Week 38: IS CAPITALISM THE DRAGON THAT NEEDS TO BE SLAIN TO SOLVE THE CLIMATE CRISIS?

August 2023 has been, for me, a month of re-read and re-discovery. I re-read hoodwinked by John Perkins. Partly because I enjoy his writing style that decomposes complex economics & capital stuff to accessible language, and partly reflecting on the present wave of climate finance as the new buzz word around the climate crisis.

I also re-engaged with Cornel West’s master class on Philosophy a third time over! His witty delivery on what it means to be human (aka a two legged linguistically conscious featherless creature born between urine and feaces) and getting over our fear of death and other human identities is simply a timeless classic!

On the last Wednesday of the month, I connected with UTA-Do conversations to interrogate urban theory in Africa. It was a critical reflection of how to frame the Climate Crisis and Climate Action in a post-colonial, deeply unequal, poverty riddled African urban context. And what does it mean for lived experiences in Africa cities? Then, what is the context relevant climate action? UTA-do? (a Kenyan sheng slang word of “What you gonna do about it?”)

Reflecting on UTA-Do conversations prompted my memory to recall the short, crisp, provocative ideas in Noam Chomsky masterclass on how employment – a quintessential pursuit of African governments as a solution for the youthful jobless populace can be a form of modern-day slavery!

The four ideas fused to an awakening aha moment! 

1. The climate crisis is an economic power crisis.
2. At the heart of present-day economic power is predatory capitalism - a mutated infected form of capitalism. 
3. To win the climate war is to win back economic power through putting an end to predatory capitalism. 
4. Employment opportunities in exchange of ownership and access rights for youthful Africa (who will bear the biggest brunt of the climate crisis that they never caused) is a modern expression of slavery propagated through predatory capitalism.

AHA! 
The Climate crisis is inextricably linked to the economic power crisis (and its human consequences of poverty, inequality and injustice).     History bears out that power is seldom given. 
It is taken. 
Seldom through peaceful protests....
Almost always through unconventional battle strategies... 

Killing predatory capitalism in post-colonial, deeply unequal, poverty riddled African urban context is about securing and protecting ownership and access rights. 

Here is my journey to this consciousness. ..

Climate crisis is the elephant in the room. Like many friends in social and professional circles, I grapple to get through the mutating forms of buzz words and jargon on climate. I get lost in the tensions of resilience, adaptation, mitigation, justice, loss and damage, and common but differentiated responsibilities. Particularly because the conversations tend to reduce action to projectization - what needs to be built and what project needs to be funded.

The human face - the lives and livelihoods - seems lost in all this.

Reimagining the climate crisis: Synthesizing UTA – Do Conversations.

The dots connecting the climate crisis to an economic crisis revealed to me through two contrasting narratives. The first from Chandni Singh – a researcher at the Indian Institute of Human settlement, speaking to the Keynote address on “crisis of Imagination/ (re) Imagination for (Climate) crisis. The second from Nonhle Mbuthuma – a human rights activist bringing voice on the lived struggles in the quest for “just energy transition”.

Chandni:

The climate crisis is pervasively framed as a high emission crisis. It’s through this lens that the Paris target of a certain degree centigrade was set.

Consequently, climate actions are framed as reducing high emissions particularly from polluting energy sources like coal. This props solutions like electric vehicles, non-motorized transport and renewable energy sources.

Critically, however, this framing does not dig deep into the root cause.

The reason behind high emission is the quest for economic power. Western nations appropriated fossil fuel energy sources to power their industries and accumulate wealth often to the detriment of the lives and livelihoods of the ‘other’. Today, we also know it was to the environmental detriment of our planet.

The means used to appropriating this capital was often predatory. It was through slavery, colonizing territories, othering and perpetuating unequal access to resources.

Overlaying this framing of climate crisis (as a high emission crisis) and climate action (as reducing emissions) to the African context is simply disconnected and Utopic.

In the African context there is little or no emissions in the first place. UNEP reports that Africa has contributed a negligible 2 – 3% of emissions.

