Ciplet writes op-ed on crisis of solidarity at climate talks in Paris
The medical anthropologist Paul Farmer once wrote that "the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." For many in the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris this week, this idea is at the heart of disagreement on a pathway forward.
Climate change is not primarily an institutional, technological or scientific problem; it is a crisis of solidarity between nations and peoples globally. It is the belief that major polluting countries and wealthy people have more of a right to fill the atmosphere with carbon. It is the idea that the flooding of Miami under rising seas represents more of a catastrophe than that of Dhaka. It is the lack of a shared historical memory that links the suffering of the economically marginal and climate vulnerable to the imperialist actions of wealthy countries and corporations. It is the fact that some lives, and largely those of people of color, women and Indigenous peoples around the world, are treated as mattering less.
