Greenwashing? The Green Marches are Mute on the “War Factor”

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March 17, 2019

By Nazanín Armanian

[*Translated from Spanish to English via Google Translator.]

February 23, 2019: “French president Macron received Swedish climate girl Greta Thunberg (right to Macron) and a delegation from Youth for Climate, including Anuna De Wever (second from the right) and Kyra Gantois (first from the left).” [Source]



On March 15, the Day of the Popular March for Climate, tens of thousands of young people from several countries, followers of the Swedish student Greta Thunberg, showed their indignation at the indifference of world leaders towards climate change. Since last August, 16-year-old Greta demonstrates every Friday before the Swedish Parliament calling for greater commitment in the fight against the alarming deterioration of the oceans and glaciers.

Surprising (or not) that while environmental activists of the stature of the Honduran Berta Cáceres or the Iranian professor Kavous Emami who have been killed for their struggle against the powers that benefit from the destruction of the environment, the Swedish teenager is presented as leader of the fight to save the planet.

According to Global Witness, in 2017, at least 207 environmental activists were murdered in 22 countries. A year earlier, there were another 200, eight more than in 2015. It is unknown why she, a native of one of the world’s top arms sellers, and her fans concerned about the CO2 that seeps into her lungs, have not included the “No to war” and the businesses that revolve around the arms industry in its claims to save the battered planet. It is incomprehensible that they are more afraid of breathing contaminated air, but not of the very real threat of a nuclear war that would kill billions of living beings, and cause long and hard suffering for the survivors. A year ago Trump broke the nuclear agreement with Iran , and last month he did the same with the agreement with Russia, while he ordered to invest 1.2 billion dollars to make new atomic bombs in order to “make the world safer “.

In the slogans the “March” did not see any mention of the consequences of the open wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Libya (which have destroyed the lives of nearly 150 million people), nor those that imperialism can start against Venezuela and Iran, or the deadly contamination of the Palestinians’ habitat, which besides being bombed almost daily by Israel, they live an ecological catastrophe: millions of their olive trees have been uprooted by the occupiers, the fields of Fruit trees and farms in Gaza have disappeared; its people breathe the asbestos of demolished houses, and untreated sewage pollutes the Mediterranean because of the destruction of infrastructure.

The same “amnesia” happens with television ads, which invite us to recycle to protect the land, but silence the degree of responsibility of large companies always protected by the states, which commit 80% of the aggressions against the environment .

The lack of policies on the part of the capitalist governments to avoid a greater ecological disaster is simply a policy.

Other false environmental heroes

Greenwashing “greenwashing” or pseudoecologism is the term created to denounce makeup on the face of a system that continuously generates and reproduces the foundations of the destruction of nature.

Former US Vice President Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 ” for his efforts to build and disseminate on climate change “, despite the fact that the Clinton-Gore administration bombed Yugoslavia, Albania, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq , Haiti, Zaire, and Liberia, using all kinds of destructive munitions including projectiles that contained depleted uranium, causing the death of tens of thousands of civilians and causing irreparable damage to their lands, airs, and waters. He was also one of the promoters of the campaign to expand raw material for biofuel, trying to convert the pancakes of the poorest Mexicans into ethanol from the cars of the well off. It was the fear of the rebellion of millions of hungry people who filed away, in part, this occurrence.

Years later, in September 2014 and on the eve of the UN Climate Summit, Wall Street bankers paid about $ 220,000 to announce the march organized by companies like Avaaz and 300 other organizations against the New York subway. the pollution of the planet. The participation of the World Bank or the Clinton Global Initiative in these initiatives, rather than being due to the “mainstreaming” of the environmental movement, is to take control of it, as well as a marketing operation to “whitewash” the most predatory elites without scruples of the world, the same that presents, for example, to NATO as the sister of charity : if you download tons of bombs on defenseless nations it is because the arms industry goes out of its way for the well-being of the Sudanese lord,the Afghan lady .

The movement for “climate justice” is a very profitable capitalist business line that turns the sensible struggle of people worried about the agony of our planet into a commodity, creating the illusion that the manufacturers of cluster bombs or white phosphorus are going to give up their benefits, at the stroke of “signatures” or demonstrations with music and dance.

One of the examples of the trickery of capitalism is, for example, that 1) the stock markets lower the price of carbon in order to sell the largest amount, 2) the banks do not exclude the most polluting companies from their offers of credits, and 3) governments give incentives to this sector to reduce their polluting emissions. The business of “Saving the Earth” is very all-encompassing.

Devastate the environment with war

It is said that the army of ancient Rome, to ensure the present and future capitulation of its enemies, covered the surface of its arable land of salt; Centuries later, we have witnessed how US aviation sprayed the forests and crops of Vietnam with 20 million gallons of Agent Naranja herbicide (produced by Monsanto). Today, 44 years later, there are 500,000 blind children, without limbs and with other serious malformations. A few years before, Harry Truman’s atomic bombs turned Hiroshima, Nagasaki and 240,000 of his neighbors into ashes.

The wars, in addition, produce massive displacements of the population, erode the soil, desert the forests. Among the scant data on the environmental stress caused by the military aggression of the US and its allies to Iraq, started in the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and continues to this day , news like this is showing:

In “response” to the fire of 736 Kuwaiti oil wells by Iraqi troops, Anglo-American forces bombed Iraq’s refineries and oil fields that burned for months, producing millions of tons of carbon dioxide, sulfur, mercury, which produced rain Acid on a large surface removed vegetation and animals.

The use of 320 tons of depleted uranium by the US, which killed thousands of people, produced strange diseases and malformations in babies born later, in addition to polluting hectares of cultivated land.

Tens of thousands of birds died, some by drowning in oil spilled in the waters of the Persian Gulf, and others by falling water temperature, creating a toxic micro-layer on its surface.

In 2015, Iraq experienced the highest temperature in the world, because of the destruction in the vegetation cover and the reduction of the water surface. The severe dust storms that are born in this country and spread throughout the area, cause conditions that kill hundreds of people each year.

Fishermen and Iraqi kids who bathe in the Tigris River still find bodies in their waters.

In Yemen, the “non-televised” bombing of the US-Saudi-led coalition and the planned destruction of crops, farms, and their infrastructure, including wastewater treatment plants and hospitals, has caused the most brutal humanitarian crisis of the world, and an epidemic of cholera that has killed thousands of people, leaving half a million more seriously ill.

In Myanmar, the army uses the “scorched earth” tactic against the Rohinya, burning their homes and crops, in order to make it impossible for the victims to return to their homes.

In Sudan, the war has caused the elimination of thousands of animals, hunted to feed the armed men. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the population of white rhinos, an endangered species, was reduced to 31 in 1996 because of the conflict; 5,000 elephants disappeared, as well as half of the hippos.

With a few open wars in the Middle East, and the US threat to provoke others to seize the natural resources of other peoples, the environmental movement must strengthen the weak movement for peace , and include the reduction of military spending in one of its main demands.

We need you to support critical voices. [Nazanín Armanian: I left half of my life in my Persian lands, and when I landed on this peninsula of welcome, a lovable platform for the reclamation of bread and peace for all, I began to exercise the puzzling office of exile: to know, to learn, to admire, to transmit, to reveal and denounce, the latter taking advantage of the University classes, the media and a dozen books such as ‘Robaiyat de Omar Jayyam’ (DVD editions, 2004), ‘Kurdistan, the nonexistent country’ (Flor del viento, 2005), ‘Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, 40 responses to the conflict in the Middle East’ (Language of Rag, 2007) and ‘Islam without veil’ (Bronze, 2009).]

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