In the protests outside the COP26 climate conference, the narrative was that climate change is a case of the “global north” — meaning the wealthy Western countries and…uh…Australia — victimizing the “global south”. The group Fridays For Future, which organized some of the protests, often frames the issue along these lines. Greta Thunberg gave a speech in which she said the conference had become "a Global North greenwash festival."
If you can get past the fact that the phrase “Global North Greenwash Festival” sounds like a down-market knockoff of Woodstock, or possibly a really hoppy microbrew, she’s not completely wrong. The summit didn’t produce anything groundbreaking. New commitments, if fulfilled — and that’s an “IF” big enough to be seen from outer space — would put us on pace for a temperature rise of 2.4 degree Celsius. That’s well short of the 1.5 degree goal. There were side pacts and agreements on technical issues that could help a bit. Still, we’re in a situation where we basically need to lose 100 pounds in six months, and we’re making commitments along the lines of: “We will only dip doughnuts in low fat mayonnaise from now on.”
I wrote about the conference for Matt Yglesias’ Slow Boring newsletter. I portrayed China and India — especially India — as not-really-with-the-program. I felt that any accurate summary of the conference needed to mention that dynamic. I’m familiar enough with the debate on this issue to know that that portrayal would rub some people the wrong way, and, sure enough, this showed up in the comments section:
This comment reflects an extremely common talking point: That rich Westerners are demonstrating Jupiter-sized balls by asking mostly poor Indians to disavow things, like burning coal, that the West is doing at this very moment. There is, of course, a lot of truth to this argument. But the most important thing about this logic, to my mind, is that it illustrates an uncomfortable truth that those of us who care about climate change need to confront. Unfortunately, many of us — specifically, some left-wing activists — aren’t facing up to reality due to a weird form of racial condescension that’s making finding solutions more difficult.
The “noble savage” trope refers to a stock character who — by virtue of the fact that they haven’t been corrupted my Western/modern wickedness — possesses almost limitless virtue. A good example are the Na’vi in Avatar, who have developed a no-cleanup-required method of fucking, a clear sign of advanced evolution. Other examples include the Native Americans in Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves, who can do magical things like talk to trees and tolerate Kevin Costner. Another example is the “Crying Indian” anti-pollution ads, which worked despite the fact that the actor was actually Italian-American, a fact that was hidden when the director chose to edit out the Indian’s only spoken line: “What’s with all the trash ‘n shit? Are you fuggin’ kiddin’ me over here?”
The noble savage trope has deep roots. The phrase appeared in print as early as 1672, and was popular in the Romantic writings of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was present in the works of Marx and Garfunkle — I’m sorry, Marx and Engels — especially Garf…Engels. There’s an obvious connection to Rousseau, who believed that humans are innately good and only exhibit bad traits because we’ve been removed from the state of nature. Personally, I think Rousseau’s argument is complete garbage; I think it’s obvious that all creatures — humans included — are inherently self-interested, and that nature is neither egalitarian nor peaceful. Though, in fairness to Rousseau, he was writing before Fox’s mid-’90s miniseries When Animals Attack; it’s easier to equate nature with peace and goodness if you haven’t seen footage of a pilot whale fucking up a snorkeler for no particular reason.
The noble savage trope fits nicely within the “AmeriKKKa Sux” narrative that far left activists apply to everything.1 I’ve written before about how “AmeriKKKa Sux” is the only narrative the far left knows, and that all their arguments are variants thereof. When applied to climate change, the story goes like this: The West underwent a capitalism-fueled industrial revolution that released unprecedented levels of heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere. Those gasses are causing rapid and unpredictable changes to our climate, the negative effects of which will be disproportionately borne by people in poor countries.
At its core, this narrative is pretty much completely true. I see very little to quibble with in that story; its components are, to my mind, mostly indisputable facts. The US and EU have contributed almost half of historic CO2 emissions; the average American does, indeed, emit seven times the greenhouse gases of the average Indian. The West really has put the entire world behind the eight ball. I’ve used multiple metaphors to try to describe this dynamic; I’ve likened the West to Cartman refusing to swim while telling Stan and Kyle “you just have to save me”, and I’ve said that the West being the mouthpiece for low GHG emissions is like having 1970s Aerosmith be the spokespersons for sober living and strict monogamy. The situation definitely isn’t good, it definitely isn’t fair, but on the other hand: Who ever expected life to be good and fair? Other than Rousseau, who — I think I’ve been clear — really would have benefitted from a panda bear attack.
The activist narrative goes off the rails when they portray climate change as a morality play in which the West are the bad guys and people in poor countries are the good guys. This dynamic is unmissable in activists’ rhetoric (see the first paragraph, and also here and here — this stuff is easy to find). The flaw occurs when the frame of reference is changed, when the speaker stops talking about what has happened and starts talking about what is happening and will happen. Whether talking about the past, present, or future, the lefty activist story stays the same: Climate change is — and seemingly always will be — something that the evil “global north” is doing to the innocent “global south”.
The first problem with this narrative is that it’s already a bit untrue and is getting less true by the second. Greenhouse gas emissions in the 21st century are mostly a story about what will happen in the developing world. In 2000, China emitted a little more than half as much CO2 as the US; now, they emit close to double what we do. India has almost caught the EU in total greenhouse gas emissions and is projected to catch the US in the 2030s or early 2040s. Parse the data any way you like; all of it tells a story of GHG emissions slowly trending downward in the West but accelerating rapidly in the rest of the world.
