Current Affairs8 Mar 2024

Why "Climate Optimism" Is Irrational and What Global Climate Justice Requires (w/ Jag Bhalla)

Get new episodes early at patreon.com/CurrentAffairs !

Jag Bhalla is a contributor to Current Affairs who has also written for Scientific American and Big Think. His pieces for our magazine have frequently focused on debunking popular narratives about climate change and arguing that anything resembling a just future will require a fundamental change in the distribution of global wealth and consumption. Read his articles here:

Today Jag joins to explain some of the core ideas underpinning his work in Current Affairs, showing how the assumption that the Global South doesn't matter is buried in U.S. climate discourse and explaining some of the bad math that allows for the rationalization of heinous injustices.

Climate change is not just going to be “apocalyptic,” it’s already apocalyptic. It’s just that the apocalypse is not something that happens to the entire world at once. Instead, the apocalyptic events are experienced mostly by the world’s poorest people (who, incidentally, have contributed the least to creating the problem). Who, witnessing the scale of flooding in Pakistan last year, could possibly say that the climate crisis is not “apocalyptic,” unless you regard Pakistanis as unpeople whose well-being simply doesn’t factor into the equation? 33 million people were displaced, and millions of homes destroyed. When white Western elites publish books with titles like It’s Not The End of The World or Apocalypse Never or False Alarm, what they mean is “it’s not the end of the world for people like me,” “apocalyptic conditions will never be experienced by my sector of society,” and “those of us who are among the world’s richest do not need to be alarmed.” Of course, even these are false comforts—the mansions of Malibu are flammable, after all.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(600)

Palestinians Shouldn’t Have to Be Perfect Victims (w/ Mohammed el-Kurd)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Mohammed el-Kurd is a Palestinian writer from Jerusalem, The Nation’s Palestine correspondent, and ...

31 Aug 31min

AIPAC Knows Its Money Is Toxic (w/ Track AIPAC)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Track AIPAC is an advocacy and watchdog project that tracks AIPAC and other pro-Israel political sp...

27 Aug 31min

Both Parties Are Failing Working People (w/ Dan Osborn)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Dan Osborn is an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Nebraska and a former union leader who fi...

25 Aug 19min

The Israel Lobby Is More Desperate Than Ever

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Eli Clifton is an investigative journalist and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible S...

21 Aug 36min

The “Silent Genocide” in Cuba (w/ Abby Martin)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Abby Martin is a journalist, filmmaker, and creator of The Empire Files. She joins Current Affairs ...

20 Aug 53min

Socialist Defends Medicare for All on Fox News

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Nathan J. Robinson returns to The Will Cain Show to defend Medicare for All, California’s proposed ...

18 Aug 4min

Send Ben Shapiro to Iran

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Why should other people’s children be the ones who die in the wars he promotes? 🌹 Full article by ...

13 Aug 13min

Graham Platner and the Left’s Misogyny Problem (w/ Yasmin Nair)

🌹 Use the code "15OFF" for a discount on Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/membership Yasmin Nair is a writer, activist, and longtime contributor to Current Affairs. In this conversatio...

11 Aug 1h 17min