Deadly floods in Afghanistan, Brazil, the Middle East and India, with rainfall in part much higher than that recorded since records began. Germany, Austria, Spain, France, Belarus, but also Israel and Palestine, India and all of East Asia broke their heat records in April, in many cases for the third year in a row. None of these phenomena is the result of bad luck or chance. All of them have become more intense due to human-induced climate change.
With every ton of coal, with every barrel of oil and gas we burn, we are experiencing an increasing number of more intense extreme weather events in Europe and on all other continents. Yesterday, today, not only in the future (but also then of course), things will continue to get worse as long as we don’t stop burning these fossil fuels. Of course, extreme weather events have always existed, but the 20% more rainfall in Germany’s extreme floods in 2021 made a big difference for those who lost everything. A three-plus degree heat wave matters a lot for those who struggle with asthma, live in poorly insulated homes or try to make a living selling crops that have withered in the heat. It mattered enormously for the more than 11,000 people who lost their lives due to extreme heat in Spain in the summer of 2022 alone.
The damage and losses resulting from this situation are not suffered by those who profit from continuing to burn oil and gas, but are paid by low- and middle-income people. This vast majority lives in worse houses, spends a greater proportion of their income on food, has children in school who lose out when schools close, and depends on health care that does not collapse when extreme heat hits. All of these things that we lose with climate change—life, livelihoods, health, housing, education—are fundamental rights. They are human rights, rights in whose establishment Europe played a decisive role after the end of the Second World War. The European Union (EU) has been founded on these rights. Values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law. Climate change directly attacks these fundamental human rights of all. Not just in the global South, but here and now.
We don’t often read or talk about climate change this way, instead we talk about physics, technology, and buzzwords like “net zero.” We are led to believe that there is only one option: either reduce energy prices and therefore the cost of living, or reduce carbon. This is wrong, since the only way to reduce energy bills is to do what we need to do to reduce carbon, such as using renewable energy that is now cheaper than fossil fuels, or insulating homes. Furthermore, failing to reduce carbon is worsening the cost of living crisis. The impacts of climate change, flood damage, inability to get insurance, extreme heat, unproductive land… All of this is drastically reducing living standards. Not far away, but here in Europe.
Europe also used to be a leader in climate policy. But both good and just climate policies and human rights are under attack. A better standard of living for all can only be achieved by protecting the climate, but only if other freedoms and rights such as education, abortion, etc. are also preserved and reinforced. It may seem that they are different issues but they are not if, for example, you do not have the right to abort, you do not have bodily autonomy, you cannot make free decisions about your health, you cannot make independent economic choices or you cannot participate on equal terms in the decision-making processes within your work or your community. This makes you poorer, more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
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The policies proclaimed mainly by right-wing and conservative parties lead to the poor becoming poorer, the rich becoming richer, and the entire society becoming more unequal and unstable. The US after four years of Trump, and Brazil after Bolsonaro, are clearly demonstrating this. With Bolsonaro dismantling rainforest protection laws, encouraging deforestation and stripping indigenous people of their rights, huge amounts of forests were destroyed, leading to more emissions globally. Today, Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, is largely underwater, following the worst flooding the country has ever seen. Floods that would have been much less serious without these emissions and those of the rest of the world.
Effects of climate change
Environmental and climate protection and civil liberties are fundamentally linked and at risk. Women and minorities often bear a disproportionate share of the negative effects of climate change. They tend to be poorer and live in more polluted areas; They are the ones on the front line. Thus, the right to equality, one of the most fundamental human rights, is threatened by climate change. This occurs at the same time that the AFD, the FpÖ or the Fratelli d’Italia try to dismantle the achievements made in the past in terms of greater equality of rights, that participation in decision-making becomes tougher, that platforms to fight for our rights become more difficult to use, while our rights to a clean environment, to health, to a decent standard of living are increasingly violated.
In these European elections it is not about finding a party with which you agree 100%, but rather about building coalitions in favor of human rights. That’s incredibly important, especially today. There are elections in the United States in November and we need a Europe that regains its leadership in human rights. EU elections are bureaucratic, they seem distant and to many they may not seem to matter. That is not true!
Today, perhaps Hannah Arendt’s most important idea is that cynicism is the most dangerous legacy of totalitarian regimes. No one has the right to let cynicism triumph and Europe become a place where totalitarian structures can thrive again. Although many parties and politicians frustrate us, and they definitely frustrate me, doing nothing is not an alternative.
We have power, much more than we are led to believe, and we can use it. But we have to do it.
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