The climate solutions advanced of Electric cars are a distant dream to a slum dweller who presently desires a simple safe bulb to light their single room and a safer cooking energy alternative away from charcoal and firewood that lead to health problems.

What’s the real context here?

Nonhle Mbuthuma

Listening to this bold and passionate human rights defender, the real context is the deception and doublespeak of western hegemony.

In Africa, predatory capitalism is alive and booming today!

Today, the government of South Africa is awarding permits for the exploration of fossil fuels on South Africa’s seabed.

Nonhle’s people are being pushed away from their land to make way for “investors” for whom her government is defending against the pesky locals. Her community is being asked to embrace “development” that will bring employment. In return they lose access to their ancestral land.

What puzzles her and her community is the ludicrous reality that in 2022/2023, with all the formal passionate political statements of rich nations schooling the world about "greening", new "investors" from these same nations are elbowing her community to grow their economic power through further exploiting the high emission fossil fuels.

Green transitions, electric cars, renewable energy is just banter from how they experience things. The real deal on the ground is to turns her people from owners of capital to dependents of wage employment.

Noam Chomsky’s reflection on “the control we don’t see” comes to play.

Chomsky quips that the ultimate attack on the basic human right is to be subordinate to a master and to lose control of your own actions. In this way wage labour is not so different from slavery except in so far as it is temporary. Seeding out the control of land for fossil fuel exploration in exchange for wage labour in the context of climate crisis amounts to sabotaging human planetary existence!

Summatively, the imagination of the climate crisis as a high emission crisis is irrelevant for the African context. In Africa’s context, the climate crisis is an economic exploitation crisis.

The African relevant solutions contrast sharply from the advanced ideas of technology driven smart cities, electric vehicles and cycling alternatives. The context relevant solution is one of securing and protecting ownership and access rights.

Perhaps, what’s playing out in South Africa is an outlier case. Yet a different version plays out in Kenya ... and with similar conclusions!

Kenya stands out as a front runner in the green energy pursuit with 90% of its on-grid electricity sourced from renewable sources like hydroelectricity, solar, wind and geothermal. Yet the cost of electricity makes this basic service often inaccessible to the majority, particularly those living in urban informal settlement that make up two-thirds of urban residents.

What’s going on here?

Zooming into the lived experience of the majority – the urban poor. Their story is one of daily survival, on the edge of tipping over to the abyss.

Their immediate environment is often polluted with solid waste and untreated sewerage pouring into the rivers tributaries that outline such settlement usually formed around the river riparian.

The sewer comes from illegal connections of developments upstream in industries and formal housing complexes. Water is a pipe dream that is accessed at three times the cost compared to the formally housed city residents. The electricity company’s approach to providing access to electricity is an elitist demand for security of tenure before access. Security of tenure is yet another pipe dream.

Through projectized campaigns to sensitize slum residents about climate crisis as a high emission problem polluting the ozone layer, the youth, who form over 80% of the residents in informal settlements, are taking action into their own hands to de-pollute and de-carbonize their environment. They engage in reclaiming riverbeds, recycling and urban agriculture. This efforts double up as livelihoods providing a source of income.

Yet this climate action feels too micro, a drop in the ocean and a bit demeaning. It will never gather enough steam “kuguruma” (a Swahili word meaning to power up).

While not criticizing or watering down every “humming bird” effort, a critical reflection begs.

The sewer pollution is not from the community.

The solid waste is also dumped from outside the community.

Denied access to water and electricity compromises their health.

Inadequate housing exacerbates the conditions.

Diminished right to occupy the land makes their existence precarious.

The control of the resources needed to change their reality has been captured.

The government is often overwhelmed by the magnitude of need.

Government action to provide social housing, safer and subsidised electricity and water is easily submerged in the sea of predatory capitalism run by cartels who control these resources for profit.

But why is the Kenyan government so hamstrung in addressing pervasive poverty?

Like many other African governments, it is throttled with debt.

At 1.02 trillion Kenya Shillings (about $700 million) debt repayment gobbled up 58.6% of total tax collection for the July 2022 – May 2023.

Obviously, this leaves paltry resources for health, housing, and basic service that secure dignified lives and livelihoods.

