It’s fascinating that this year’s United Nations Climate Action meeting (COP27) happens to be at the same time that the midterm elections in the United States. Progressive organizations have been denouncing the human rights record of Egypt, this year’s host for the COP27 meeting, while at the same time encouraging and reminding everyone to go to the polls for this “crucial” election. Yes, you are encouraged to vote for this “formal” democracy that created the climate catastrophe in the first place.
The White-West is very worried about the erosion of their old and unadapted democracy. Imagine asking a 19-year-old to go to vote — it’s like asking them to do their homework on a typewriter. This democracy has been controlled for a century by a minority (old white men) who block, for whatever manufactured reason, common people from voting, justifying their restrictions on skin color, gender, or any judicial precedents. The battle to limit voting right is still very much alive. This despicable democracy is addicted to spending more and more money. All this money spent to elect people who have almost no power but are there to ease the wills of corporations and financial markets.
Our climate change crisis is produced mainly by these so-called democratic countries who have not been able for the past 27 years (and 26 COP meetings) to keep their promises to do the right thing. Why are we NOT talking about human rights for the island nations going underwater? Nicholas P. Simpson in The Conversation published an article titled “Climate change will force up to 113 million people to relocate within Africa by 2050—new report”. The White-West is always using the same technic of proportional manipulations. Talking about the hundreds of human-right cases in Egypt but barely mentioning 113 million people forced to relocate in Africa. And what is even more disgusting is that we will be calling these displaced communities immigrants and will be asking every one of them to justify being accepted as refugees into our “democratic” countries.
We can’t keep voting for the same system and organizing the same international meetings, year after year, protesting the inaction of our governments and expecting drastic measures on climate change. This reminds me of Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
We are going to have to do more than vote and protest if we want to change the destructive direction we are headed in. We need to transform profoundly and urgently our democracy and our understanding of human rights to address the climate crisis. Does the White-West have a “human right” to destroy our habitat?
