Privatized Benefits, Socialized Risks

One type of Great Lakes waterfront, northern Lake Huron

Another type of Great Lakes waterfront, on the Detroit River

People who care about justice, getting inspiration in Detroit's Central United Methodist Church this past Monday

I've been reading Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail and comparing it to a statement called Four Principles of Climate Justice from the Indigenous Environmental Network. Add to that a timely article from Yes! magazine about the injustices of high-carbon lifestyles (specifically air travel), and we have a big topic.

That phrase, "benefits are privatized, risks are socialized," first used in conjunction with Wall Street, is cropping up increasingly. And I suppose that is because a whole way of life has been built on this principle, and although occasionally really egregious results of this system arise and we notice them specifically because they're so far outside the norm, they're the exception that proves the rule.

Look at the top two photos. One is a typical (for some) Great Lakes scene. The other is also a typical (for some) Great Lakes scene. People can and do fish in both spots, though the piles of coal at Zug Island are just beyond the most polluted place in that river. There are residential neighborhoods just behind you, the viewer.

I am typing this on a computer powered by that coal. I have the benefits of that coal. I can say the risks are socialized, but even that is not quite right. We've socialized the risks of coal to mostly a relative handful of people, all relatively poor. Yes, my air here 10 or so miles from the coal plant may be worse than yours, if you're in a rural area or smaller town, but believe me, as I stated in Monday's post, it's nothing like what the people in southwest Detroit live with. Here, we all benefit from their misfortune. My eyes are not burning as they did late Sunday night, my lungs do not ache and tighten up, and I am not nauseous, here at my safe distance.

Dr. King's letter was to fellow clergy, who had warned him that his current actions were "unwise and untimely." He mentions that if he spent time responding to criticism, he would get nothing else done. But now read this:

"In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action."

Well, anyone driving through southwest Detroit or similar poorer and more polluted areas of any Great Lakes city will collect enough facts in each breath to determine that injustice exists. The mere act of breathing is proof of the problem.

Negotiation? It is ongoing; the residents there have community organizations and meetings and canvassing campaigns; they're negotiating. They're fighting back, pretty much on their own.

Self purification? Isn't that an interesting step? This one grabs me and shakes me. What would self-purification mean in ongoing direct battles in places like Detroit, but also in dire but more generalized struggles like climate change?

What it has to mean is direct, personal, daily response, in our own lives. If I oppose the use of coal, am I "pure" if I give no thought to its use in my own life? How can I oppose fracking, then thoughtlessly crank up the heat? Maybe solidarity with the "fracked" means I turn the thermostat not just down, but way down, and know it counts. If Dr. King can willingly go to jail over injustice, can I take the much smaller action of willingly being chilly on behalf of the fracked? Have a darker house on behalf of Appalachians, a house warm in the summer, because their mountains, or the plains of Wyoming, turn literally into my air conditioning? (Does it even make sense to blow up "purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain" just to make my HOUSE cooler?) In these cases, the self-purification becomes the bottom level of direct action. The first step. It all counts. The rain barrel, getting rid of the lawn, the light bulbs that use a tenth the coal: it's "self-purification", and it matters, not just for the amount of fossil fuels saved, but for the self-alignment, the integration that extended struggles call for. Maybe like nations, environmentalists divided against ourselves cannot really stand.

From Dr. King's letter: "An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself." Well, the environmental problems of our age revolve around just such imbalances. I am part of a power majority group (a person who depends upon coal burned in southwest Detroit) that compels a minority group to obey (live with, meaning breathe) but does not make binding on myself (I don't live too near the coal plant, or the coal mines; their problems are not binding on me, myself.) And no, I didn't set this up and to a certain extent, cannot help it. But I can darn well participate in the benefits to the least possible degree, while helping the struggle over the socialized risks to the greatest possible degree. I am not innocent here, and inaction is not a moral option.

