The Paris Climate Agreement is akin to a two-state solution for a planet on the brink, a falsehood giving the ecocide perpetrators cover for their crimes.
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.” - George Orwell
Autopsy of a False Geopolitical Solution
The so-called Two State Solution is dead…
It was poisoned by the architects of zionism before the zionist ethnostate was even established in 1948 through their own words as people like Theodore Herzl in his manifesto, The Jewish State, and Vladimir Jabotinsky in his proclamation, The Iron Wall proudly indicated that zionism is a colonial construct with the ultimate goal of permanently displacing the Palestinian population and replacing it with a European-Jewish population. The idea of a two state solution was suffocated after the Oslo accords by indicted War Criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party before the ink even dried on that agreement and they even labeled then Israeli Prime Minister, Yitxzhak Rabin as a “traitor and Nazi” for signing the agreement - rhetoric that many, including Rabin’s wife, believe inspired his assasination.
The two state solution has all but been murdered by Netanyahu’s current administration that includes megalomaniacs like the zionist ethnostate’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Both are ardent proponents of the “Greater Israel” project, which is in full effect and evidenced by the fact that the zionist ethnostate continues a bellicose campaign of slaughter against neighboring sovereign nations including Syria and Lebanon. Further, this past summer, the zionist ethnostate’s parliament, the Knesset, by a vote of 71-13, approved of a symbolic bill that calls for, “applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria [the Occupied West Bank] and the Jordan Valley.” And even before this vote took place, scores of synagogues in the United States have been holding sales of stolen Palestinian lands to North American Jewish people, which have led to incendiary and sometimes violent incidents between people on both sides of the issue.
Even the liberal leaning think tank, Brookings, in their 2018 report, How the Peace Process Killed the Two State Solution, concludes, “...the focus of American mediation was not on altering the basic political and power dynamics that sustain the conflict, including the central reality of Israel’s military occupation, but on reassuring Israel first and foremost and secondarily on reforming the Palestinians.” It goes on to say, “But by removing pressure on the stronger party and increasing pressure on the weaker party, Washington effectively reversed the traditional role of a mediator.” The conclusions of the Brookings report were put on full display earlier this week when President Trump while standing next to Netanyahu triumphantly announced a 20-point “peace” plan for Gaza.
The plan has nothing to do with the full self-determination and agency of the Palestinian people and contains a set of glaring omissions that would likely not end the larger issue of the zionist ethnostate’s subjugation and oppression. For instance, the so-called peace plan makes no mention of the Knesset’s previous vote to annex the Occupied West Bank, nor any discussion of ending the construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the area or a serious solution for what is to be done about those that currently exist. Moreover, the idea that President Trump would be the head of “Board of Peace” for Gaza - a man that has publicly called for a U.S. takeover of the embattled strip as part of a scheme to continue using the U.S. government to enrich his own family business as he has done through arrangements with the Qatari government and others is more laughable than the “peace” plan itself. Furthermore, a “Board of Peace” that includes the likes of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair - a man who himself could be considered a war criminal for the role he played with Presidents Bush and Obama in the deaths of nearly one million Iraqis and other Arab people - is, as journalist Medhi Hassan noted, “like allowing the arsonist to be the fire department chief.”
It should be noted that Smotrich has already rejected the plan calling it, “simply absurd.” And a member of his far right Religious Zionism party posted on X (formerly Twitter), “[the] entire rationale is based on an artificial differentiation between the [Gazan] population and Hamas, and they will supposedly give up the dream of murdering us in return for money.”
But the two state solution is not the only specious geopolitical idea that contaminates the discussion on the liberation of oppressed and colonized people globally. Another agreement/idea that also has massive implications for global stability, for there to even be a habitable planet, has contaminated the global discussion on climate and environmental liberation for a decade - the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.
Autopsy of a False Global Climate Solution
When the Paris Climate Agreement was first ratified world leaders were rhapsodic and marveled at their seeming achievement. Then United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon proclaimed, “The Paris Agreement is a monumental triumph for people and our planet,” said Mr. Ban in a tweet, immediately following its adoption. “It sets the stage for progress in ending poverty, strengthening peace and ensuring a life of dignity and opportunity for all.” Former President Obama for his part noted, “This agreement represents the best chance we've had to save the one planet that we've got.” Ironically, at the time that the Paris Climate Agreement was being negotiated, Obama ended the U.S. ban of crude oil exports which had previously been in place since 1975 and paved the way for the U.S. to become the premier petro state that is today. This act in itself was plenty of proof that the Paris Climate Agreement was not a serious approach to reducing emissions at the scale necessary to prevent the planet warming by 2 degrees Celsius - a tipping point that will have grave and mortal consequences.
