Climate disruption and environmental degradation caused by carbon combustion is an existential threat.
There is no other option than eliminating the use of carbon fuel sources to generate energy. The equally environmentally destructive use of nuclear generation must also be discontinued, since there is no such thing as ‘clean nuclear’, nor ‘cheap’ nuclear, nor ‘reliable’ nuclear.
What carbon combustion and nuclear generation have in common is that they are extractive process, rooted in the economic framework of colonialism:
Energy (and) Colonialism, Energy (In)DependenceAfrica, Europe, Greenland, North America
Edited by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, & Helmuth Trischler
2014
What does history tell us about energy transitions? What do energy transitions tell us about the history, moreover, of colonialisms throughout the world—from Greenland, to North America, to Africa, to Europe, for example? In talking of transitions, is it a question of entirely leaving one form and adopting the next, or of overlapping, even mutually complementary energy forms?…
At their core, all colonial projects derive from the imperative to transform the potential energy stored in colonized (or colonizable) subjects into mechanical energy for the production of wealth. The marshaling of the manual labor makes possible the transformation of nature into the inputs and infrastructures of energy production. Therefore, it is important to discuss the rationale and identify catalysts behind decisions to switch from one energy form to another. Until the development of solar energy, almost all energy forms have involved the modification of the environment—excavating ores and dumping them; building dams and displacing people and animals; flooding forests; and more recently, creating crop fields for biofuels that are grown in monocultures. A new energy form is introduced to address a deficit, its promise to quench all energy shortfalls always hugely dramatized. Whether it is vast reserves of coal, uranium, and natural gas, or “electricity too cheap to meter,” the initial promise eventually runs its full course, and the quest for new, more dependable energy forms begins again. Energy transitions are never just about economics, engineering, or science. Rather, the question is why the use of specific scientific or engineering techniques makes sense at a particular time and leads to specific energy outcomes. The transitions could be related to imperialist projects such as the partition of Africa or the Nazi expansion into Eastern Europe; to a specific political party coming to power riding on a popular wave of mega-developmentalism...
It is not enough to pursue massive development of renewable energy sources.
If we do not address the legacy of colonialism, and its close cousin white supremacy— their pervasive presence in the economic and political systems based on extractive industries-- we will simply replicate the colonialist project under the guise of environmental activism.
Like all forms of colonialism, the costs and harms of Green Colonialism are borne by the most vulnerable populations on the planet:
The climate strikes are about so much more than green colonialism
20 September 2019
… it is not just big business or politicians who shrink away from this inconvenient truth and the transformation required of an economy that is built on fossil fuels, but more fundamentally on the extraction of resources and exploitation of peoples, disproportionately so in the global South. Big, troubling gaps can also be found in the way that environmental organisations and climate movements in Europe and North America have been approaching the climate crisis….
The climate crisis is a crisis of inequality rooted in hundreds of years of colonialism. It is the result of multiple, intersecting crises that people in the global South and on the frontlines of injustice have been facing for centuries. These inequalities have both caused the crisis by advancing a model that exploits people and planet, but they also limit the ability of those affected by climate breakdown to respond, to be resilient or to move in the face of climate impacts…
It will require imagination and political will, it means listening to and being guided by those on the frontlines of extractive projects and climate impacts. Solutions to these crises won’t come in the shape of a battery - they come in the shape of justice, reparations and equity.
Tracing the materials utilized in constructing the renewable energy grid brings us straight to the modern day colonial practices of the extractive economy:
Resisting Green Colonialism: Lithium, Bolivia, and the Green New Deal
Daniel Willis /New Socialist
November 18, 2019
The need to combine ecological, political and anti-imperialist concerns is all the more pressing in the wake of the events of recent weeks in Bolivia. Although opposition to Evo Morales constituted a broad coalition, the growing influence of racist and far-right political groups, mutinies by the police and military, and a conservative power grab which has seen a new transitional President proclaimed and Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) excluded from Congress, power has rapidly been taken away from the grassroots elements of the opposition. Luis Fernando Camacho, a prominent opposition leader and wannabe Juan Guaidó, has significant links to the Bolivian far right in Santa Cruz. It would be a travesty if environmentalists or any advocate of a Green New Deal saw in this coup an opportunity to rapidly accelerate the extraction of Bolivia’s lithium to support decarbonisation targets…
Why should the demands of a Green New Deal and international solidarity stand in apparent contradiction? This is because many of the technologies associated with renewable energy and decarbonisation rely on minerals and metals for their production, and these would need to be mined on a vastly increased scale if our current economic model continues. Lithium-ion batteries require cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese. Rare earth minerals such as neodymium and dysprosium are required to build electric vehicles and to facilitate wind power. Solar panels make use of cadmium, indium, gallium, selenium, silver and tellurium, whilst aluminium and copper are important to all of these technologies...
Although the Green New Deal remains many things to many people, the broad policy platforms outlined by those campaigning for it in the global north appear to be heavily reliant on metal and mineral-based technologies. For instance, the Green New Deal resolution proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whilst broadly recognising the common but differentiated responsibility and historic emissions of the US, proposes to meet “100% of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” and “remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector…including through investment in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure”. Although the resolution does refer to the expansion of affordable public transit, there is also the implication here that there will be similar expansion in electric vehicles – a technology particularly reliant on lithium battery production. Although talking perhaps more about finance than lithium, Miriam Brett’s assertion, that “a limitation of the Green New Deal in its current form as proposed in North America is that its state focus does not address underlying concerns amassing from an integrated global economy” applies also to how, under capitalist extractivism, a rush to decarbonise in the US would almost certainly lead to untold ecological and social damage in mining-affected communities in South America.
