The Idiocy of Environmental Racism
JohnAndrew
States, aggravated in some places by local reactions
against illegal immigrants, it's crucial for all
genuine environmentalists to recognize the political
stupidity and suicidal character of "green" racism.
Whatever the rights and wrongs may be in the
immigration debate, racism (and especially white
racism, in all its guises) is a path to nowhere
for the American and indeed the global environmental movement.
The facts are clear: some 80 percent of the world's population
is now nonwhite, and in the United States, some 25 percent of the
people are now African-American, Hispanic, Native America, Asian
or "other."
Environmental problems by their very nature, however, usually
cut across class and racial lines, not to mention property lines
and political boundaries. This makes global climate change, for
example, a problem that is international in scope, and that can
only be solved through international cooperation.
The preservation of tropic rainforests and the vast biological
diversity they harbor, similarly, is a challenge that requires
action by governments and private citizens in Asia, Africa,
Latin America and Indonesia - it is not a problem that even the
richest, most politically influential and best-informed white
environmentalists can take on by themselves, especially not from
the vantage point of the US and Europe.
The safeguarding of ocean fisheries from over-exploitation, the
protection of the stratosperic ozone layer from ozone-destroying
CFC emissions, the global regulation of toxic chemical wastes
and nuclear wastes, even the control of acid rain and air pollution
also are international problems requiring international cooperation
to resolve.
In a world that is 80% nonwhite, of course, international cooperation
has to mean environmental cooperation across racial lines, not
to mention religious and cultural lines as well. Not just American,
European and Australian whites, but people of all races will need
to participate and cooperate in creating a sustainable civilization
that can co-exist safely with nature. Not just American Christians
and freethinkers, but also Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and
animist peoples from around the world will need to work together to
tackle problems like global population growth, the destruction of
wildlife habitat around the world, and the destabilization of the
earth's atmosphere by industrial pollution.
When a small minority of white racists, pursuing an explicitly
racist and white supremacist agenda, attempt to invade and
take over the mainstream environmental movement, therefore, they
are putting the entire environmental project in jeopardy.
They are effectively trying to convert the cause of environmental
sustainability into a permanent minority cause, a weapon wielded
by 20 percent (or actually, less than 20 percent) of the world's
population against the remaining 80 percent. And in so attempting
to turn Green activism into an minority affair that is only of
interest to racist white people, they are effectively working to
undermine and kill the global campaign for environmental reform.
There is too much at stake environmentally, too much at stake
in terms of human survival, for more mainstream environmental
activists of all persuasions - radical and liberal and reformist,
grass-roots based or well-established - to let the racists
succeed.
A century to a century and a half ago, when ecological science
was in its infancy and modern environmentalism was just being
born, there were prominent environmental thinkers who indeed
were white racists. Ernst Haeckel, the founder of the new science
of ecology, was one of them, and took his racist notions so seriously
that he ended his life with ideas that were similar to those of the
Nazis. But Haeckel and other ecological thinkers of the late
19th century inhabited a different world, a world of grand European
empires and the domination of most of Asia, Africa and the Pacific
by white colonial administrators.
World politics and world demography both have changed drastically
since then. And all questions of political morality aside, it
is simply not viable any more for white Europeans and Americans to
think that we can dominate the world. Too many things have changed
since the 1890s, from the rise of industrial societies in China,
Japan and India, to the decolonization of Africa and the desegregation
of political and economic life here in the United States, for
the racial supremacy of the 1890s to work in a modern context.
Benjamin Franklin, at the time of the American Revolution, is
said to have advised his fellow patriots that "We must all hang
together, or we will hang separately" - a reference to the grim
fate awaiting them all in the event of a British victory in the
war. Today, environmentalists of all colors, races and religious
beliefs are in the same situation.
We must all hang together,
or our failure to cooperate and compromise will doom civilization to
terrible experiences in the form of global climate change,
uncontrollable toxic emissions, ongoing destruction of biological
diversity and wildlife habitat, and an uncontrolled exploitation of
the world's oceans, leading ultimately to the collapse of essential
ocean fisheries.
In the world of the early 21st century, racial cooperation may
still be unconformtable for many of us, but it's an urgent political
and environmental necessity. Let's not allow the professional
purveyors of hate to blind us to that fact.
puppe...@hotmail.com
[snip]
> In the world of the early 21st century, racial cooperation may
> still be unconformtable for many of us, but it's an urgent political
> and environmental necessity.
If they would agree, I would agree.
Socks