Flying is pet peeve of mine, although for years I have had no effective challenge, while vaguely understanding the relatedness to environmental justice. The article in Yes! clears the air. Only a very small percentage of the world's population can afford to fly. The benefits of flying, therefore, are privatized in the extreme. However, the risks are socialized. Poor populations containing no individual wealthy enough to fly are now dealing with rising sea levels, melting tundra and sinking villages, agriculture disrupted by worsening droughts. There is no bigger hit a single human being can give the atmosphere and its carbon levels than a trip by plane. From Joseph Nevins' Yes! article:

"A round-trip flight between New York and Los Angeles on a typical commercial jet yields an estimated 715 kilos of CO2 per economy class passenger, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization. But due to the height at which planes fly, combined with the mixture of gases and particles they emit, conventional air travel has an impact on the global climate that’s approximately 2.7 times worse than its carbon emissions alone, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As a result, that roundtrip flight’s “climatic forcing” is really 1,917 kilos, or almost two tons, of emissions—more than nine times the annual emissions of an average denizen of Haiti (as per U.S. Department of Energy figures).

"Only 2-3 percent of the world’s population flies internationally on an annual basis, but the climate impacts ofair travel are felt by a much larger—and poorer—population. It is difficult to illustrate the meaning of such numbers in terms of who among the planet’s citizens pays the costs."

The statement responding to climate change by the Indigenous Environmental Network makes some sharp points:

Climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. Stop it at the source. Limit people’s consumption.

End the promotion of false solutions such as carbon trading, carbon offsets, using forests and

agriculture as offsets, agro-fuels, carbon storage and sequestration, clean coal technologies, geo-

engineering, mega hydro dams and nuclear power. These allow the rich industrialized countries to

avoid their responsibility to take major changes. {I'll add that these allow rich individuals to avoid OUR responsibilities.]

An end to over-production for over-consumption, and a dramatic reduction in wasteful

consumption and production of waste by Northern and Southern elites.

Restore to developing countries the atmospheric space that is

occupied by their greenhouse gas emissions. This implies the decolonization of the atmosphere

through the reduction and absorption of their emissions.

The world must forge a new economic system that restores harmony with nature and among

human beings. We can only achieve balance with nature if there is equity among human

beings. The capitalist system has imposed upon us a mindset that seeks competition, progress

and unlimited growth. This production-consumption regime pursues profits without limit,

separating human beings from nature. It establishes a mindset that seeks to dominate nature,

turning everything into a commodity: the land, water, air (carbon), forests, agriculture, flora

and fauna, biodiversity, genes and even indigenous traditional knowledge. Under capitalism,

Mother Earth is turned into nothing more than a source of raw materials. Human beings are

seen as consumers and a means of production, that is, persons whose worth is defined by what

they have, not by what they are. Humanity is at a crossroads: we can either continue taking the

path of capitalism, depredation and death, or take the road of harmony with nature and respect

for the Circle of Life.

The statement ends with a call to stopping "CO2 Colonialism," which is described pretty well in the Yes! article. How did we miss this aspect of our fossil-fuel-centered lifestyles? We can't contain our own carbon, we impose it. We benefit while the risks are socialized.

Again, Dr. King:

"When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

"In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed."

I wonder how much of those paragraphs could apply to the current environmental situation. ARE those who bear the risks while we reap the benefits disappointed in us, in the environmental movement? Have we forgotten the poorer neighborhoods, the poorer people worldwide, the tribal people who are tired of our carbon "occupying" their atmosphere? Is this a reasonable way to assess the situation? If so, isn't the first most-gratifying response to be the biggest personal downscale of fossil fuels possible, and wouldn't that be exhilarating, not the onerous burden that not only our consumer culture declares, but even we ourselves often assume? And the second, but just as immediate response, would be direct action against the system that caused the imbalance and injustice, the one that benefits some greatly, while burdening others terribly. We need to join their fight.

And I believe the third response is this: knowing this is some of the greatest work we can do. That it'll create some of the greatest satisfaction we can experience. That we can know in our hearts it's worth it.

Post and photos by Sierra Club volunteer Rebecca Hammond