In 2020, Zambia defaulted on its debt repayment. Simply unable to meet the cost of debt servicing with a reality of an unmaterialized fantasy of future high copper prices. This was the pipe fantasy against which its former president, Edgar Lungu, was persuaded by “investors” to go on a borrowing frenzy to finance massive infrastructure projects.

This is the point at which an understanding of “hoodwinked” comes to play.

Hoodwinked into predatory capitalism: understanding the financial entanglements in the climate crisis.

Like many other “ism’s” such as liberalism, socialism, environmentalism, racism, colonialism – Capitalism denotes a relationship.

That between human society and capital.

At its core conceptualization, the relationship defines the innovative pursuit to discovery how to use our “Garden of Eden” (the environment and resources in it) to generate value that protects and even advances human life. This innovative pursuit is fundamentally a mind venture, making the human mind the core capital.

At some point in human history – this core capital was infected with a virus. It was a virus of a false dichotomy of “us vs them”. Deleterious competitiveness that sharply contrasts to today’s call for mutual collaboration pictured this variant form of capitalism which mutated to bear the now pervasive predatory capitalism.

Predatory capitalism is pernicious – it encourages exploitative practices, unsustainable use of resources, othering, and inequality. Its principle agent is an Economic Hit Man (EHM).

An Economic Hit Man (EHM) is the agent of the predatory capitalist charged with executing a simple cookbook.
 
First, identify the prey. This is often a territory that has a coveted natural asset in its “Garden of Eden” like oil, coltan, copper, diamonds etc. 
 
Second, hook the prey. The EHM lures the prey akin to the seduction of the poisoned apple in the story of snow white. It starts by painting a glorious picture of a future propelled by this great natural resource in the territory. Sadly, this is all “locked” out of reach by the territory because of lack of infrastructure. But today is your lucky day, the pitch goes on, because the EHM is the savior who can secure a massive infrastructure loan deal. All the leader needs to do is offer a form of security. When the leader protests the debt is too high for his people, the EHM swoops in again and soothes the worry by persuading the leader that the “unlocked value” will fully meet the debt cost. 
In the deal, the predatory capitalist backed by the EHM becomes the contractor to deliver the projects. To say “thank you” for the contract awarded in their favour, they offer massive kickbacks to the collaborating leader and associates. This tongue-ties the leaders such that if the deal goes rogue, they can’t back out without losing their political credibility.  
 
Third, go for the kill. Inevitably the chickens come home to roost. This is when the debt service is due, and the imagined “unlocked value” fails to materialize. This often comes as a surprise to the territory but was all in plan for the EHM. The pitch to take on the debt almost always inflated the quantity and value of the “unlocked” resources. When this does not materialize, the country is locked in a debt trap. With no real increase of its territory's revenue it has to squeeze into domestic revenue because default is not an option. 
Once again, the EHM returns. 
This time, however, it is to a debt riddled territory with a compromised corrupted leader! In stern words, the EHM echoes the words of the lenders – if you default, we will take you to the dogs! Then in swift messianic notion the EHM offers a “rescue plan” out of the debt shackles. 
All the country needs to do is waive its protective regulations and offer the predatory capitalist – now dressed as “investors” - unfettered access to exploit the “Garden of Eden”.  This, the EHM argues, is good for the territory because it will make it quicker and easier to get the resources and work on the debt shackles. 

So to say scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. 

In a stroke of a pen, the territory becomes a slave to the predatory capital “investor” to avoid defaulting on debt. It sways to the tunes of the new slave master. Even more hideous, is the revelation that once the debt trap is locked in, the leader really had no choice. Waiving off the territory’s wealth is near guaranteed – the easy way by pen, or the hard way by the gun. 

The world is riddled with unsettling tales of how sovereign territories have signed into ludicrous deals that led to massive degradation of rainforests, dumping of toxic waste and even the use of its people in wars they never signed up for. Equally told are tales of prominent leaders meeting untimely deaths or being overthrown, and thereafter the country getting riddled in debt. Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkurumah, Thomas Sankara, Velasco Ibarra, Mossadegh, Sadam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi. Just a tip of the iceberg.

