apparent in the various COP meetings that pit interests of those creating CE against those suffering from it.
Think about it however! It’s one thing for the Chinese and Japanese to prefer western music — just look at the recent roster of performing geniuses — but it’s an entirely other matter if the growing middle class in India or China want to start driving cars or eating steak! I mean, the deforestation of the Amazon is to make way either for cattle or for soy-beans to feed said cattle… And this is not for the Latin American market either! I haven’t seen, and perhaps that is suppressed, the stats for source and outlet of where various foodstuffs come & go from. Watch this space.
Two excellent sources for data visualization are Our World in Data and (ironically) Visual Capitalist.
So finally here is the sucker punch, the narrative no-one wants to get to: We get it all backwards! We should be doing the reverse of what’s happening:
- adopt food regimes based on far more efficient ones than meat based
- adopt climate adaptation and mitigation processes to tackle the CE
- prepare for greater population density as urban areas grow & grow
- invite indigenous people and so-called minorities to the table
- foster cooperation rather than competition to find sustainable solutions
The change in the narrative means a change our attitudes too:
The Global North must admit the possibility of being wrong, that others may have better ideas to tackle the new regime imposed by the Climate Emergency
And that means a new “regime of solidarity for the Anthropocene” (paper).
Addendum: from The Guardian
Libya flood (2023)
‘An alarm bell’: Libyan poet warned of flood risk in Derna before dying in storms
In Derna, and indeed across Libya, everyone is sharing a poem called The Rain, written by a poet from the city, Mustafa al-Trabelsi, who died in the floods. On 6 September, days before writing the poem, he had attended a meeting at the Derna house of culture to discuss the risk of a flood in the city and the state of the dams.
The poem is short but pertinent. It reads:
The rain
Exposes the drenched streets,
the cheating contractor,
and the failed state.
It washes everything,
bird wings
and cats’ fur.
Reminds the poor
of their fragile roofs
and ragged clothes.
It awakens the valleys,
shakes off their yawning dust
and dry crusts.
The rain
a sign of goodness,
a promise of help,
an alarm bell.
