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Last week’s Happy Friday focused on opinions supposedly made by the Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL), which, to quote their website, is: “the largest environment and wildlife coalition in England, bringing together 82 organisations to use their strong joint voice for the protection of nature.”
Imagine my surprise, then, when, on 13th February, WCL issued a press release that says this:
Wildlife and Countryside Link does not believe the countryside is a racist, colonial, white space - as has been falsely reported by some media outlets - and neither do our members.
Gosh! Had I unfairly maligned this organization? I’m a miniscule part of the media pile-on that railed against these chaps but, even so, I do not like to think that I am in any way a server-upper of misinformation. So I went to check the WCL report that gave rise to the negative comments.
I suspect that, with what follows, I may leave myself open to a charge of glibness. I don’t intend to be glib. Rather, I think it only fair and reasonable that the counter argument to some pretty bald assertions be made.
You’ve never had it so good!
The WCL document in question is a response to a request from UK members of parliament. It is titled:
Race and the Environmental Emergency: call for Written Evidence
Wildlife and Countryside Link Response - November 2023
Early on in the document there is this assertion:
The current crises our world faces—rising global temperatures, declining biodiversity, increasing disease and mental illness burden, and significant social, health, and economic inequalities—are all interconnected.
Well, I think that’s the very definition of a bald assertion! Yeah, okay … although, I guess, by definition, everything is part of the overall complex Earth system, I’m really not sure that it’s very helpful. Consider, for example, that insofar as many of the issues of human health and economic circumstances are concerned, we’ve actually never had it so good!
By 1800 the global human population had crept up to around one billion people. At the time, this was believed to be a natural limit - a point at which births and deaths would always balance one another out to keep the total at around that figure. However, the Industrial Revolution and the acceleration of industrialization enabled population growth to take off. There are now around eight billion people on Earth.
This increase is, self-evidently, despite the huge increases in the use of fossil fuels that powered the industrialization. In fact, to a significant extent, the population growth is because of the fossil fuel use. This point was well put in McKinsey Quarterly:
Life isn’t drastically better for billions of people today than it was in 1800 because we are allocating the resources of the 19th-century economy more efficiently. Rather, it is better because we have life-saving antibiotics, indoor plumbing, motorized transport, access to vast amounts of information, and an enormous number of technical and social innovations that have become available to much (if not yet all) of the world’s population. The genius of capitalism is that it both creates incentives for solving human problems and makes those solutions widely available. And it is solutions to human problems that define prosperity, not money.1
So, it surely follows that the industrial activity initiated by the West is what actually enabled the eightfold increase in global population over the past 200 years?
And, if that is true, it surely also follows that, although many improvements may still be desirable, had the industrial activity not happened, seven-eighths of the world’s population would not even have existed in the first place!
Then, when we look at the geographic distribution of the increased population, the West is NOT the primary growth area. Far from it. In fact, as we all know, in much of the West, populations have been in decline for quite some time. By the way, there are not only all of these extra people - they are on average living a hell of a sight longer than their predecessors. Plus, in addition to all this, in the past few decades more has been done to reduce global poverty than in any previous period.2
So, perhaps the West can get a little bit of credit? No chance, I suspect.
Back to the document
Let’s take another peek at the WCL document. If, as they now claim, they do not believe that the countryside is a racist, colonial, white space, what do they believe? Well, here’s a chunk of it:
Ethnic minority communities are particularly vulnerable to the nature and climate crises due to how this intersects with health inequalities and with socioeconomic inequalities. People from ethnic minority communities are disproportionately represented in lower-income households and economically deprived urban areas in the UK. These communities are more likely to live in poorly adapted or overcrowded housing, and in neighbourhoods with greater air pollution and a lack of access to green spaces, and are therefore more likely to have greater vulnerability and have less access to the resources needed to address the impacts of nature and climate crisis.
For example, health issues arising from heatwaves and hot weather may be exacerbated by poorly adapted urban housing, as may health issues arising from damp, further worsened by heavy rainfall and flooding. Air pollution is particularly significant, responsible for health impacts including asthma, some cancers, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Ethnic minority communities are more likely to live in areas known to be permanently affected by air pollution. Research shows that waste incinerators in the UK are disproportionately built in low-income areas and neighbourhoods with high populations of people of colour. As the NPC’s report highlights, further evidence of the impact of climate change and nature decline on ethnic minority communities – both in the UK, and internationally – is required.
Hmm. Is it not arguable that the circumstances described in the above text are not, per se, to do with race? Many poorer white people suffer exactly the same problems. So, wouldn’t it be better to label it a class issue?
Can we please stop this nonsense?
As you probably gather, I am tired of the constant sniping at Western values and the reference to immutable characteristics to assess people. Yes, like any other human group, the West has done some bad things but, on the big balance sheet, I am convinced that the credits outweigh the debits.
So, can we please get back to a point where we once again judge people by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin? Just as Martin Luther King put it.
Cheers.
Beinhocker, Eric and Hanauer, Nick. Redefining Capitalism, McKinsey Quarterly (September 2014)
Pinker, Steven. Rationality (2021)