Climate Change is Racist

[PickelledEggs]

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-37283869

ha. haha. hahahahahaha WHAT THE FUCK

I want this to be satire, for BLM's sake, but it's not.

[TomFoolery]

Whilst at London City Airport a small elite is able to fly, in 2016 alone 3,176 migrants are known to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean.

I was unaware that people of Middle Eastern origin were considered black, unless they're talking about other migrants. I'm confused.

In Britain, 28% of black people are more likely to be exposed to air pollution... being in closest proximity to the industries causing climate change."

Are more likely to be exposed to air pollution... than what? White people? What a funny statistic. 28% actually seems like a low number, and I wonder what the percentages are for other races and ethnicities.

I'm doing my best to follow the logical construct, but this story isn't doing a lot to make it clear. From what I understand, lots of black people live near the airport, planes fly near the airport, planes pollute, therefore, pollution is racist? I can just see the heads of all the major airlines rubbing their hands together and cackling over "keeping the black man down by blackening his lungs."

[Baruch]

Anytime a rich Black pimp isn't driving a pimp-mobile and admiring the diamond studs in his teeth in the rear view mirror ... he is oppressed.  I have seen an actual fellow like that pass me on the highway, back in the 70s.  I looked around to see if there was a film crew, but didn't see one ;-)  Sometimes people actually live the stereotype.  I wonder if Clint ever drove around in dark shades and a dark suite, pretending he was the real Dirty Harry, while fondling a 45 magnum revolver ...  probably not a good thing to cross him when he was that mayor of that small town in California.

On the other hand, cultural socialism would tell you that everyone has to get cancer or we are unequal, so the government should go around giving everyone who doesn't have cancer, cancer ... so that everyone is more equal.  It seems that the Chinese entrepreneurs and the CIA are interested in that kind of thing from time to time.

[GSOgymrat]

I'm doing my best to follow the logical construct, but this story isn't doing a lot to make it clear.

I agree. They should have linked to the BLM statement. I don't exactly understand the reason of the protest.

[Hydra009]

There is a kernel of truth in this - climate change does/will affect the developing world more severely than the developed world.  Though obviously, as the term global warming hints at, this climate crisis affects everyone.

That said, trespassing on a busy airport with the intent of making it unable to operate is a highly questionable and extremely ineffective method of combating global warming.  Clearly, the motivations behind this move were more about self-promotion and venting rage than actually improving the world.  Sadly, this behavior is pretty typical.  I honestly worry about the mental state of people who view this sort of bad behavior positively.

[drunkenshoe]

Neither the article, nor the BLM activists say anything like 'Climate Change is Racist' meaning that a natural phenomenon is racist.

The news piece is about a protest which protesters invaded a runway in a London airport and caused inconvenience. While article does not make it clear what was the protest about there are a few expression about it, but then none of them are about people claim a natural phenomenon is being racist, but it consequences.

Seriously, how do you get 'ahhaha these people are saying climate crisis is racist' from that article under the political climate the world in and a Europe in brink of civil war in some regions, because of refugee crisis being used in all sorts of domestic politics?

Black Lives Matter UK said the action was taken in order to "highlight the UK's environmental impact on the lives of black people locally and globally".
A statement said: "Whilst at London City Airport a small elite is able to fly, in 2016 alone 3,176 migrants are known to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean.

"Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly, in this racist climate crisis.

"In Britain, 28% of black people are more likely to be exposed to air pollution... being in closest proximity to the industries causing climate change."

Also, I don't get why it is surprising that an activist group of nonwhite people making a protest for other nonwhite people on the planet. Esp. an American group.


Remember that global warming, the environmental change we keep talking about? The Climate Change is a result of that 'thing' we keep talking about and criticise religious governments, groups and people for being deliberatly ignorant about it. It has already arrived. Actually, it has been some time. Reality is not some dysutopian Hollywood movie where a global storm takes over the planet all at once. We are living climate change right now.

Now, in case you weren't paying attention to the refugee crisis beyond the '1 in 4 women will be raped by muslims in Sweeden next year!' articles, the main cause of the refugee crisis in EU is this Climate Change AND the common drought so severe, there is literally nothing. It's NOT something like water is scarce or very little and down to alarming levels. THERE IS NO WATER in certain regions in the ME. Period. And this has been known for a couple of decades.