The politically and economically disempowered populations of the world (especially women and indigenous groups) are subject to displacement, theft of land, theft of natural materials, and de facto genocide:
The Arctic’s Indigenous peoples bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s response to climate change, leaders say
Initiatives aimed at mitigating climate impacts are being used to disrupt traditional ways of life, say Indigenous leaders, in what amounts to "green colonialism."
November 9, 2018
Climate-friendly initiatives are being used to force Arctic Indigenous peoples from their lands and livelihoods, Indigenous leaders and researchers said last month at an Arctic Circle Assembly event in Reykjavik, Iceland.
“Colonialism has dressed up in nice green finery and we are told that we have to give up our territories and our livelihoods to save the world because of climate change,” said Aili Keskitalo, the president of the Sámi Parliament.
And it isn’t just the Sámi people facing what Keskitalo calls “green colonialism,” according to panelists who spoke at the Reykjavik event.
“We are all facing the same issues,” said Kuupik Kleist, the former premier of Greenland. “Our challenges, and the huge problems that we are facing, are those of colonialism.”…
In Sápmi, the Sámi homeland that stretches from Norway to Russia, new projects intended to reduce emissions, power green technologies, and provide clean energy include an Arctic railway, mines, and wind farms that often disrupt important reindeer migration routes and breeding grounds.
“It is land grabbing in the name of the climate,” Keskitalo said. “It is unjust.”
How a Green New Deal could exploit developing countries
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University/ The Conversation
February 25, 2019
The Green New Deal has changed the conversation among progressive Democrats about how to deal with climate change, from simply managing a disaster to how to take advantage of an existential threat to build a more just society.
However, should this legislative concept be transformed from the hypothetical framework it is today into actual policies, some of the solutions it engenders could make global inequality worse. As a scholar of colonialism, I am concerned that the Green New Deal could exacerbate what scholars like sociologist Doreen Martinez call climate colonialism – the domination of less powerful countries and peoples through initiatives meant to slow the pace of global warming.
The clearest cases of colonialism involve the unmistakable signifiers of foreign control: planted flags, and the formal and institutionally recognized assertion of authority over foreign lands. Only five countries in the world were not colonized by European empires in one way or other after the 15th century…
Rather than directly running other countries, neocolonial domination is accomplished through levers of political and economic leverage.
Green New Deal policies could empower communities on both sides of U.S. borders, and could expand the powers of poor nations to determine their own destinies. Or they could promote climate colonialism, a term that can mean different things to different people.
To me, it’s the deepening or expansion of foreign domination through climate initiatives that exploit poorer nations’ resources or otherwise compromises their sovereignty. Others focus more on how formerly colonized countries are paying the price for a crisis caused disproportionately by the emissions from more industrialized nations – their current and past colonizers…
Efforts to boost energy security can also drive climate colonialism. The African continent is, paradoxically, both home to the world’s largest solar power plant – the Noor Ouarzazate complex in Morocco – and people who are the least connected to grid.
Solar power may end up giving more Africans access to electricity but at the same time, many large renewable energy projects in North Africa could soon boost the European electric grid, bolstering European energy security with a climate-friendly source of power while millions of sub-Saharan Africans have none of their own.
Daniel A.M. Egbe, the coordinator of the African Network for Solar Energy, calls this linkage of large-scale solar farms with foreign power grids “a new form of resource exploitation.”
The economics of energy production and extractive industries are intertwined with modern colonialist political and military conflicts:
We can't tackle environmental and social justice in Morocco if we don't talk about Western Sahara
Hamza Hamouchene/ Middle East Eye
23 November 2016
With the communities and the internationals present - Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, a Kenyan and one indigenous person from the Navajo tribe - we held workshops that popularised concepts such as extractivism, environmental justice and eco-feminism as well as holding a successful open-air political film festival.
This sharing of environmental injustice experiences reinforced the belief that we are all facing and resisting an extractivist system that is accumulating wealth by excluding many of us, especially people of the global South and people of colour…
While some of the projects in Morocco, like the Ouarzazate Solar Plant can qualify as "green grabbing" - the appropriation of land and resources for purportedly environmental ends - similar renewable projects (solar and wind) that are taking place in the occupied territories of Western Sahara can be labelled "green colonialism" as they are carried out in spite of the Saharawis and on their confiscated land…
Activists must ask the critical questions that will shift our focus to the materiality of renewable energy: who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? Who wins and who loses? And whose collective, public good is being served?
Answering these questions through a distributive justice lens, while taking account the colonial and neo-colonial legacies, and issues of race, class, and gender will reveal what these projects are nothing less than "green grabbing" and "green colonialism".
There will be no simple, slogan-based solutions to the climate disruption and environmental degradation caused by carbon combustion.
If we do not recognize and address the living historical context of colonialism and extractive capitalism, we will perpetuate them, even in well-intentioned efforts to create a renewable energy grid.