Sometimes

Sometimes, I just have to speak out. Seeing a conference call for a panel on “Racial capitalism and climate (in)justice in the 21st century: unsettling colonial entanglements and green New Deals”, I decided to speak my mind and submit the abstract below. I have no illusions whatsoever about being accepted but sometimes there is a cost to remaining silent.

Title: Perpetual global apartheid or songs of a world reshaped?

Short abstract:

Rather than accelerating the transition to a world of free global movement and material equality, talks of a Green New Deal have remained centred on the domestic deployment of non-scalable renewable energy sources, precluding an honest conversation about global energy needs.

Long abstract:

The worsening climate crisis has renewed Western elite concerns for “over-population” in the Global South and entrenched Malthusian worldviews that hold that the rest of the world can never attain living standards comparable to those in the West. Projects like the Green New Deal, that remain centred on the domestic deployment of non-scalable low-energy sources, have prevented an honest conversation about the energy needs consistent with universal human development. In contrast, a few ecomodernist voices have argued that rather than perpetuating a world of deep energy disparities, the rich countries have a moral obligation to innovate high-energy technologies capable of rapidly reducing carbon emissions while, at the same time, making possible global economic convergence. The aim of this contribution is to examine how present calls for “green” technology transfer and the financialization of sustained rural poverty through different “conservation” projects, frustrate comprehensive forms of socio-economic transformation and reflect colonial patterns of domination.