The second problem with the North bad/South good narrative is the noble savage trope. The story contains an implicit assumption that people in other countries — because they’re not part of the evil, corrupt West — will do better than we have. The belief that poor countries will be superior environmental stewards is sometimes justified by noting that they have “skin in the game”. That’s true, of course, but the West has skin in the game, and that’s barely phased us; in the US, the politics of putting a price on carbon remain extremely tough, and the president’s approval rating rises and falls with the price of gas. The only way I could convince myself that Indians — and Africans, and Indonesians — will behave substantially differently than we have would be to inject my thinking with a massive dose of positive racism.
I deeply believe that Indians and people in all countries are fundamentally exactly as shitty as everyone else. That’s what an egalitarian belief about shared humanity sounds like coming from me: I think we all suck the same amount. Of course, you could point out that when I say people are “shitty” I’m referring to the normal level of human shittiness, and therefore should be grading on a curve. I take that point; we could develop a Median Theory of Human Assholery that would take the pejorative sting out of my characterization. Unfortunately, the task here isn’t to uphold normal standards of human behavior — the task is to find some way, any way, to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The belief that the global south will be exemplary environmental stewards isn’t just wrong; it’s an active barrier to finding a solution. We sometimes talk as if solving climate change is like bringing Tinkerbell back to life: It will happen if we just clap really loud and believe really hard! But this isn’t a matter of will; anyone who thinks we’re on the cusp of a massive cultural shift towards environmentalism is delusional. The noble savage myth sends us down a strategic dead end by indulging the fantasy that climate change can be solved by people making selfless choices on a massive scale. I don’t mean to piss on Rousseau’s grave more than I already have — and I have already pissed on it a lot — but if we’re counting on the better angels of human nature to save us, then we are deeply, deeply fucked.
The question of whether it’s morally right to ask Indians to not drive cars or run air conditioners is a red herring. Ask all you want: They’re not going to do it. Have you been to India? It’s very big and very hot. Nobody walks from New Delhi to Mumbai — even Gandhi, one of the walkin’-est dudes who ever lived, topped out at 240 miles. Nobody in Bengaluru is going to switch off their air conditioner in the summer months, a time of year when you could fill a second Ganges with your ass sweat. The average Indian is not going to dramatically alter their life, and I, for one, won’t think less of them for that. Americans have sacrificed our right to get on our high horse on this issue, and if any American is exempt from that, it’s not me, the guy who once reacted to a broken air conditioner by moving his fridge next to the couch and cracking the door.
This isn’t a test of character; this is a technological challenge. We need to invent things that will allow people to gain wealth and live modern lives without emitting greenhouse gases. I’m not a “technology will save us” guy; I’m a “technology is the only strategy that has an ice cube’s chance in Hell of working” guy. It’s people, not governments, who (mostly) buy cars, build buildings, run air conditioners, eat meat, fly on planes, make things, and generate power.2 No government has a big knob labeled “EMISSIONS” that they can just turn down. The government’s role is to enact policies that incentivize the development of technology that will allow people to do the things they do without emitting carbon.
There are many politicians in India who would be much more on board with this program than Narendra Modi. I hope they win elections. We should be realistic about our expectations; just as “liberal Pope” doesn’t mean “gender-fluid porn star”, “environmentalist President of India” doesn’t mean “Ed Begley, Jr.”. But India could easily have a president who would do things like push India’s publicly-owned utilities towards gas and renewables at a faster rate than Modi. That would help grow the market for renewables, which every country should be doing. The West should do that much more aggressively than the developing world, and we should also put up money to help countries invest in renewables as technology comes online. This money wouldn’t be reparations; it would be spending the money we need to spend to solve the problem. Climate change isn’t a parable through which we’ll separate the righteous from the wicked; it’s a challenge that we’ll either solve together, or not.
Let me use one more metaphor to describe where things stand, and I’m posting this mostly because I’ll use any excuse to post it: it’s the Monty Python “let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who” bit:
That about sums it up! The West…he he…hoo boy! We did not cover ourselves in glory here! But hey: What’s done is done, we are where we are. I understand why that might be deeply frustrating to people in the developed world; I understand why they might want to jump through the internet tubes and wring my snarky neck. I really do get that. But none of that changes the fact that what’s done is done, we are where we are, and we’ll either solve this problem together, or not.
The West should create markets for low-carbon technology and commit money to its development and deployment. The developing world should incentivize the adoption of green technology as much as possible. What none of us should do is to imagine that if the evil “global north” stops victimizing the poor, noble people of the “global south”, then the problem will be solved. That’s a false narrative; it robs most of humanity of their dignity by — strangely — not acknowledging what shitty assholes they can be. I reject that narrative — I say to the rest of the world: I recognize your profound assholeness. I would never insult you by imagining that you are faultlessly good and noble. And, as I think about solutions to climate change, I will do so with a clear-eyed understanding that your capacity for shitty, selfish assholery is every bit the equal of my own.
Of course, if you’re British, the narrative is “Britain Sux”, and if you’re Slovenian, it’s “Slovenia Sux”, and so-on.
Power distribution (I couldn’t find numbers on generation) is actually more often publicly-owned than privately-owned. But there are a lot of privately-owned utilities, and they’re likely to become more common as the world develops (they’re much more common in the US and Europe than in the rest of the world).
I'll add that the Noble Savage trope also assumes that those people in the Global South received exactly zero benefit from the West's carbon output, which is absurd. Yes, they are poorer than those of us in the North, but I'm pretty sure they consume lots and lots of goods that were either produced or invented in the North, with no remorse (nor should they). Those GHGs have benefited all of humanity, to varying degrees.
I’m a big proponent of the “equality means we all suck equally” mindset. I remember, during peak Internet Feminism of 2014-2015, floating the revised slogan of “feminism (noun): the radical notion that women are just as bad as men.” Strangely enough, there weren’t many adopters…