With Donald Trump as our sitting president and his penchant for shifting his stance on various issues, I started to reflect on what might happen if he suddenly saw the light and accepted the fact that climate change is happening. One might think that would be a good thing but upon reflection of the way the Donald’s mind processes information I experienced a profound Holy Shit moment!
Please note: I’ve written about Eko Atlantic before.
Here is the link to my past article which provides more background.
Eko Atlantic is being built just off Lagos along Nigeria’s Coast and designed to house 250,000. Its whole purpose, developers say, is to “arrest the ocean’s encroachment”. Like many low-lying coastal African countries, Nigeria is being hit hard by a rising sea-level, which has been regularly washing away thousands of peoples’ homes. To defend against this coastal erosion and flooding, Eko Atlantic is being built surrounded by the “Great Wall of Lagos”, a sea defense barrier made of 100,000 five-ton concrete blocks. Eko Atlantic is billed as a “sustainable city, clean and energy efficient with minimal carbon emissions,” offering jobs, prosperity and new land for Nigerians, and designed to serve as a bulwark in the fight against the impacts of climate change. A city of souring buildings, with a central boulevard to match New York’s Fifth Avenue.
But here is the flip side.
In congested Lagos, Africa’s largest city, there is little employment and millions work scavenging in a vast, desperate informal economy. Sixty percent of Nigeria’s population – almost 100 of 170 million people – live on less than a dollar a day. Preventable diseases are widespread; electricity and clean water hard to come by. A few kilometers down the Lagos shoreline, Nigerians eke out an existence in the aquatic slum of Makoko, built precariously on stilts over the ocean. Casting them as crime-ridden, the government regularly dismantles such slums, bulldozing homes and evicting thousands. These are hardly the people that will scoop up square footage in Eko Atlantic’s pricy new high-rises.
The inspiration for Eko Atlantic is coming from the dreamworlds of rampant capitalism, stoked by a successful, thirty year global campaign to claw back gains in social security and unchain corporations from regulation – what has become known as neoliberalism.
In Nigeria, oil wealth plundered by a military elite spawned extreme inequalities and upended the economy. Under the IMF’s neoliberal dictates, the situation has worsened: education and healthcare have been gutted, industries privatized, and farmers ruined by western products dumped on their markets. While the World Bank celebrated Nigeria; extreme poverty doubled. The most notorious application of the power of the Nigerian state for the interest of the rich came in 1990: an entire district of Lagos – 300,000 homes – was razed to clear the way for high-end real-estate development.
Eko Atlantic is exactly the kind of plan that would be extremely attractive to Trump the real estate developer.
You see, I believe the wealthy and powerful do take climate change seriously; not as a demand to modify their behavior or question the fossil-fuel driven global economy that makes it possible, but as the biggest opportunity yet to realize their dreams of unfettered accumulation of wealth and consumption. The disaster capitalists behind Eko Atlantic are seizing on climate change to push through pro-corporate plans to build cities of their dreams, architectural insults to the daily circumstances of ordinary people.
Privatized green enclaves for the ultra rich ringed by slums lacking water or electricity, in which a surplus population outside the walls scramble for depleting resources and shelter to fend off the coming floods and storms. Cities protected by guards, guns, and an insurmountable gully – real estate prices – allowing the rich to shield themselves from the rising tides of poverty and a sea that is literally rising. A world in which the rich and powerful exploit the global ecological crisis to widen and entrench already extreme inequalities and seal themselves off from its impacts.
Will this practice, starting with the elites in Nigeria, and now with Trump in the White House be quickly embraced? Will the result be some of the most severe forms of colonial segregation and gated leisure being re-established? To get their way, will the rich, backed by industry and politicians, trample over environmental assessment processes in country after country?
Will Eko Atlantic start a trend in the world contrary to anything one would want to do if one took seriously climate change and resource depletion? Will the elite, like never before, use climate change to transform neighborhoods, cities, even entire nations into heavily fortified islands? Around the world, from Afghanistan to Arizona, China to Cairo, and in mushrooming mega-cities much like Lagos, will those able move to areas where they could live better and often more greenly – with better transport and renewable technologies, green buildings and ecological services?
Does Eko Atlantic start a moral and social secession of the rich from those in their respective countries?
This essentially utopian drive – to consume rapaciously and endlessly and to reject any semblance of collective impulse and concern – is simply incompatible with human survival but resonates with people who think like Trump.
At the very moment when the world needs to confront an economy and ideology pushing the planet’s life-support systems to the breaking point is this what our future looks like – grotesque monuments being built to assist the ultra-rich’s flight from responsibility.
Note: This post is part of the Holy Shitters ongoing series which posts on one of our S.H.I.T days (so happy its Tuesday or so happy it’s Thursday) . It is not officially a part of the blogathon currently going on on this site. But you will note I posted an article in support of this effort earlier this week. Here is the schedule of that blogathon for your reference.
The Church of the Holy Shitters will post articles on our holy S.H.I.T. day ( So Happy It's Thursday) Hoping to add some humor, provoke thought, spark debate, deepen understanding, and shed some light on the fecal side.
Remember: "If we really want to straighten out all this crap we really need to think about shit." ( Shitbit by Poop John the First of the Church of the Holy Shitters )
A secular environmental religion, scientifically based, with a focus on the psychology of it all. Our ego is the culprit when it comes to dealing with climate change. We cannot save the planet. We can only save ourselves. Our current egotistical self-perception makes that prospect a dubious one at best. Meekness, humility and a realization that our shit does stink, guides us on our path to true sustainable living and climate equilibrium.
Learn more about the Church of the Holy Shitters here.
Cross posted at holyshitters.com/...;