What do Climate Change and Slavery have in common?

Representing mankind’s darkest hour, slavery involved as a mass trade in people developed under capitalism. The expansion of capitalism, from its genesis in Europe to around the world, saw up to 15 million Africans stolen and sold into slavery. The slave trade itself built profits for the traders. Some trade merchants became considerably wealthy. Liverpool, for example, was established on the trade in people. Slaves built the sugar and cotton industries around the world. The US would not exist as it is now without slavery; its systemic racism today is a consequence of the slave trade and the industries built on it. Simply put, there were many entrenched industries whose profits depended on the continuation of slavery. They resisted change that threatened their interests, their profits. Those who profited from slavery used numerous arguments in defence of their interests. Many purported that the determination of slavery would destroy the British economy. Slavery was phased out over time and massive compensation was paid to the slave owners. These turn of events – from the realization that humans shouldn’t be treated like animals, to the transition of work force labour production – are analogous with climate change scepticism and the low-carbon transition.

Analogous with slave trade proponents, industry once openly funded climate change scepticism science to circumvent change. Once a breadth of peer-reviewed scientific evidence politically isolated and marginalized sceptic arguments industry then used economic arguments to both circumvent change and claim fiscal compensation. Corporations within the EU ETS have successfully lobbied for compensation to make the low-carbon transition. A report by carbon market data  estimated that 10 of the biggest cement and steel companies within the EU ETS could earn a staggering 3.1 billion by 2012 from free permit allocations. This handout from the public purse towers over the amount these organizations will ultimately pay to purchase carbon credit offsets or install low carbon technology. New Zealand Government is also guilty of such incomprehensible acts, through the allocation of free permits, costing the New Zealand tax payer $225,000 a year for every job at Rio Tinto Smelter in Invercargill. Despite these pay outs to polluters both the EU and NZ ETS systems are woefully inadequate in delivering the emission cuts required to combat climate change.   

The termination of the slave trade did not destroy the British economy; it stimulated one the greatest periods of technological innovation in human history. The low-carbon transition will create a comparable technological transformation. Beyond the social injustice associated with paying polluters with public money, the ‘green revolution’ will be stifled if government continues to incentivize high carbon trajectories.  

Climate change scepticism, like the hideousness of slavery, will be one of the things we look back on as relic of a less-evolved age. Unlike racism and women rights, only fate will decide whether we are offered a moment of unified introspection to catalyse change.

Article by GetFrank European political correspondent: Keisha Slater.