The New Carbon Colonialism

As I sat down to write this article, a paid advertisement appeared on TV that captured my attention because that is the idea driving this article. And yes I do sometimes watch TV while writing, because, why not. The ad was by ExxonMobil talking about how they are capturing the carbon that is accumulating in our atmosphere trapping the heat. That causes global warming.

The ad was laughable because ExxonMobil is the culprit that caused these very carbon emissions in the first place, knowingly. But credit must be given when it is due. Their consistency knows no parallel. They emitted carbon for the sake of profits and they are claiming to be capturing it now, again, for the sake of profit.

Climate change is causing many natural disasters today just so a few could get rich. In fact, many rightly argue that those disasters such as super floods, wildfires, droughts, extreme heat, and so forth must not be called natural disasters because they are anything but natural. They have man’s fingerprints all over them. Climate change is caused by human activity.

But while disasters might harm people, there are always some who thrive in chaos. We saw the fortunes of the already fortunate ones rise enormously. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other billionaires made many more billions because of people’s inability to go about their lives in a routine. The pandemic in 2020 was a dry run for what is coming our way once the worst effects of climate change manifest themselves in our everyday lives.

When 9/11 happened, America was angry for revenge. The US Vice President at the time, Dick Cheney, saw this as an enormous opportunity to extend American imperialism and his hegemonic ambitions around the world with literally no checks on America’s wide reach. And while climate change is a much bigger threat, it too is being harnessed to serve some selfish interests of the global elite and power interests.

The developed world consisting of technologically advanced countries are now reminding the poor countries to abandon the use of fossil fuel in powering their economies. The poor countries rebut by arguing that they should be allowed to achieve prosperity without orders from those who became rich by burning fossil fuels. And while I would like for the use of fossil fuel to be completely abandoned, the argument by the poor and developing world holds water.

Bolivian leader Luis Arce called the lectures and the global policy imposed by the rich on the poor countries the New Carbon Colonialism. While there would be denials about the existence of any ulterior motives behind the rich world’s fight against climate change just as there had been denials about climate change by the same world, the fact of the matter is that there is more hypocrisy in portraying an image of a born again climate warrior than there are carbon ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere.

If one really thinks about it, one party causes all the mess in the first place and then has the chutzpah to lecture the rest of the world to watch their actions. Just like Jihad was an American favourite until America became the leader of the global fight against Jihad. Remember the words of Noam Chomsky when he said that the mindset in America generally is that we are the good guys “because we say so” and that “crimes are what others commit”.

At the COP26, that was the leading theme of the global discussion, if you will. President Biden, I think I remember reading somewhere, is a practising Catholic. I assume he has read the Holy Bible. Here is how the word hypocrite is defined in the Holy Bible: a hypocrite is a person that refuses to apply to himself/herself the same rules that he applies to others. President Biden needs to read the Holy Bible more often than reading the scientific findings about climate change.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2021.

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