The Three Axes of Climate Injustice and Faux Radicalism

[Sukla Sen]

Sounds too smart and nice.

Vijay Prashad is an intellectual aligned with the CPI(M) (and a nephew of Brinda Karat?).

He's the executive-director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Chief Editor of the Leftword Books.

But, there're problems at many levels.

Just three examples.

I. The thesis of colonial loot.

Of course, the colonial rulers were looters and pretty brutal too; no doubt about that.

But, they were no Nadir Shah - looting accumulated wealth in the form of precious metals and jwellery.

They introduced new and revolutionary (productive) technology to help create wealth, made the natives toil and skimmed off the bulk of the produce.

(Of course, again, certain pre-existing forms of production - based on manual labour and some of these associated with very high level of individual skill, were (even wilfully) destroyed.)

II. They made us dependent on coal.

What we were dependent on till then? Jungle wood? 

III. They left us with 13 per cent literacy.

What was the level of literacy they had found us with?

It had been confined to only a thin top layer.

And what was the content of that literacy???

(Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar - an eminent Sanskrit scholar himself, became legendary for his gritty fight to get English and science education introduced by the British colonial rulers in Calcutta/Bengal.)

Coming to the substantive issue on the table: "climate injustice" has three major axes - and just not one.

AA. The global (or geographical) North - the colder region, is the major emitter of the greenhouse gases (GHG), being far more developed, while the (poorer) global South - the warmer region, is more affected by global warming - triggered by the emissions of GHG.

BB. Within any given country, broadly similar is the picture of the rich vis-a-vis the poor.

III. The present, together with the immediate past, generation is enjoying at an enormous cost to the future generations.

Moreover, the global South - it's necessary to keep in mind, is not an undifferentiated entity.

The low-lying coastal areas and the smaller island nations are facing the grim prospect of being just wiped out by the rising sea - caused by global warming, in the pretty near future.

They constitute a separate bloc altogether and are the most vociferous in favour of ceasing use of coal (ref.:  <https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Climate-Change/COP26/Nations-strike-climate-deal-after-India-led-compromise-on-coal>), which India, China (and the likes of Vijay Prashad) are so doggedly defending - from under the banner of Global South.

<https://youtu.be/pBKNoBs3ENo>