“Eat the rich” is a slogan that has been echoed often in the past years, whether it be graffitied on the walls of cities all across the world or yelled out at different protests no matter the occasion for it, it has become a rally cry known well in the sphere of activism, including amongst environmental and climate activists. The origin of it is largely attributed to philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from a quote which, translated, says: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”. “Eat the rich” well encapsulates, in short terms, my attitude towards climate justice and the general message of this essay. So, the big question: how do we solve the climate crisis? There isn’t only one clear solution, there are in fact a plethora of avenues to suggest, and whatever is proposed will definitely never be easily achieved. I will choose to focus on two steps. One, we need to accept, and support, certain controversial means of protest and let go of this disillusioned moral high ground of “we shouldn’t answer violence with violence”. Two, we need to urgently reach some sort of collective consciousness by coming to a mass realization that every single struggle is intrinsically related to one another, like one string in a large web of subjugation and oppression, in order to reach mass mobilization.
Another Jean to look at is Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, writer and political activist who wrote a well-known preface for Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched Of The Earth”, in which he speaks, in part, of those who champion non-violence above all else.
“I think we understood this truth at one time, but we have forgotten it—that no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them. […] A fine sight they are too, the believers in non-violence, saying that they are neither executioners nor victims. […] Try to understand this at any rate: if violence began this very evening and if exploitation and oppression had never existed on the earth, perhaps the slogans of non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oppressors. […] Will we recover? Yes. For violence, like Achilles’ lance, can heal the wounds that it has inflicted.”
I think of the discussion surrounding blowing up pipelines, and the instinctive reaction of some to abhor that, as one would flinch away at the thought of enacting any form of violence upon another. Some would even say that reacting with such violence would only serve to lower us to the immoral ranks of those building pipelines knowing full well the devastating environmental impact, or that opposing it by any means necessary would be equally bad for the environment. I would say this is a disillusioned, naïve and falsely moral way of thinking.
We cannot hold oppressive violence and resistant violence to the same moral standard or assign equal blame or responsibility. This is not fair as it completely decontextualizes this violence, effectively erasing the decades of subjugation that led us here. The marginalized activists that are blowing up a pipeline for the sake of their own survival and the survival of the environment are not “just as bad” as the billionaire building a pipeline for personal profit at the expense of nature and the people living in the designated area, the repercussions of which he is entirely aware of. Moreover, while the material blows to climate criminals is a goal, there are also discursive, ‘positive political’ ends. Take for example the PFLP blowing up the Trans-Arabian pipeline, and how that action laid bare the actors of oppression, how “sabotage rendered power relations perceptible precisely by disrupting the infrastructures sustaining them”. There is a reason for why the U.S. department of homeland security as well as more local legislators classified acts of violence for the purpose of an ideological or political goal, particularly specifying violence against ‘critical infrastructure’, ‘property’ and ‘economic targets’, as terrorism, which is largely functioning with the intent of suppressing mobilization and revolts, including against the constructions pipelines.
It was recently revealed by reports that only 57 firms (though excluding countries) were responsible for a whopping 80% (64% excluding nation states) of the world’s carbon emissions between 2016 and 2022. To target them with concrete direct action would not only serve material blows but also let people know of these companies’ (which seek to stay hidden) hand in the climate crisis. Thus, we must acknowledge the people’s right to resistance in the face of the climate catastrophe, and mobilize to make it a central part of our plan to combat it.
Then, we must realize that all of our struggles, all possible realms of activism, are interconnected. Patricia Hill Collins speaks of a matrix of domination which explains social stratification as a sociological paradigm of interlocking layers of oppression. The issues of anti-white supremacy, of anti-capitalism, of feminism, of decolonization, of queer rights, of climate justice, they all cross over one another in a mess of tangled strings that all lead to the same oppressive elite class. When the PFLP orchestrated their attack against the Trans-Arabian pipeline, they likely did the environment a great service, but was it their main goal? In the larger frame, it is freeing Palestinians from the settler colonial state, but also exposing the complicity of the U.S and certain Arab governments. What does the plight of Palestinians have to do with the climate crisis? Well, 85,000 tonnes of bombs in a little over a year, which amounts to more bombs dropped during the entirety of the second world war and is equivalent to 5 nuclear bombs, on a strip as small as Gaza does the climate and the environment no favors, to say the least. According to Middle East Monitor, the use of internationally banned white phosphorus and the constant bombardment “has devastated vast agricultural lands and contaminated the soil with toxic chemicals, which will impede farming for decades”. Their study reveals that between October and February alone, the Zionist entity’s pounding of Gaza has released between 420,265 and 652,552 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Another study, according to EuroNews, predicts that the impact of rebuilding Gaza post-war is “estimated to be between 46.8 million and 60 million tonnes CO2 – higher than the annual emissions of more than 135 countries”. That is all without taking into consideration the Zionist entity’s assault on the south of Lebanon, and now its expansion further into Lebanese territory, notably the Bekaa region and Beirut.
How can anyone seriously make a plan against climate change and call themselves environmental activists if they do not condemn this and do not mobilize for the dismantling of the Zionist state? And the same white supremacy that upholds the domination of Zionism by dehumanizing Palestinians is the one oppressing people of color in the U.S and in Europe, and those power’s proxy presence in the global south, and the same one that was responsible for the colonial eradication and suppression of indigenous cultures which had long respected and lived harmoniously with nature before then. The same bourgeois class of elites that is funding the settler state for their own financial interest in oil and other, is the one that is keeping the 1% filthy rich in the U.S while the average American cannot afford weekly groceries, which makes people angry, desperate, and is historically a massive reason behind the rise of fascism, bringing us people like Trump. That is all to make the point that everything that oppresses the masses is connected, and that coming to what Marx would call “a collective class consciousness” is an extremely important step in the fight against climate change. Individualism will be the death of us and nature as we know it today. The environment will adapt and survive. The earth will remain, we will not.
In conclusion, though there are many steps to tackle for the sake of solving the climate crisis, I see two: accepting the fact that a violent system will not be taken down by mere protests and planting trees while singing kumbaya, and unifying ourselves by finding the common thread that binds us all as against the oppressive class, both for the purpose of mass mobilization. As Hickle said in his argument for degrowth as the path to climate justice: “degrowth is, ultimately, a process of decolonization. […] It is a struggle over our very theory of being. It requires decolonizing not only lands and forests and peoples, but decolonizing our minds”.
Edited By Christy Abou Saad and Amin Kharrat