This is one of the main reasons, besides the long standing policies of various religious-politcial fragments being armed by western countries for power games, politcial-militaristic interventions, invasions carried by western countries that has taken place for resources, local groups and civil war pushing people out of their homeland. It's NOT because the Middle Eastern people; 'muslims' leaving their country to invade EU to make the world muslim rape white European women in the process which has been the 'design' campaign for couple of years now that resulted in Brexit and other social explosions and turmoil AND a perfect perception management of 'muslims gonna get us' belief.

People are running away, because there is nothing. Literally nothing to survive. Do you get that concept? I am asking because I don't. I don't know what does it mean trying to survive at some place that has nothing to survive, let alone add atrocity and civil wars to it. Doesn't matter how hard I try to imagine, I know I can't. This is not something like being homeless in some city or town. Not even remotely close. It's the darkest, unknown waters we don't know anything about.


Now, BLM is protesting that these people -who are NONWHITE- being thrown out for bullshit reasons. Their problem is, be it refugees or other nonwhite residents that nonwhite people suffering the consequences of this crisis far more than white people who created and supported the policies and circumstances of this crisis while they can find a solution getting down from their high horse; now instead of trying to produce any solutions they are just following a racist fucked up policies.

And so they invaded a runway in an airport, because it is where people travel abroad. LOL


They are not saying climate crisis is racist. BLM protestors are saying the policies, politics and regulations created around this crisis IS RACIST. And it doesn't matter who likes their protests or way of speaking or not, they are right. 

[drunkenshoe]

That said, trespassing on a busy airport with the intent of making it unable to operate is a highly questionable and extremely ineffective method of combating global warming.  Clearly, the motivations behind this move were more about self-promotion and venting rage than actually improving the world.  Sadly, this behavior is pretty typical.  I honestly worry about the mental state of people who view this sort of bad behavior positively.

Protests are not -has never been- about combating with an issue directly. They are certainly about some self-promotion of issues, obstruct daily life, disturb and sometimes even harass social life and so people. That's their function, why they are typical. 'Venting with rage' is a nature of any protest group walking down the street or invading a certain place.

Neither protests, nor protest groups are about positive behaviour, because they do not occur from positive circumtances. They are all about creating negativity, distrupt the flow of things. Without creating conflict, creating a disturbance, taking solid attention nothing is done, esp. in an age and society where people are bombarded with mass media, mainstream propaganda based on fear but do not even 'touch' each other in a huge, diverse country like America.

Nobody is going to succeed in re-defining or re-writing the definition of protest out of human nature and human reality. Reality does not conform individual feelings and standards. It's about time we passed the pink- vanilla, rainbow phase of 'but why are they being mean '.   

[Baruch]

Some people benefiting more than others, and some people suffering more than others, is the very spleen of velvet glove neo-colonialism.  Of course White or capitalist people would deny that they are involved with any kind of colonialism ... not even in Korea and Vietnam earlier in my life time.  It is only colonialism when Russia does it in Afghanistan, not when the Bidens are doing it in the Ukraine.

So yes, most people won't get this protest, or others like it, because it touches on their unconscious assumptions of their own virtues.  For the First World ... hubris is key.  But we both know where that leads ... which is why Putin is scared of Hillary but not Trump.  For the post WW II American politician, massaging the narrative with psyops is the whole septic tank.

[Nonsensei]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMmYuj03eGY

This is the complete protest concept as told by BLM.

To sum it up, the UK is the biggest per capita contributor to climate change according to BLM. Not sure if this is true but I'm ok proceeding on the assumption that it is because its not really important. Even if it isn't true, as an industrialized western nation the UK certainly contributes substantially to climate change.

Their complaint about this is twofold. First, that high pollution power generation facilities and other facilities are often established in low income "black or brown" communities, increasing their exposure to pollution. Again, I am not sure if this is the actual truth, objectively and I don't know if its something I could even find out short of actually going to the UK and checking. BLM doesn't offer any evidence to support this. I'm not saying it isn't true, just that I can't confirm it in any way.

The second complaint is that the climate change that the UK contributes to has a global effect that is first felt in areas of the world that are populated by "black or brown" people. They are asserting that this effect is one of the driving factors behind the refugee crisis. They are also asserting that nothing is being done about climate change because it has yet to have a major effect on areas in which white people typically live. The UK for example.

Unlike most BLM protests, this one actually has a stated objective goal. Apparently there is an airport expansion being planned that would further expose people in black communities to even more pollution. This is why they chose to shut down a runway as their protest.