John Perkins was an EHM.

His conscience was relatively neutral to the mess he was creating until the predatory capitalists turned their guns to his country – United States of America. He, along with 300 million Americans, became prey.

It all crystalized in the housing crisis that melted into a recession. The tipping point of deregulation was ignited in the financial industry. In his account, compromised political leaders were hoodwinked and coerced into the interpretation of Milton Friedman “free market” economics as a deregulatory economics. Americans were hoodwinked to take up housing loans because, after all, the future value of the house was going to pay for the debt – right?

The perniciousness went as far as creating new vocabularies of the targeted vulnerabilities such as NINJA loans – No Income No Jobs No Assets loans.

Then, in 2008, the music stopped.

The knives all came falling, cutting through families, men, women, communities - no one spared. Well, except the predatory capitalist who saw it coming and got richer in the demise of the many!

It was around this time that Perkins became a grandfather and realized how grim the future was for his grandson if this virus was not immunized.

What does this all have to do with the climate crisis?

Everything!

In its pernicious nature, predatory capitalism was (and still continues to be) a progressive assault to the environment through unsustainable exploitation of resources and intentional pollution through dumping of toxic waste. The predator’s guns always fire simultaneously to the planet and its human victims. Initially, these assaults were far between space and time. But in the non-linear complex butterfly effect of flapping wings that morph into a typhoon, all these scattered shots have now lined up and fired up the planet into a climate crisis.

The world is largely over the skepticism of whether the climate crisis is real. Science is unequivocal and lived experiences bears this out. The heatwaves, the droughts, the once in a century hurricane becoming a repeated phenomenon within a year, the flooding, the deaths.

The efforts to forge global collaboration away from a history of pernicious competition.

Ritually, every year, the world gathers to forge actions needed to urgently shift the tide of doom in the climate crisis. The most prominent of these gathering is the Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (CoP).

Political leaders – whose economic power was secured or curtailed through predatory capitalism - are convened under the clarion call that the climate crisis does not obey geopolitical boundaries. It is therefore in their best interest to collaborate beyond their self-seeking identities.

The expected outcome of CoPs is a binding agreement of making resources available for transformative action. This is yet to materialize 28 years later since the first conference of parties in Berlin in 1995.

The imagination of CoP as a convening to forge transformative climate action is the naïve imagination of CoP.

The unsavory truth that attests to the 28 years of stalemate is that CoP is the second scramble for economic power.

At the root cause of the high emissions that science has attributed to the climate crisis, is the amassing of economic power through predatory capitalism that deeply fractured the world now historicized by exploitation, slavery, colonialism, inequality and injustice. 

The exploited victims, who are the majority, approach CoP demanding reparation or else we will all perish. They bang the table at those nations accused of perpetuating predatory capitalism demanding they give up their ill – earned wealth. In the same breath they demand their right to capitalize their own resources (whether from fossil fuels or not) to grow their economic power. After all, their contribution to the mess will still be paltry! This is where climate finance gets strangled with emancipatory finance.

The accused predators, who albeit being the minority, still have a stronghold on the economic power, scrutinize the cards on the table. 

One choice is to confess and concede. 
To sign agreements to cede financial resources accumulated through pernicious practices. To pay for the damages they caused amounting to trillions of US dollars. It’s a pandora box. A bottomless abyss of claims for reparation and restoration.   In conceding, they also lose their right to pursue wealth creation using the old tools of the box – the predatory capitalism. Isolated, they have no viable alternative sources for generating wealth.  This option is a relatively quick certain death. 

On the other hand, they can defend the status quo, admit to nothing, stall and even attempt to sabotage the convening. Hang on to their economic power and arm twist narratives and weaker nations to extract even more resources until the last breath. This is what is happening in South Africa, nanhle’s home. If science and lived experiences count, this option will also certainly lead to their demise. However, the death will be slow and delayed. And who knows. With no historical playbook on what to expect with the climate, there is a thin chance that this dark cloud may just pass. 

The cards laid on the predatory capitalist’s table all offer the same ending– perish! 

