Al Jazeera has published a superb article by Vijay Kolinjivadi titled "We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction." I'll provide several excerpts below, but I encourage you to read the whole thing. There's much more, and it is essential reading.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/1/29/greening-ourselves-to-extinction
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Governments and corporations have teamed up to turn the apocalypse into a money-making opportunity. They have rushed to put forward false solutions to the climate crisis: from the push to replace fuel-engine vehicles with electric ones, to so-called climate-smart agriculture, and massive tree planting projects for carbon offsets.
All this trickery is called “greening” and it is designed to profit off of climate fears, not stop climate change. While guaranteeing high returns [for investors], this deception is tantamount to the genocide of the hundreds of millions of people who will perish from the effects of climate change within the next century — because things *are* that bad.
What governments and corporations have pushed for in terms of climate action in the past few years are policies that only make the situation worse.
Take carbon offsets – the epitome of “greening”. Acting as real-life “Pass GO and Collect $200” tickets, they allow some of the biggest climate criminals to go on polluting by engaging in a charade of tree-planting schemes. The logic behind them is that we cannot stop our greenhouse gas emissions immediately because that would “hurt the economy”, so we can instead plant trees that will absorb them and grow the economy through carbon markets – a supposed win-win situation.
But this fallacy has been repeatedly exposed. A recent investigation into the world’s largest carbon standard found that 94 percent of its rainforest offset credits did not actually contribute to carbon reduction.
Nature conservation has also fallen prey to the “greening” deception. For years now, large conservation organisations and their corporate sponsors have been pushing the idea that large swaths of land and forests need to be fenced off so we can protect biodiversity and help mitigate the effects of climate change.
Like the carbon offset schemes, this policy is just another way to enable big polluters to continue to pollute by saying: “We are doing something for the planet.”
A much better solution would be addressing the biggest cause of biodiversity loss: industrial-scale farming. It destroys the soil, increases desertification, releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases, and is linked to deforestation.
We also have people like billionaire Bill Gates who say they are “very optimistic” about the future. Of course they are! Since 2020, the top 1% has collected nearly two-thirds of all new wealth, while the world has faced a deadly pandemic and massive climate-change-related disasters.
The optimism of the wealthy and the fake climate solutions pushed on us are quite effective in convincing people that climate change will be tackled. That is because they provide reassurance that we will not have to give up the comforts we enjoy, and because they also give us, the consumers, a "choice" – to go green or not.
Making the “green” choice leaves us satisfied that we are doing something about climate change. But driving an electric car, putting your organic produce in a tote bag, and turning down your heating or air-conditioner by one degree is not going to save the planet. Let’s have the courage to face this fact.
What *would* make a difference is developing mass transport and substantially reducing car ownership; closing coal mines and ending oil and gas exploration; promoting decentralised and community-managed renewable energy systems; doing away with industrial-scale monoculture farming; and supporting Indigenous-led agro-ecological systems that have been shown to enhance nutrition, biodiversity, and quality of life.
It's an excellent article. Thank you for sharing.
I was particularly happy to see this addressed:
"Then there is the fatal confusion between efficiency and ecology. We are being duped to believe that buying more “energy efficient” or “green” products can save the planet. Whether it is a new electric car, an “eco-friendly” condo, a paper straw instead of a plastic straw, or a solar-powered turtle-shaped mega yacht – all are branded as ecological solutions because they are supposedly more energy or materially efficient than the standard alternative."
A couple of months back I posted a little bit about trying to get a solar company to help us with updating the power on our off-grid home. I was a bit harsh on the companies and how they're not actually selling sustainability. They're selling the idea to soccer moms and McMansion owners that they don't have to change anything in their lifestyle if they just put enough solar panels on their roof.
I got a bit of blowback, but I ended up updating it later to expand on my thoughts and how no one was interested in our job, but almost every one of them suggested that we *consume more electricity* and buy more solar panels. Multiple companies told me buy an electric car, or two, to up the amount of solar energy I needed. One person, not understanding that we were off grid and not trying to sell back to the grid, even suggested running a few electric heaters outside 24/7 for a couple of months and then bringing them the electric bill so they could fill out paperwork for a larger grid-tied system.
Know what I (re)learned? No one wants to hear it. Even here on Mastodon they want to believe that science has solved the climate problem and if they just slap some solar panels on their roof then they've done everything that they have to.
I deleted it and quit arguing it with people, but I'm definitely stealing "the fatal confusion between efficiency and ecology" for future use.
