Withdrawal of Consent 2

…continued

For all our smug espousal of democracy, our governments have put or backed despotic regimes to control the natural resources of our former empires, upon which our dependence daily grows. Covered by liberal rhetoric about self-determination, after the Second World War we victors cast off the colonies into an exploitative regime masquerading as free trade between equals, seasoned with a little aid. We subcontracted to their despots the exploitation of oil and a host of other commodities, including the coffee I’m drinking now, but above all, oil. Half the world’s ships carry oil to us.

The decades of the Cold War allowed us to suppose the defence of democracy somehow required us to support despots. We had ten years after 1989 to replace them; somehow we neglected to do this.

Keep sending the commodities The trade and finance regime we victors established after World War II maintains poverty; we refuse to buy from the poor lands anything but raw materials and labour, and cripple them with loans, to service which they must keep sending us the commodities. Free Trade is a one-way street. We insist through the IMF and the World Bank that the economies of the poor remain open to us, while we refuse to buy their manufactures. We run this planet as a company town.

In this context, our aid programmes are pissing into the wind; salves to our flickering consciences, reassurances that we are the Good Joes of the world.

Climate change is only the most recent abuse heaped on the heads of the poor. Our effluent is changing the climate faster even than the scientists warned. It appears positive-feedback loops are already at work. The warming is not only under way but might be accelerating without our help.

Some changes will be welcome. We have been enjoying milder winters and longer summers in Britain. But little is certain. Polar meltwater has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% in twelve years; if the ocean current stops completely, temperatures here are expected to drop 4-6C°.

We are rich with accumulated wealth. It won’t be easy, but we will use it to adjust to changes like these.

Not so the poor of the earth. In subsistence economies, without reserves, such changes kill people. This is our pollution, our effluent, our shit; we owe them the help they need to survive it. We owe them this help even before we help ourselves.

Wilful inattention We’re not going to give it to them — you know that. We’ll regret their troubles and would offer more help were we not also victims of this terrible, terrible thing. That’s just happened. Really.

They are poor and ignorant perhaps; but not stupid enough to believe that. Expect dissent. Violent. Incoming.

Air travel and electronic communication knit the world together. We used to send gunboats to faraway places. (Remember Joseph Conrad’s image of a French cruiser lobbing shells into the African jungle; that the RAF bombed Iraqi villages with chemical weapons long before Hussein ever did.) Now we receive bombs from faraway places too. And from people who grew up here but who feel more strongly connected to people there.

Expect along with climate change to receive more wake-up calls from those savaged by our wilful inattention; more vengeful and despairing suicide bombers. The climate terrorists have not arrived yet, but they will.