In the past year, I try to follow my curiosity on various perspectives related to climate change. Personally, it’s easier for me to find information about “cleaner” energy because I have followed it since college years. I know that I have various questions about the term “clean” recently, especially after I read Apocalypse Never and then observed what is currently happening in Europe related to energy.
My curiosity led me to another thought-provoking book with a quite controversial title: Climate Change is Racist: Race, Privilege and the Struggle for Climate Justice. The book is written by a white writer and activist named Jeremy Williams.
It’s a relatively short book. As the author wrote:
I am going to keep this book short, because I want as many people to read it as possible.
The author did his best to be concise about the answer of his burning question about how climate change is racist. At the beginning of the book he laid out the facts about the unequal carbon footprints around the world.
In the first chapters, Jeremy Williams pointed out the internal conflict he faced to write about racism as a white person. However, he believes that climate change is a white problem. The people of northern hemisphere of the earth (Europe and North America) contributed more to global carbon emissions.
In the middle of the book, Jeremy Williams brought us closer to the roots of climate injustice. Brought us back through the history of colonization and slavery. It’s one of the hard-hitting chapters in this book.
The book also highlighted an important reflection about how privilege most people are.
Including me.
I wrote the draft of this post on my mobile phone, at the airport. I went to the airport by taxi and I was about to fly to other city for work. So much carbon footprint.
I consumed a lot of energy as my life grow. I even have the time to reflect on how I am still a part of over consumptive society.
How about you?
In the book, Jeremy Williams wrote:
If you’ve been able to cut your carbon footprint and feel like you’ve done your bit, there’s an element of privilege to that too.
Those who are most vulnerable have footprints so small that there’s nothing to cut, and they experience climate change as something that is done to them,
not something that we’re all bound up in collectively.
That is such an introspective paragraph. The sad part of this is it’s true that the climate crisis will harm people that are relatively poorer and have limited choices. Most people still need to go to work to factory or offices, with chaotic public transport. They need to endure long work hours, added with exhaustive commuting hours. While some of us, might have choices to work from home. Or even from Bali for some.
Another paragraph that I highlighted:
You can tell me I have to live with less, but nobody should say it to the billion people who live on a couple of dollars a day. This kind of language obscures the injustice of our climate predicament.
By the end of the book, Jeremy Williams invites us, the privileged ones, to learn and listen more. This is the hard part. With various voices out there, it’s hard to listen to more people. I believe there are peoples in Indonesia that preferred to have their city to be more modern. But, I know there are peoples that are also fighting bravely to protect our environment. Even though it’s hard, we need to listen more from the people out there. There will always be trade off from our choices.
Doubling down on solar power means we will temporarily rely on China as the biggest material provider. Speeding up electrification with batteries means we will need to dig and to mine more than ever to get the raw materials. Shifting away from coal will ask us to be ready to provide a stable energy source. At the moment, I can only think of gas and nuclear. But, each choices will have their own consequences. Recently, a new documentary by BBC exposed how Drax chopped down trees from important forests in Canada as the source of “renewable energy” for UK’s electricity.
There will be no one solutions to solve all.
Just transition from too much fossil fuel is a challenging and political task. But, this is the reality that we faced today.
A lot to learn.
A lot to listen.
I can take the knee as a symbolic gesture. But when I get in my car or fly on a plane, I contribute to global injustice that considers Black lives cheap. My actions don’t match my words.
And while I cannot extricate myself from this injustice entirely, I have responsibility to do what I can.
- Jeremy Williams.
