Yes.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that immigration is part of our fight in the climate movement. Here’s why I think we need to be actively involved in the immigrant-rights battle that’s going on right now.
In terms of “stopping climate change,” “containing climate change,’ or even “preventing the collapse of civilization as we know it,” we’re fucked. Really fucked. Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth, makes that abundantly clear. The title reflects the point that the planet we used to know is gone. McKibben couldn’t possibly be any clearer about the fact that there is no hope of avoiding the collapse of our civilization. What matters at this point is what the collapse will look like and what will come next, and that’s also the scariest part.
When the industrial economy collapses and we move toward a more manual labor based economy, that could be a good opportunity for mass awakening. It could be a chance for our society to collectively say “Maybe trying to meet our emotional needs through material consumption wasn’t a good idea” or “Maybe greed and competition weren’t the best values on which to base our culture and economy.” There will undeniably be extreme hardship and loss of life, but it could reconnect us to our humanity, and a new society more in line with our true values could be build on the ashes of this one.
But history suggests otherwise. While there has never been this kind of collapse on a planetary scale, there have been local precedents. Whether environmentally induced like in Darfur or economically induced like in Germany in 1930, societies have gone into free fall. But rarely have those societies acknowledged that they had it coming due to systemic problems in the way they were living. Much more commonly, a person or group stepped up and said “THOSE people, they are the problem.” Then the scapegoated group and civil liberties were sacrificed in the name of reestablishing order and security.
The scariest thing in our future is not the physical limitations we will face, but who will be blamed and what moral sacrifices will be made in the futile attempt to maintain order. That is why what we are doing is so important. If we go over that edge with a clear focus on climate change, we can acknowledge the true culprit and learn from our parents’ mistakes. But without that focus, we are susceptible to any interpretation. Just as climate change is already here, the battle for how we will deal with it is already here as well.
The current immigration debate did not emerge out of a vacuum, and was not nearly as heated just three years ago. But then gas prices shot up because we are running out of oil. As the cheap and easily accessible oil peaked, supplies ran short and speculators panicked. While the oil driven economy at large suffered, the greatest impact was on the housing market since the glut of suburban houses with 90 minute commutes were suddenly less attractive. So the economy tanked and unemployment skyrocketed. Since the root issue of basing our economy on a rapidly depleting resource is uncomfortable to deal with, the right wing demagogues had no trouble selling their argument that “THOSE people stole your jobs.” Hence the front page quote from Archie Archuleta last week about the current atmosphere being more hateful toward immigrants than any point in his 60 years of dealing with immigration issues. This is a harbinger of things to come. The current battleground of hatred is immigration, and it matters who wins. If hatred wins the day today, we face a much darker tomorrow.
If our groups stay out of this issue, we implicitly support the notion that this is just about immigrants. But the hatred toward immigrants is not just an alternative to compassion toward immigrants; it is also an alternative to a rational discussion of the real problems with our economy and society. Xenophobia is the alternative to honest introspection. The climate movement needs to be actively standing up for that voice of honest introspection. We need that introspection now, and we’re really going to need it down the road.
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