Climategate was a well coordinated, strategic and devestating attack on the Copenhagen climate talks in December last year. With unprecedented moves from U.S. and China in the run-up, the world’s media and attention was hooked onto the alleged manipulation of data at the University of East Anglia. That stolen information framed the entire negotiations, and set it up for failure.
Today the prospect of a clean-energy economy faces a new threat.
Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States for climate change, according to a new audiotape released today. Right-wing media outlets including The Daily Telegraph, Drudge and Fox News, are already seizing on the al-Qaida leader’s comments. All this on the same day that the American administration formally announced it’s 2020 carbon targets, and a 39% increase in wind-power.
Those in the struggle for a clean-energy economy and safe climate future, should ask themselves why bin Laden would come out with this statement. This is the man who has shown no concern for human life, indeed revels in killing innocent people – why does he now care about rising sea-levels?
His plan is to drive the wedge between the climate cynics and climate activists even further, and it’s already working. This is the perfect story to kill any federal climate bill in the U.S. In fact it’s the perfect strategy if you desire chaos and destruction.
Any association with him immediately demonises the climate movement, and will maintain the stranglehold of oil-rich nations over the American economy. More worryingly in the long term, a world in the throws of extreme weather and an unpredictable food-supply is rich pickings for a fanatic totalitarian.
So how should the environmental movement respond?
- Immediately and unequivocally condemn his comments. We can’t let ourselves be aligned with a terrorist. Bin Laden isn’t an environmentalist and cares nothing about climate change (because that would mean caring about people).
- Whatever your feelings on climate change; don’t use his comments for your cause, because actually he will be using you.
Thanks for posting this – the absurdity of comparing bin-laden statements to advocates in the US is juvenile at best. But we know the conservative culture-warriors will see this as an opportunity to push a story.
Great post. I was especially struck by the comment that bin Laden’s statement is “the perfect strategy if you desire chaos and destruction.” I believe bin Laden hopes to undermine any chance that developing and industrialized nations might come together to form a global climate pact, in the process overcoming the Global South/Global North division which bin Laden himself has so often capitalized on to spread hate and destruction on both sides of the fault line. Bin Laden clearly wants the right wing in the US to exploit his remarks and derail serious climate legislation. By doing this, the far right will tragically be playing right into bin Laden’s hand.
Movements in the US can fall into a dichotomy trap where they end up supporting, either tacitly or explicitly, organizations or individuals that stand in the way of the war machine, capitalism, or whatever their perceived ill is, even if those they support are also oppressive forces. Bin Laden and the US are an example of a false dichotomy – one that limits the ideas of what is possible by presenting them as ends of a spectrum.
Movements tripped over this trap with Hezbollah during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War. In both cases it is easy for someone critical of US dominance, or the dominance of US economic ideology in the world, to fall into the trap of “hey, this person is taking a stance against the US war machine/globalization/you name it, so they are on the higher moral ground than the US.” But of course neither Hezbollah, the Baathists, nor Osama Bin Ladin, are a model of sustainability or justice (gender anyone?). They can offer critiques, but nothing to rally for.