All Our Yesterdays

Arwa Aburawa is a filmmaker whose work focuses on race, the environment, and the enduring legacies of colonialism.  www.arwaaburawa.co.uk

In his book ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ (1), the writer Sven Lindqvist carefully and meticulously traces the European colonial legacy of extermination and genocide as he treks across North Africa. And yet, he starts the book with a simple quote: 

You already know enough. 

So do I. 

It is not knowledge we lack. 

What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions. 

As I look over the previous editions of the CO2 newsletter that Marc wants to explore and examine, I know his work is guided by one quest: to carefully and meticulously trace how long we’ve known about the carbon dioxide and global warming problem. 

And yet, we all know that the answer, sadly, is much too long. 

Kevin Anderson states that since the newsletter’s publication, “humanity has become extraordinarily adept at observing and quantifying the world it is reshaping. With increasing accuracy, we can measure, model, and project the climate system, supported by ever more sensitive instruments, richer datasets, and stronger scientific confidence. Yet this growing clarity has not led to restraint or correction.” Michiel van den Broeke, reflecting on an article on glacial melts in the third edition states that it was “remarkably accurate.” So all the newsletters reveal, in great detail, is how even back in the 1980s we knew enough. 

You did. And so did I. So it is not knowledge we lack. 

But courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions. 

What does it mean to understand what we know and draw conclusions in this context? 

It means to take action. To transform ourselves and our societies.

It’s to ask the same question the writers of this newsletter asked, to ask the same question Dr Abi Perrin asked, the same question that Marc’s work is ultimately shaped by: When should the studying stop and political action begin?(2)

The newsletter once again gives us another answer; long ago. 

And yet here we are. So once again we are forced to look for the courage to ask why we have failed to take action and draw conclusions about that too.

When Lindqvist asks himself to draw conclusions and confront a reality he already knew – the roots of European colonialism, white supremacy, and genocide – he asks himself to really know and understand his society. To understand what is at the heart of his world and what drives it.

We must find a way to do the same thing. To confront the murderous, genocidal, white supremacist society which continues to accept the horrendous consequences of the climate crisis. A society where billionaire elites fight information, fact and science not with countering information but with a steady stream of confusion and distraction to destabilize us and rob us of any real clarity of what we might do next.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore defined racism as a premature exposure to death(2). I think that its also a fitting definition for the climate crisis and global warming. Colonialism never went away. It is here with us right now. It’s mutated, evolved into the same world which has failed to act on the climate crisis, 

And so it’s time, once again, to look for that courage Lindqvist talked about, and draw conclusions. 

References

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

The End of the World is Never the End of Everything

Footnote

(1) A book Marc introduced me to many, many years ago now

(2) I think it’s rather telling that the first option mentioned in the newsletter as a course of action  for  Energy and environmental planners in the U.S. was to “Postpone the decision to halt the CO, buildup (inaction itself may be a form or action)”