Justice giant: Remembering Mandela and his fight for climate justice

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/climate-energy/justice-giant-remembering-mandela-and-his-fight-for-climate-justice/

?w=470&h=265&crop=1

Nelson Mandela, who died yesterday, is best known for his fight against South African apartheid. But his long walk to freedom also included steps toward solving this mammoth problem called climate change. He envisioned a world where all people are able to live a fully dignified life, with clean air to breathe and clean water to drink — and where poor countries are not left with the repercussions of rich nation’s dirty ways.

Six years ago, Mandela founded The Elders, a cross-cultural group of leaders from across the globe, including former President Jimmy Carter and former United Nations Chief Kofi Annan, to forge human rights-based solutions to worldwide problems. One of the group’s top priorities is climate justice, which is not only about reducing greenhouse gas emisssions, but also about ensuring the protection of those people and regions most vulnerable to the worst of climate change’s impacts.

The morning of Mandela’s death, the first thing I read when I woke up was a New York Times op-ed from Bjorn Lomborg stating that what the world’s most vulnerable “really want” is something that would leave them even more insecure under a destabilized climate: cheap, dirty, coal-based energy. Lomborg cited South Africa — where Mandela lived, fought, was imprisoned, and bled for a better life for his people — as an example of a place where people want this dirty fuel.

Mandela never bought into that line of thinking. He was fully aware of how global warming had already been causing havoc on his continent, destroying through oppressive heat what Europeans hadn’t already decimated through the oppressive regimes of slavery, colonization, and apartheid.

[cprise]

1. K&R