Human rights: Food for a gaia-centric thought ‘The rights of nature’
HRR 645
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the needed new vocabulary and actions in the economic and political discourse that is turning a blind eye on climate-related disasters. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Note: You can easily translate the Readers to many languages, Use the app deepl.com and it is done instantaneously. It takes seconds to download the app into your computer or phone and translations are of high quality.
–We have to watch our parlance: Not environment, but ‘biosphere’; not environmental, but ‘ecological’. We must stop referring to the natural world, otherwise known as ‘the biosphere’, as ‘the environment’. Environment simply means ‘surroundings/scenery’ –which in the neoliberal world tends to mean ‘real estate’. ‘Environment’ is an entirely anthropocentric or indeed individualistic concept, implying separateness. (C. Tudge)
Of the dominant economic discourse and climate related disasters
-Mother Nature does not deal in US dollars. (Indigenous Land Defender, USA)
1. Economic forecasting continues to be blind about events disrupting the global economy as they cause climate-related disasters: I mean floods, droughts, super-storms, sea-level rise, as well as the covid-19 pandemic –all with still so many many victims in many countries. Actually, the more socio-political (and human rights) consequences of climate disruptions are more commonly taught in other disciplines –they are rarely taught in economics classes or found in economics textbooks. Economists still cannot face up to their forecasting failures that inevitably link complex interdependent factors in society.*
*: To repeat: The profession of fortune-telling is the business of astrologers and economists, and it is not possible today to establish who is less wrong. (Louis Casado) or, if you prefer, economics is very useful …to give employment to economists. (Francis Blanche)
2. Today, economics is revealed to us as outdated, and its concepts are found to be based on inaccurate classifications based on ideologies in ‘political disguise’. [Take just one of many examples: Think of how trillions of subsidies and tax breaks made societies ‘suicidally’ dependent on fossil fuels]. But humans are finally understanding our true situation on planet Earth: One species is indeed interdependent with all other species. (Hazel Henderson)
Nothing deprives Capitalism of a future more than the ecological collapse to which it is heading
3. To turn the climate crisis into the ultimate crisis for Capitalism itself is about transforming the ‘crisis of symptoms and outcomes’ into a ‘crisis of causes’. (Andreas Malm).
4. Given the above, the intriguing question here would be: Will Socialism be reborn as a response to the ill-consequences of the climate catastrophe? (Martin Mosquera)**
**: You cannot be a socialist without fighting the socioeconomic system that puts profit and exploitation at the center of the human economy to the point of endangering the future of the species and the planet. (Oskar Lafontaine, Anne Applebaum).
Going in the wrong direction
-The shocking figures of the advance of an impoverishing biodiversity and a rapidly deteriorating air and water quality (not forgetting plastics) are the real mega-threats we face, now, not tomorrow. (Luis Weinstein)
5. Instead of organizing the fight against large corporations that kill the planet, the modern, dominant ecological, rather forces its faithful to clean and expiate their consciences by recycling packaging, plastic and garbage, buying electric cars –and vilifying and excommunicating the neighbor who does not do it. (Oleg Yasinsky)
6. With the pandemic and Ukraine, the fight over climate change has been shelved: A sorry state of affairs. With the sums invested in ‘the-suicide-of-reason’, we would have solved all the problems identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a threat to our existence in the planet. I do not think Mother Earth is not interested in Putin, Zelensky or Biden and the small window we have, before we reach 1.5 degrees increase in global temperature, is closing. These discussions on the wrongs and reasons of the actors involved in Ukraine seem to me to be useful for them, but marginal compared to the real problem humanity is facing. (Roberto Savio)
7. Ecological injustice and climate change are doling out damage in profoundly unequal ways by going in the wrong direction. This is visible not just between countries, but also within them; if people achieve the freedom and empowerment needed, they will be more likely to be organized and globally mobilized to solve big problems like climate change. But, so far, there is no guarantee that greater human freedom and empowerment will stop climate change, or bring about justice by putting the rights of nature first. If given choices, without simultaneously raising consciousness, people may as well pick the wrong choices. Nevertheless, it makes sense to try. (Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò)
What do you think is the best predictor of climate action? Political orientation? Climate concern? Nope, neither
8. By far, it is whether a person believes that other people are already taking action –which turns out to matter even more than their own belief that they should take action. All of which means that when climate-friendly actions are depicted on-screen as common, normal, and expected, viewers will be more likely to change their behavior. (Good Energy Stories)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-From the climate crisis to Covid-19, the challenges of our time do not respect national borders –they are global. So, our response to them must be too. The United Nations has been the boldest and most visionary experiment in international cooperation in the history of humanity, but in some important ways it is broken. Too remote. Lacking teeth. Dominated by too few powerful nations. When emerging from the wreckage of World War Two, the UN represented a giant step forward in how humanity was governed. And from responding to humanitarian crises to tackling the ecological emergency, the UN has played a crucial role in shaping our world for the better. But with humanity facing multiple urgent existential crises, it needs to evolve. Without highly-functioning, significantly more participative global governance, it is much harder, maybe impossible, to meet the challenges we face. There are simple things that can help, like reforming decision-making, securing a greater role for public interest civil society and social movements to suggest policies (with voice AND influence) and to choose a proactive Secretary General to lead the UN. But to stand a chance to achieve this, we have to make our voices heard. Loud and clear. (Avaaz)