The difference, however, is while the first is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to diminish themselves, the second one leaves it to the wind. In the slimmest chance humanity survives they preserve their economic dominance. In the likely alternative that humanity perishes, they sink everyone down with them.

It’s a power game where the priced trophy is economic power. Saving the planet is just but a desirable “oops” byproduct. 

Looking at the CoP negotiations in this context, the paradoxes make sense.

The stalemates in the talks and seeming lack of ambition for climate action speaks to the favored strategy of the predatory capitalists. To stall or frustrate any actions that puncture their economic power.

The valorization of climate finance as the pet-peeve on the negotiation table logically flows. If economic power is the real price on the table, then the means of enabling this – finance, is the targeted strategy.

Dissecting the CoP claptrap around climate finance to see the apocalypse

Understanding the climate crisis as a tension for economic power helps us understand why finance for climate action becomes the thorny issue. 

Once again, two narratives are propped up.

The economic power holders, who also largely happen to be the high emitters and predatory capitalists begin their treatise by declaring solidarity with the world and willingness to make available the financial resources to slay the climate crisis dragon.

They quickly proceed to frame the problem as an investment opportunity.

Now, the troublemaker shifts the seat from the accused to the coveted title of the “investor”.

On the “investor” throne, the economic power holders projectize climate action through the lens of solving the problem in their society - often disconnected to the majority victims who are now pushed to the “borrowers” seats.

The “borrowers” must now pitch their story to the tune of the investors who will reward the right symphony with the money to save themselves.

I visualize this as the predatory “investor” taking a high seat on top of a rainbow. They then place the coveted “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow.

Borrowers, who are the historically exploited nations, and who have done little to contribute to the mess, now have to scale this rainbow of declarations, commitments and project pitching to access the pot of gold. Only those favored few who sing to the right tune of the potholder will access the pot of gold.

In the meantime, it seems, the orchestra with the right symphony is lost!

The exploited victims, cry foul. They demand unfettered access to the money they need to survive.  Taking their moral high ground, the predatory capitalists justify their rigorous project requirements as securing accountability since the corrupted leaders cannot be trusted. It is for the good of the people, they argue. They now wear the second hat of the vanguards of society against their corrupt leaders!

As time passes, the exploited victims begin to weaken from the brunt born by the climate crisis as well as historical predatory capitalism that has left them in debt.

Longer droughts, dangerous floods, reducing revenues and…oh yes… escalating debts with their territories now classed as "higher risk" and the cost of capital going up!

They become desperate for funding. Their desperate decaying populace threatens civil unrest. Caught between a rock and a hard place, they begin to cave one after the other. The EHM’s are back.

This time they are demanding a pound of flesh. Fossil fuel exploitation that needs to be off the books. In return they will throw a few bones of climate funds. South Africa's narrative comes clear.....

Outside the pristine venues of CoP, the tables now turn.

The one faced with certain death is now the exploited victim who has two choices – both with the outcome of Perish. 

One choice is to auction their future. 
To sign agreements to cede their natural resources for the predatory capitalist to further defecate. 

This is a slow death. 

It gives a breathing space on the common sweetener of debt reprieve that the EHM once again messianically negotiates. A loosening of the strangling rope of the cost of debt. 

In return the land is further degraded, the suffering of their people deepens. It becomes a vicious cycle of poverty and precarity. 

Though slow. This option is a sure death. But they sink down pulling the assailant with them. 

On the other hand, they can stand up to the assailant. 

Better to die on their feet than to continue existing on their knees. 

Such movements are gaining momentum. West African nations are rebelling in domino effect  through coups to overthrow leaders who they claim have been compromised over time into auctioning their future for a song. 
The Economic Freedom Fighters are igniting songs beyond South Africa. 
Some leaders are gathering the guts to simply say “No”. 

This option, similarly, leads to certain demise. This time possibly quick, but painless. But with a clear threat that the unconventional battle strategy may be an option, maybe, just maybe, the assailant will back off and the tide will shift. 

The cards laid on the victim’s table all offer the same ending– perish! 

It’s the classic math prisoner’s dilemma! The end - the apocalypse!