Neoliberalism and Climate Change
The effects of climate change, long warned about but always seemingly far off in the consciousness of ordinary people, are already here, and they’re deadly. Harvey and Irma have devastated American coastlines in quick succession, causing unprecedented damage and ruining countless lives. India has been pummeled by severe flooding in recent years, one instance of which is considered the worst natural disaster in the subcontinent’s history and resulted in at least 11,000 deaths. In California, a state of emergency has finally been lifted for most of the state after it experienced its worst drought in over 1200 years. The unprecedented nature of these disasters is no coincidence. This trend of increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events will characterize life in the 21st century. Unfortunately, we find ourselves operating within a political and economic system that is woefully unprepared to address the coming environmental catastrophe.
Not only is neoliberal capitalism largely to blame for inaction on climate change, it also intensifies the problem with development practices that serve the interests of private capital but leave the rest to fend for themselves. This is especially apparent in the case of India. Following the 1991 economic crisis, the country took a strong neoliberal turn. Beginning with the New Economic Policy of 1991, India gradually liberalized its economy, and today it is one of the most unequal societies in the world, and the consequences of changing weather patterns on the nation’s poor have been exacerbated by this market-driven development. Just this past August, a flood in Mumbai was made worse by the clearing of wetlands and cutting of mangroves, which act as natural water drains, for the construction of luxury housing for India’s upper classes. Surrounding these pockets of extreme wealth are slums and shantytowns, inhabited by people who have little to no support from the government to fall back on. So when the floods swept through Mumbai, the water had nowhere to go and the poorly constructed homes of India’s underclasses were decimated. People lost everything and were forced to scavenge for food, eating rats and drinking floodwater mixed with sewage, while the government took little action. The Indian state’s minimal role in ensuring sustainable housing for its citizens and rebuilding communities after disasters hit has already resulted in many additional fatalities to climate change, and the body count will only rise in the years to come.
The United States, despite having a far more developed economy, suffers from a similar lack of preparation that disproportionately affects the poor. The consequences are also heavily divided along racial lines, as years of discriminatory housing policies have made minority communities far more vulnerable to natural disasters. Additionally, due to the lack of government protection and extreme wealth inequality in America, it is much more difficult for the underprivileged to evacuate, putting them at far greater risk of death. People can’t simply get up and leave when they don’t have anywhere to go, and leaving home means potentially losing everything. Some, as has been reported in Florida during Hurricane Irma, even face the possibility of getting fired from their jobs just for not showing up to work.
Negligent urban planning also bears much of the blame for the severity of the damage and its human toll. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the city of Houston has seen this all too clearly. A combination of environmentally-unconscious practices, poor zoning laws, and a lack of political will to spend money on anything that might reduce long-term risk to climate change (the city had deemed drainage bayous clogged with debris too expensive to clear out) has made Houston particularly unequipped to handle flood conditions. This is especially frightening given that the city has experienced three 500-year floods in just the past three years.
Disaster relief by the United States government has been both insufficient and, as shown in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, cruel to the nation’s poor. This is not due to a lack of resources; the United States is the richest country in the world. The government’s complete failure to do its job after Katrina was a result of the fact that it just didn’t care about New Orleans’ predominantly African-American lower class. Billions of taxpayer dollars went straight to private contractors looking to line their pockets rather than toward helping the people of New Orleans. The predictable result of putting the relief effort in the hands of profit-seeking entities was that the people who could afford help got it, but those who couldn’t languished. With no access to basic necessities, many were forced to turn to looting in order to survive and were subsequently vilified as dangerous, anarchic criminals by both the government and the media. To keep the suffering population in check, the Bush administration contracted the private mercenary army Blackwater, which employed many of the same counter-insurgency tactics it had previously used in Iraq and Afghanistan to maintain order in New Orleans. The destruction wrought by Katrina was also seen as an opportunity by free-market fundamentalists to push through a radical right-wing agenda on the city. Schools were rapidly privatized and public housing was destroyed to make room for more profitable luxury condos. All of this amounts to a brutal class war waged by the powerful against the weak. While things might have turned out better had Katrina not occurred during the Bush administration, this is not saying much. The response under a Democratic president would likely have been less overtly cruel, but the underlying systemic inequalities would still exist.
[pullquote]Disaster relief by the United States government has been both insufficient and, as shown in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, cruel to the nation’s poor.[/pullquote]
In contrast, the United States’ impoverished southern neighbor Cuba is a model for hurricane preparedness and response, garnering praise from the UN. Over the past 18 hurricanes to hit Cuba, there have been only 45 deaths (ten of which were from category 5 Irma), while Katrina, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it hit New Orleans, resulted in over 1500 fatalities in the city alone. The Center for International Policy even published a report stating that Americans are 15 times more likely to die in a hurricane than Cubans. How does a relatively poor country so drastically outperform the world’s richest country in such a crucial measure of development? Large-scale disasters require massive citizen participation and cooperation, and Cuba’s communist government is particularly effective in carrying that out.
[pullquote]It turns out that large-scale disasters require massive citizen participation and cooperation, and Cuba’s communist government is particularly effective in carrying that out.[/pullquote]
Due to its location, Cuba is particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. To protect itself, Cuba enacted a national preparation and response system that prioritizes human life over private property (while also guaranteeing the protection of people’s personal possessions). As a result of the state’s mobilization efforts, hurricane preparation has become a way of life for Cubans. From an early age, children are taught how to help their community in the event of a hurricane, and this education continues into adulthood. All citizens are mandated to go through a civilian defense training program, and every year before hurricane season the entire country holds a two-day hurricane drill known as Ejercicio Meteoro. To make sure that every Cuban’s needs are accommodated for, municipalities keep detailed information on citizens that allow them to identify what services they might require. When a hurricane is imminent, entire communities are mobilized and every individual is given a role to play in protecting their neighborhoods and evacuating fellow citizens. This approach to natural disasters doesn’t require huge amounts of money. People naturally come together to protect their communities, and the government should harness that solidarity by providing the organizational structure and education for them to do so effectively.
Climate justice and long-term sustainability have to be priorities of policymaking in the 21st century, and this requires that we recognize the current system’s impotency in bringing that about. If radical changes in the structure of our political economy are not made, the world will begin to look more and more like a dystopian nightmare. The gap between the haves and the have-nots will become accentuated as dwindling resources drive prices for basic necessities higher, forcing the havenots to resort to desperate measures to stay alive. They will be met by severe crackdowns by police states that prioritize capital over human life. This may sound alarmist, but we have already seen this happen on a much smaller scale in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The mass human displacement that is already inevitable will be even worse if the same development practices that have herded people into overcrowded living conditions that are especially susceptible to natural disasters are allowed to continue. Not only is promoting equitable and environmentally-conscious development the morally correct thing to do, it is also in the interest of the wealthier countries of the world that this happens. Refugee crises are incredibly destabilizing forces in developed countries. Bangladesh, a country of 163 million people, will be mostly underwater by the end of the century. This alone will be create a far greater refugee crisis than the Syrian civil war, and the rest of the world must be prepared to handle human displacement on this scale well in advance.
[pullquote]There are no market-based solutions to natural disasters.[/pullquote]
Neoliberal capitalism is simply not equipped to deal with the effects of climate change. This is a collective problem that requires collective action. There are no market-based solutions. Following the Cuban model, governments must take the lead in preparing for the changing world and protecting their citizens when disaster strikes. Failing to do so will result in a barbaric future.
Jeffrey Conner ‘19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jeffreyconner@wustl.edu.