Green Capitalism: Following the Path of Imperialism

This text was originally written in French

During the latest September 27th climate demonstration, an irritated voice could be heard over the crowd saying: “Can we avoid mixing everything and just do a demonstration for the environment, without mentioning capitalism?”

As a feminist, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and ecological collective, our answer is a resounding NO! No, we cannot talk about climate crisis without talking about the capitalist system since they are so closely intertwined.

The Environmental Problems

The environmental crisis and climatic disruptions includes but is not limited to : air pollution, water pollution, soil erosion, melting glaciers, extinction of species, acid rain, forest fires, droughts and floods. This crisis can be computed in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, in degrees Celsius, and in the number of climate refugees. The state tells us that to fight these issues, we must change our habits, consume better, buy greener, take transit, use more reusable bags and take shorter showers.

But human activity, especially in the West, is directed by three dominating systems: the systemic exploitation (and capitalization) of resources, the cis-hetero-patriarchal system, and the racist colonization system. These three systems are interdependent and reinforce each other. The current environmental crisis is a direct consequence of its existence. We cannot understand and fight this crisis by hiding the fact that we live in a capitalist world, where nature is subjected to unbridled extractivist exploitation.¹ It is no more to pretend that everyone has an equal responsibility, than to assume that everyone will be affected in the same way, no matter the color of their skin, their gender identity, or their wealth.

Canada: Exploit to Dominate

The Canadian State impose its domination to other territories by taking over resources using different strategies. In Colombia for instance, Canadian oil and mining companies take advantage of the social and armed conflict to steal the land of the people who were forced to flee. Families who decided to stay and resist against this encroachment face threats and assaults, going up to criminal acts and targeted assassinations. All this is operated by armed agents, hired by private companies and State institutions.

The business world feeds violence to the conflict in order to maintain its grip on the exploited territories. As such, Canadian companies are directly linked to forced movement of population within and outside the country. According to the Trochando sin Fronteras organization: “Since the arrival of multinational companies in Colombia, we evaluate that they are responsible for about 12,000 assassinations, 3,700 disappearances and 1 million forced displacements.” Companies often set up on the territory without consulting the local population, even though this right is given to them by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). When there are consultations, they are often rigged in order to influence the local communities to give their land away to private companies.

From Environmental Racism to Patriarchy

Because of the specific impacts they face, it is often people who identify themselves as women who are on the frontline of the struggle to protect their lands. To present one example of how patriarchy and imperialism cannot be separated, note that during forced displacements, women often find themselves in charge of children and elders, making them even more vulnerable (not only the case in Colombia, but also in “Quebec”). Additionally, because property titles still belong mostly to men, women have difficulties in reclaiming their land back.²

The social-environmental impacts of extractive projects are not the same for everyone. They vary in intensity based on social class, race construct, gender, and the colonization process of the land. The people and social groups most affected by environmental problems are those which benefit the least from the economic model behind these problems. And it is true everywhere around the world: the lack of drinkable water in multiple indigenous communities in Canada, the horrific consequences of the Katrina hurricane on African American populations and poor people of New Orleans, the injustice faced by the survivors of the Bhopal catastrophe in India, are all examples of environmental racism.³

Green: The Color of the Environment

Here in Canada, the people most affected by the crisis are precarious groups which cannot afford the so-called solutions which capitalism, now dressed in green, try to force us to adopt, like a biological product, a bamboo toothbrush, or an electric car. These propositions are costly, often useless, or even harmful. Therefore, it is important to think about alternatives to the climatic and social crisis in conjunction with domination systems and not only through individual solutions.

Green capitalism is still capitalism… The case of the Hidroituango hydro electrical project, in Colombia, proves it. While trying to rebuild its image through a renewable energy project, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) decided to invest in this hydro electrical dam built on the second largest river in the country. However, this dam resulted in some of the worst ecological disaster of the history of Colombia. Communities were forced to move, and those who tried to raise their voices against this project are facing death threats. To continue to exploit local populations only reinforces the systems contributing to the current climate crisis.

Therefore, when we see Justin Trudeau, icon of the imperialist State of Canada, strut in a climate demonstration, then yes, it is essential to recall that the environmental crisis is not only linked to capitalism, but it is a direct consequence of it, and of patriarchy, colonialism and racism.

The PASC (Projet Accompagnement Solidarité Colombie) https://pasc.ca/

Notes:

1. The concept of “extractivism”, which comes from “extraction”, refers to a supply and demand economy in which natural resources (minerals, oil, agriculture, animals, forests, etc.), seen as the central wealth of an area or a country, are massively exploited, in order to be sold on the market, based on prices fixed by these, often international, markets.
2. See the work done by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the mining industry in Latin America (2014).
3. Environmental racism is a form of systemic racism, defined as following the The Canadian Race Relations Foundation: “People of color, indigenous groups, working class people and low-wage workers find themselves disproportionally exposed to environmental dangers and risks presented by toxic industrial products, air pollution, tainted water, health-damaging work conditions, and the placement of toxic and dangerous installations, like incinerators and toxic waste dumps.”