There are a couple of criticisms that can be leveled at the above position. First, while the UK and the west at large are responsible for their fair share of pollution, and are even #1 per capita, when it comes to aggregate pollution the responsibility is blind to skin color. China is #1, the US is #2 Russia is #3 and India is #4. To be clear, the US, Russia and India pollute less combined than China does. The point is, pollution is hardly caused entirely by white westerners.

For the record, the UK is #11, behind Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Canada and Iran.

The second criticism I have is that while BLM does have a stated goal of stopping the London City Airport expansion, they don't offer any solutions or ideas for solutions or even suggest a vague course of action regarding what to do about the more serious global problem of climate change. As usual they just state facts and then wait for white people to feel guilty enough to solve the problem themselves.

Sometimes, that works. This time, it won't. Why? Because even if the west stopped polluting entirely tomorrow, the rest of the countries in the east will still continue the march toward catastrophic climate change at a pace that is only marginally slower than what we are at now.

Anyway, the overall point I wanted to make was that they were protesting something real and not just being ridiculous and asserting that the mechanism of climate change was racist as so many articles were gleefully eager to suggest.

[Hydra009]

To sum it up, the UK is the biggest per capita contributor to climate change according to BLM. Not sure if this is true but I'm ok proceeding on the assumption that it is because its not really important. Even if it isn't true, as an industrialized western nation the UK certainly contributes substantially to climate change.

Just fyi, it's not true.  (It wasn't too long ago that I was posting about the progress Scotland had made in reducing CO2 emissions, so the UK being the current top per capita contributor would be an unexpected development)

Though you're right that it's not terribly important whether or not the UK is the biggest contributor or simply a big contributor, BLM making these sorts of statements and not being concerned with whether or not they're accurate is pretty worrisome.  It's hard to trust an organization when you suspect that they're either making things up to suit their cause or are disturbingly unconcerned with fact-checking.  From the looks of things, it's the latter in this case.  (historical UK emissions conflated with current UK emissions, old data, etc)

Also, aircraft emissions comprise about 2% of the human-caused CO2 emissions per year.  So targeting an airport for protest (in lieu of say, a coal plant) probably wasn't the best idea in the world.

[Nonsensei]

Yeah they chose the airport in protest to local expansion. The global issue was just tacked on.

[Mr. Pibb]

I was unaware that people of Middle Eastern origin were considered black, unless they're talking about other migrants. I'm confused.

Many of the migrants, the majority if you exclude those fleeing the war in Syria, are from sub-Saharan Africa.

[TomFoolery]

Many of the migrants, the majority if you exclude those fleeing the war in Syria, are from sub-Saharan Africa.

Ah, this was what I was curious about. I was wondering if there was a significant minority coming out of Northern Africa, perhaps, but sub-Saharan is a bit surprising.

[Baruch]

Ah, this was what I was curious about. I was wondering if there was a significant minority coming out of Northern Africa, perhaps, but sub-Saharan is a bit surprising.

Latin Americans die in the American SW in the hands of "coyotes" smuggling the into the US.  A lot more Sub-Saharan Africans die in the Sahara desert, being smuggled by Libyan terrorist gangs, only to die at sea trying to get into Italy.  Most N Africans are too busy trying to kill each other over oil and the profits from smuggling.  The Marine Corps hymn about the shores of Tripoli are about real history ... from smuggling and piracy 200 years ago.  The folks from the Near East and parts closer to South Asia have gotten most of the attention.

The larger problem of human trafficking in general:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ztDU-yr74

A French report specific to Africa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1590yxToZs

Of course for many W Africans, France is the destination.  For Nigeria or other former British colonies, Britain is the destination.  Moroccans themselves got illegal work in Spain, until the economic depression in real estate.

[Shiranu]

You are jumping to the conclusion that it is terrorism of what they are protesting. You have a tendency to do that; jumping to conclusions (without understanding a single thing about what they are actually saying).

How come you try spock one small piece junk inside yoa brudda's eye, cuz you know, awready get one big two by four inside yoa own eye. Eh, an how you goin tell yoa brudda, ‘Eh, try let me pull da small piece junk outa yoa eye,’ wen you get one big two by four inside yoa own eye? You say one ting an do anodda! First you gotta take da big two by four outa yoa own eye. Den you can see good fo take da small piece junk outa yoa brudda's eye.