May 1, 2022 Hot Take

It's Not Climate Denial, It's White Supremacy

It’s Not Climate Denial, It’s White Supremacy

By Mary Annaïse Heglar

Last week, Amy and I went on Pod Save America to play a special climate edition of a game called Take Appreciator. In the game, the producer reads us some of the worst climate opinions out there and we have to react. Y’all, the first one was Ben Shapiro out here making his trademark argument that sea level rise isn’t a problem because when the water comes, people will just move. (And no, it wasn’t the classic video with the blessed ax coming through the wall.) Something about hearing Ben’s fever-pitched voice took me back to 2019 when his minions swarmed my Twitter mentions, so my response was a little bit incoherent and there’s a lot I wish I’d said.

Here’s the part I got out on the episode: if you take this argument in good faith, it’s incredibly stupid, but it’s Ben Shapiro, so it’s an inherently bad faith argument. That’s what makes it so dangerous. Y’all, Ben is not stupid, he’s evil. He knows good and goddamn well everybody can’t move when the water comes—he just doesn’t care about the folks who don’t have the resources to move. Their lives do not matter to him.

I wish I’d clarified that the people who don’t have the resources to move are, by and large, people of color. And that the people who peddle in climate denial, or climate downplay, are almost never actual climate deniers. They “believe science,” they know what’s about to happen and, crucially, who it’s going to happen to: people of color, people of the global south, poor people. Climate denial was never about science and always about white supremacy.

Taken from a white supremacist lens, climate change could actually be seen as a boon because it gets rid of all those “undesirable” non-white people. It creates an almost legitimate rationale to close the borders: sorry, there’s limited resources, and we have to keep them for ourselves. We’ve seen this already. It’s called eco-fascism and I would say it’s the next logical step from climate denial except they’re both just different incarnations of white supremacy.

These folks aren’t stupid enough to think that they will be untouched by climate change; they just think it will be survivable. For them, a planet free of people of color is preferable to one with a stable climate. In other words, they hate Black and brown people more than they love their own children. It’s racism masquerading as stupidity and it was a mistake to ever laugh at it.

Nationalizing the U.S. Oil Industry Is Not As Radical As It Might Sound

By Amy Westervelt

In our latest podcast episode, The New Republic’s climate reporter Kate Aronoff joined us to talk about a topic that people really freak out about: nationalizing the oil companies. Kate walked us through what this could look like in the U.S.—a sensible, managed transition; one in which we could find a way to help Europe out and deal with high gas prices in the short term without locking in new fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come, as the Biden Administration is currently doing. As Kate points out, what we’re seeing now is what happens when private companies are in the driver’s seat, making decisions that benefit their bottom line but don’t take the public into account at all. We also walked through the various other industries that are “nationalized” in the U.S., why it’s unlikely that the U.S. would become “just like Venezuela,” how we might avoid a nationalized U.S. industry operating along the lines of national Russian and Saudi oil companies, and more. If you’ve ever wanted to know more about what nationalizing oil companies really means, what it could look like, the pitfalls and benefits, all discussed in a rational way, this episode is for you. Check it out wherever you get your pods!

P.S. Holy hell you guys we cracked the Apple Top 100! That’s amazing, and a great proof point that people do in fact want to talk about climate. If you haven’t already, please help us out by dropping a rating or review on Apple. And THANK YOU so much for your support! We love you, Hot Cakes!

The Debate-Me Bros Leap to Elon’s Defense

By Amy Westervelt

A story by NBC News this week made an argument that techno-libertarian debate me bros have been making forever: Elon Musk is a climate hero and if you don’t agree then you’re more interested in progressive identity than moving the needle on climate.

Let’s unpack this a bit.

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Too Hot to Handle

By Mary Annaïse Heglar

The temperatures in the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) are up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). For context, temperatures over 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit)—if there’s enough humidity—can be deadly. Also, quiet as it’s kept, heatwaves are the most deadly climate disasters. The temperatures in the subcontinent are so high that they’re surpassing the point where humans can be outside without overheating. They’re getting so high that your sweat won’t cool you. They’re getting so high that even if you have an endless supply of water, your life is on the line. And then there’s the fires.

But there are even more implications than that.

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