Tag Archives: triple inequality

Carbons Credits and Food Aid: Why Consumption Solutions Won’t Fix a Broken Production System

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A phenomenon that is currently sweeping through the ‘environmental’ movement, is the concept of carbon credits; paying a variety of different merchants for performing carbon offsets. The most recent of these carbon markets are farmers hoping to sell their ability to sequester carbon in the soil through no till agriculture techniques. This is the idea discussed in, “Is carbon farming a climate boon, or boondoggle?” an article reviewed by one of my classmates (Anuras). This Blog post is in response to their blog post expanding on their critique of the carbon credits movement in general.

 

Anuras brings up a good point when they say, “Further, affluent consumers are drawn to climate friendly solutions such as carbon sequestration but do they … simply commend themselves for doing a good deed.” This statement helped me realize the connections this style of response for carbon sequestration has to the response the U.S. has taken

Developed Economy, Max Gustafson

with surplus grain supplies. Rather than address the problem at its source, the policy and production level, the solution the current system comes up with is to expand the consumer market, taking an overproduction problem and selling the solution back to the public as a consumption problem. They tell us that if we just give enough food away in the form of foreign aid, re-capture just enough carbon, simply consume enough, then we won’t have to change the way we live.

However, like we discussed in class, the people most likely to be impacted by the coming climate change are not those doing most of the consumption or emissions, but those in developing countries, the very same group of people most damaged by the processes of dumping surplus crops as ‘food aid’. We can no longer rely on individualistic solutions like carbon credits that inherently rely on consumption, to solve systemic issues. Our ‘perpetual growth’ economy is being fueled at the detriment of developing nations and climate mitigation. To truly address these institutional issues beyond buying some ‘green’ or ‘fair trade’ products we must come together as active citizens instead of passive consumers. It is up to us: we can either voluntarily change the way we live now or let climate change choose for us at a deadly cost in the future.

 

 

Climate Change Triple Inequalities: A Worldwide Crisis

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Cameron McElmurry’s blog post describes the locust swarms currently ravaging farms in the Horn of Africa. While reading, I recognized the injustice that many face as they experience crises caused by climate change and are forgotten while the world focuses on COVID-19. Worldwide, millions will face food insecurity and depleted agricultural incomes because of disasters such as this.

Cameron’s post reminded me of the “triple inequality” topic discussed in class. In terms of the current climate crises that are affecting the world, developing countries most often take the brunt of the short term effects. The triple inequality concept includes asymmetric impacts (follow the link for examples), responsibility (those who are most affected by climate change often have the least to do with it), and less capacity to adapt (less infrastructure and ability to rebuild or respond to disasters). 

Climate change is known to increase inequality, so, as developing countries experience more agricultural failure (droughts, pests, etc.) due to new climate disasters, they will have even less money and resources to make further changes, continuing the cycle of this triple inequality. 

Another topic we have discussed in class is the racial disparities present in the food system. A recent article describes the increased inequality of minority Americans during the COVID-19 crisis. It discusses how industrial regions of the country have high populations of minority workers and are disproportionately hit by hurricanes, fossil fuel pollution, cancer and other diseases as result of chemical and pollutant exposure, and now, coronavirus cases. This reveals the reality of triple inequality in America, where particular people groups are systematically affected by the means of production and climate changes that occur as a result of the environmental degradation supported by big business.

It is evident that at home and abroad, we must advocate for those affected by climate change and forgotten during the COVID-19 crisis.