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Original publication in Workers World, September 30, 2020. This article is even more relevant after Earth Day 2022. The U.S. proxy war in the Ukraine — and the continuing COVID-19 crisis — are being used by the Biden administration to excuse backing away from environmental promises of the 2020 campaign trail.
Credit: Arctic Angels
Biden pledged to make the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2050 and exempt federal lands form drilling. He has now auctioned large swathes of federal waters in Gulf of Mexico to oil firms looking for profits, as Russian oil is currently under U.S. sanctions. Global supply chain issues during the pandemic are forcing manufacturing back into the U.S. along with capitalist pressure to loosen environmental safeguards. Crissman indicts this “greed and violence of a few hurtling us all toward environmental collapse.”
There is a lot of overlap in climate emergencies and U.S. Imperialism. Both are increasingly displacing the people at home and abroad on an almost inconceivable scale.
These conditions are creating refugees and migrants who must move on to survive. Climate annihilation caused by capitalist crisis must be avoided. Priority must be given Indigenous land stewardship, food sovereignty and the elimination of debts.
Displaced people and migrants in general are falsely blamed for much of the world’s scarcity. There are plenty of resources available to provide for everyone. Scarcity exists because a few people have wealth and hoard it at the expense of those who created it. This small ruling class is responsible for much suffering. However, hundreds of years worth of capitalist social conditioning have obscured the fact that many people are closer to poverty then they will ever be to becoming millionaires.
The displaced migrants are faced with food insecurity, unemployment and homelessness, as well as a lack of adequate healthcare and electricity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 40 million people in the United States — the richest country in the world — find themselves on the brink of homelessness and facing many of the exact same conditions migrants face globally.
Military, police and climate emergencies
The U.S. military does it abroad, but the internal law enforcement of police does it at home. They will forcefully displace people using armed force, eviction notice, or both, to make another dollar for the ruling class.
Climate emergencies are also increasingly displacing people at home and abroad. Rising global temperatures from capitalist production on stolen land — particularly overproduction and overreliance on fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas — have led to extreme weather. In displacement of the living, wildfires and hurricanes are becoming increasingly frequent.
These lands were managed by Native Americans for thousands of years, using sustainable agriculture and controlled burns. Their forced displacement was It is a major factor in creating misery to make it profitable for the few.
Land mismanagement and rising temperatures have resulted in drier forests, deserts and more fuel for fire and dust storms. There has also been an increase in the heat energy released by hurricanes. Excessive capitalist oil production pollutes and heats up the air — which has no borders — and the waters and land. Fractured earth, ruined natural springs and aquifers, inland flooding, melting ice and rising sea levels are all “gifts” from colonial land mismanagement.
The U.S. military is one of the world’s largest consumers of oil. This armed body is guilty of displacing the living by driving climate crisis in its consumption of fossil fuels — in addition to displacing the living through violent, antagonistic conflict.
A recent report put out by Brown University’s Costs of War project conservatively estimates that U.S. wars since 9/11 have forcibly displaced at least 37 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria. This figure is higher than those who were displaced in any previous war since 1900, save for World War II. Other data suggests that the total number of U.S. Post-9/11 wars displaced could be closer to 48-59 million people.
Deaths due to imperial intervention and direct combat have been estimated at as high as 3.1million, with traumatized and injured people reaching into the tens to millions. (tinyurl.com/CostsOfUSWarOnTerror, Sept. 21, 2020)
We are all being driven to environmental disaster by the greed and violence of just a few. As more people find themselves in situations similar to the struggles of migrants worldwide, they will also be more likely to become refugees. Our collective survival depends on our ability and willingness to rebuild the world. It is possible to dismantle what has been constructed by colonizers.
Capitalists have been “stewards” of the planet by force only in recent history. Native peoples were true stewards, living in harmony for thousands years before any capitalists. this destruction. They know how to do it again.
Abolish private property on stolen land! The earth can provide for everyone’s basic human needs. We have much work ahead of us, especially with all the crises of capitalism. As long as work is dictated by what makes bosses and the ruling class money, people’s needs won’t be met. We will also see more forced immigration and misery.
It is a way forward to engage in explicitly anti-colonial activities. We can look to Thomas Sankara as an example of someone who has succeeded in doing so.
Thomas Sankara, agroecology
Dr. Amber Murray explains: “The revolutionary transformation of the West African country Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (what is known as the August Revolution of 1983) occurred during a previous neoliberal crisis, that of the 1980s African debt crisis. Sankara protested loudly against the evil debt and rallied African politicians to do the same.
“Sankara’s politics and political leadership challenged the idea that the global capitalist system cannot be undone. During four years as the president of Burkina Faso, he worked with the people to construct an emancipatory politics informed by human, social, ecological and planetary well-being.” (Pambazuka News, May 5, 2016)
Sankara in Burkina Faso was a leader in the successful project of establishing food sovereignty through a system called agroecology. Agroecology encourages “power-dispersing and power-creating” communal food cultivation that enhances “the dignity, knowledge and capacities of all involved” and the regeneration of the environment. (From the documentary “Sur les traces de Thomas Sankara,” 2013) Other successful projects included the planting of 10 million trees across the Sahel, as a means of beginning to repair colonial suffocation that made the land more arid.
Sankara’s revolutionary ideas and methods to remake the globe caused his untimely death. His spirit and ideas are still alive in revolutionary struggle that dares win a world outside the confines capitalist-induced death.
