Naomi Klein: Climate change and "disaster capitalism"

Credit: Susanne Miller, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Public domain image. 

Naomi Klein suggests the current climate crisis is a chance to make our world more equitable. That, Naomi insists, would be "a once in a century chance." In this recently published article, Naomi mentions her personal climate change wake up call, and I'm thinking it's about time for all of us to wake up to our endangered planet:

These remarks are adapted from a speech by Naomi Klein on Monday at "Now is Not the Time For Small Steps: Solutions to the Climate Crisis and the Role of Trade Unions" at Salle Olympe de Gouges.

PARIS -- Here is what we know about what to expect from the official climate negotiations.
The deal that will be unveiled in less than a week -- likely to much fanfare and self-congratulation from politicians and an overly deferential press -- will not be enough to keep us safe. In fact, it will be extraordinarily dangerous.

The targets that the major economies brought to Paris lead us to a future of 3-4 degrees warming -- those are the Tyndall Centre's numbers -- not 2 degrees, as was pledged in Copenhagen. Two degrees is how our governments defined "dangerous warming" in the Copenhagen Accord.

And we also know from leading climate scientists like James Hansen that 2 degrees is too high. Indeed we know from lived experience that the amount we've already warmed the globe is too much. We are already living the era of dangerous warming. It is already costing many thousands of lives and livelihoods -- from the Philippines to Bangladesh to Nigeria to New Orleans to the Marshall Islands.

Speaking about climate change as if "dangerous" is a place far off in the distance is nothing less than, as my friend Kumi Naidoo put it yesterday, "subliminal racism." And it's getting less and less subliminal every day. 

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