Scientific American’s Sarah Jaquette Ray is almost positioning “climate anxiety” as a raaaaacist thing, because, of course everything has to have a racial component these days, right? If you look at the URL, the original headline was “The Unbearable Whiteness Of Climate Anxiety”
Climate Anxiety Is an Overwhelmingly White Phenomenon
Is it really just code for white people wishing to hold onto their way of life or get “back to normal?”
The climate movement is ascendant, and it has become common to see climate change as a social justice issue. Climate change and its effects—pandemics, pollution, natural disasters—are not universally or uniformly felt: the people and communities suffering most are disproportionately Black, Indigenous and people of color. It is no surprise then that U.S. surveys show that these are the communities most concerned about climate change.
One year ago, I published a book called A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety. Since its publication, I have been struck by the fact that those responding to the concept of climate anxiety are overwhelmingly white. Indeed, these climate anxiety circles are even whiter than the environmental circles I’ve been in for decades. Today, a year into the pandemic, after the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, I am deeply concerned about the racial implications of climate anxiety. If people of color are more concerned about climate change than white people, why is the interest in climate anxiety so white? Is climate anxiety a form of white fragility or even racial anxiety? Put another way, is climate anxiety just code for white people wishing to hold onto their way of life or get “back to normal,†to the comforts of their privilege?
The white response to climate change is literally suffocating to people of color. Climate anxiety can operate like white fragility, sucking up all the oxygen in the room and devoting resources toward appeasing the dominant group. As climate refugees are framed as a climate security threat, will the climate-anxious recognize their role in displacing people from around the globe? Will they be able to see their own fates tied to the fates of the dispossessed? Or will they hoard resources, limit the rights of the most affected and seek to save only their own, deluded that this xenophobic strategy will save them? How can we make sure that climate anxiety is harnessed for climate justice?
Oh, wait, not “almost positioning”, she is positioning white Warmists (these are her own fellow believers, people who mostly vote Democrat here in the US) as racist. Perhaps her fellow white climate cultists are just more fragile then all the Black, Indigenous and people of color (isn’t it racist to see people only by their skin color, rather than as individuals?), plus, let’s face it, most of the whites proclaiming climate anxiety are upper middle class to rich, who can afford to really care about the climate crisis scam.
And climate panic can be as dangerous as it is galvanizing. Dealing with feelings of climate anxiety will require the existential tools I provided in A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, but it will also require careful attention to extremism and climate zealotry. We can’t fight climate change with more racism. Climate anxiety must be directed toward addressing the ways that racism manifests as environmental trauma and vice versa—how environmentalism manifests as racialized violence. We need to channel grief toward collective liberation.
I’ve been saying for over 15 years that this who thing is really not about science, or even a mildly changing climate, but, politics. They keep proving I’m right.
Today’s progressives espouse climate change as the “greatest existential threat of our time,†a claim that ignores people who have been experiencing existential threats for much longer. Slavery, colonialism, ongoing police brutality—we can’t neglect history to save the future.
So, white Warmists are racist positioning ‘climate change’ as the biggest threat, rather than slavery, which the US hasn’t had in 170 years?
Oppressed and marginalized people have developed traditions of resilience out of necessity. Black, feminist and Indigenous leaders have painstakingly cultivated resilience over the long arc of the fight for justice. They know that protecting joy and hope is the ultimate resistance to domination. Persistence is nonnegotiable when your mental, physical and reproductive health are on the line.
Huh what? How’d this get to abortion on demand? Which is also something, let’s remember, which Democrats wanted especially for the black areas, because Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a massive racist, along with the Democrats, and wanted to reduce the population of blacks and other non-white groups.
Instead of asking “What can I do to stop feeling so anxious?â€, “What can I do to save the planet?†and “What hope is there?â€, people with privilege can be asking “Who am I?†and “How am I connected to all of this?â€Â The answers reveal that we are deeply interconnected with the well-being of others on this planet, and that there are traditions of environmental stewardship that can be guides for where we need to go from here.
These people live by creating racial strife: the question now becomes, does this mentality invade the Cult of Climastrology, with the white Warmists genuflecting to the “BIPOC”? Adding the racial component will cause more strife with the CoC, and it will be even more amusing to Skeptics watching this bat guano insane doomsday cult.
Read: Bummer: Climate Anxiety Is Pretty Much Only A Problem For White Warmist »
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