As the planet heats up, disasters are becoming more frequent and severe. When they hit, the most vulnerable among us often bear the brunt of the impact. Haiti is a country with a long history of slavery and struggle. In recent years their people have been ravaged by hurricanes, corruption, and severe poverty. Add Tuesday’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake with aftershocks in a city of 2 million to that picture and imagine what people are going through.
As I write this, people are still trapped underneath broken buildings waiting to be rescued. For hours, days, and weeks ahead people will need medical care, food, water, and support. For years to come, Port-au-Prince will need people who are invested in their recovery emotionally, physically, and economically.
Planet Green has a list of 10 ways you can help to get blankets, medical supplies, water, and relief to the people of Haiti right now. At the least, please take 10 seconds to text “Yele” to 501501. This will automatically donate $5 to the relief efforts of the Yele Haiti Foundation through your cell phone bill. If you have other good actions people can take, please share them in the comments of this post.
In this time of distress, climate change is probably the last thing on many peoples’ minds. However, as someone whose life is centered on the issue, every time a natural disaster hits, I think about fossil fuels. Most people associate climate change with sea level rise, droughts, floods, and storms. In recent years researchers have uncovered evidence that as sea levels rise and water or ice is displaced, pressure on the underlying rock can trigger seismic or volcanic activity.
We don’t know whether or not there is a link between climate change and Tuesday’s earthquake. As a global phenomenon, it is inherently difficult to map changes in the Earth’s climate to any specific event. What we know is that burning fossil fuels is altering the climate, increasing the likelihood that disasters like this one will occur.
Our actions matter. As people concerned about climate change, it is on us to demonstrate what accountability for burning fossil fuels looks like. We should stand with people impacted by disasters because we know that tomorrow, next year, or in ten years, it could be our family trapped underneath the building, driving away from a wildfire, or looking for dry land in a flood.
We’ve created an unstable climate by burning fossil fuels without accounting for the impact. If I spend time and money supporting the people of Haiti, that is a choice to invest in the health and security of others. In a warming world, strong policy and better technology are urgently needed. However, what is needed the most is for humanity to get connected to the impact of our actions before and after we take them.
There are three basic ways we can account for the impact of burning fossil fuels:
1. Mitigation – Stop burning fossil fuels.
2. Adaptation – Help communities to build levees and other infrastructure to brace for inevitable disasters.
3. Compassion – Be there with volunteers, water, medical supplies, and relief whenever a catastrophic event occurs.
Climate change has taught us that we are all connected on this planet. The fate of a banker in Taipei, a plumber in Mexico City, and a climate activist in Boston, is bound to the fate of the doctor in Port-au-Prince who is searching for medical supplies and a generator after her hospital has collapsed.
Today, we are all Haitians.
Thank you, Josh.
Hopefully, rebuilding will occur as swiftly as possible and will utilize sustainable building practices and meet earthquake safety standards.
Thanks for the post Josh. I wouldn’t for a second wish to detract from the tragedy of what’s happening in Haiti at the moment; my thoughts are with everyone there, everyone who has loved ones there, and everyone who is mobilising to provide the much-needed relief effort.
That said, like you, when I heard about the quake it didn’t take long for my mind to start thinking about climate change. Personally I doubt there is any direct link at all between this as a physical phenomenon, and climate. However, there are two links that do come to mind:
First, if we think this is bad (and it is), let there be no mistake whatsoever – this is nothing compared to what we will likely see in our lifetimes, even if we start on the path of deep emissions reductions. Even the inevitable consequences now will affect millions upon millions of the already most vulnerable people on earth. If we don’t act…
Second – and this is what I find most interesting – when presented with an immediate threat to life caused by a natural disaster, we’ve seen a massive, swift mobilisation of relief. This is exactly the kind of speed and decisiveness with which we need to be addressing the MUCH more serious threats caused by climate change (again, my thoughts are with everyone in Haiti, and the loss of life there is a tragedy). Now is the time for the fastest and largest mobilisation in human history to spark a new economic, social, and industrial revolution that decouples our quality of life from our carbon emissions.
But we’re simply failing to act on anything like the scale that is needed, a failure that could result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people; if our climate were the Haitian earthquake right now, there would be public outrage at the fact that all we did was air-drop them a few blankets.
You raise a great question Josh.
I think that as a movement we should be vary wary of boiling all major catastrophes down to climate change, or awkwardly trying to link the climate to everything. If theres not strong evidence that suggests that’s the case, then we should look else where. For one, not everything environmental is about the climate – sometimes things are about the broader, ecological crisis.
Other times – and I think this is what Haiti can teach us as a movement – there are other systemic causes: capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, reliance on a hierarchal government, and so on. If anything this should teach us that as people interested in social justice who are focusing on the climate and environment (and how that effects people and society), we’re going to have to widen our analysis to include the systemic causes of our problems – and we’re going to have to expand our focus to issues of war and imperialism, which are especially important to consider when analysing the role Haiti has played in the world system.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Matthew, I agree with your two points. On the first point, we are already seeing millions upon millions of lives affected by climate change as you know in many forms. On the second point, I think you are right that the speediness of the relief efforts needs to be shown in our efforts to revolutionize our economy. I think one key to doing that will be to get our movement more closely connected to being in solidarity with those most vulnerable to disaster. 350 has begun to do this and wrote a good blog post this week about the 350 organizers in Haiti who have been affected.
Brian, for me the common link between all of the problems you mentioned is a lack of connectedness. The solution to that is compassion and solidarity. The central point I was intending to make is that in a warming world, we are going to need to be there for each other in the face of disasters like this one. Both as a way of accounting for the damage we are doing by burning fossil fuels and as a survival mechanism for one another. We should mobilize as climate activists to create an energy revolution, to fund adaptation in the developing world, and to provide relief when disaster strikes.
I believe the dichotomies we draw up between activism and service are false. Both come from the same place – compassion. Let us change the system, yes. But let’s also stand with Haiti as a movement now and as the aid shipments dwindle and volunteers leave. One way to do this is to support the long-term reconstruction efforts of Architecture for Humanity:
http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/updates/2010-01-13-haiti-quake-appeal-longterm-reconstruction