Climate Change and the Noble Savage Trope

Positive racism is making finding solutions harder

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.”