Numerous Indigenous-led organizations including the U.S.-based Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) raised issues with the Paris Climate Agreement from the outset. IEN Executive Director, Tom Goldtooth, while in Paris in 2015 named many of the issues with the climate agreement including its reliance on carbon markets to reduce emissions explaining, “One of the issues that we are coming here to condemn is the issue of REDD as part of a market system that is going to end up being a crime against humanity and Mother Earth.” Goldtooth was referring to the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) that many Indigenous-led groups and communities fear will have the effect of enjoining their sovereignty as they do not hold land deeds for areas that will be used by major emitters to present an illusion of climate protection while they continue to emit at their current rates in nations 10s of thousands of miles away.
REDD for many represents another case of core and periphery capitalism. And the fact that the Paris Climate Agreement makes no mention of the role of capitalism in the climate crisis is another signal that it’s not serious and is bereft of requisite solutions to transform not only the way energy is produced and distributed but also address and dismantle global wealth inequalities that drive the crisis in the first place. Journalist, Alex Scriviner, noted this in a piece he wrote in 2015 before the twenty first Conference of Parties (COP) - the annual global climate summit - even commenced. Therein he declared, “The bad news is that the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) won’t work because it will not be dealing with the underlying problem - the unfair economic system that puts the interest of fossil fuel addicted corporations above those of the people.” He continues, “Climate change will never be solved through negotiations dominated by corporate interests.” And this raises a key issue as many corporations, including fossil fuel cartels like Exxon-Mobil and BP, praised the agreement when it was first released and even pleaded with President Trump not to abandon it during his first administration. They have also made the same case after Trump’s more recent Paris pullout, but it turns out that their reasons are specious at best. For instance, a piece published by the outlet, The Conversation, last year notes that the Paris Climate Agreement allows for the involvement of fossil fuel cartels so, “...they can influence things like how quickly we plan to transition to a greener economy and what the transition will involve.” This was on full display at COP 29 last year, which was held in the petro state of Azerbaijan where over 1,700 oil and gas lobbyists were in attendance. The fact that COP 29, which is when nation states come together to hash out deals to actually implement the Paris Climate Agreement, was held in a petro state is bad enough, but the fact that oil and gas lobbyists outnumbered the number of delegates from almost every nation state is further proof that the Paris Climate Agreement is a scam and no one knows this better than NASA and climate scientist James Hansen.
Hansen is heralded as being one of the first scientists to bring the issue of climate change to the attention of the U.S. Congress back in the late 1980s. In 2015 after the agreement was released, Hansen did not mince words stating, “It’s a fraud really, a fake, it’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.” He added, “It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will continue to be burned.” So if the “father of climate change” awareness is calling the Paris Climate Agreement a scam, is it any surprise that President Trump, though for different and sinister reasons, is saying the same
The Paradox of Trump’s Stance on Climate Change and Climate Action
It’s flummoxing that many in the climate “movement” continue to use Trump’s Paris pullout as some sort of doomsday device when it could be argued that he may have done us a big favor by forcing us to dissipate the illusion of climate action represented by the Paris Climate Agreement. And when Trump refers to climate change, and more specifically, climate action as a scam, he may actually have a point…again for very different reasons than myself.
There’s a scene in Spike Lee’s biopic Malcolm X when Elijah Muhammad tells El Hajj Malik el Shabazz that he will become the new National Minister for the Nation of Islam. During the scene, Muhammad pours some ink in a glass of water and remarks to El Hajj Malik, “here is water, foul, and if you offer it to the people, they will have no other choice, they will drink it...if they are thirsty.” The bottom line is that the Paris Agreement was fouled from the outset, yet people are still drinking from its tainted well of false climate solutions that will never adroitly confront and dismantle the climate crisis. This to me indicates that far too many in the climate “movement” have rendered climate action into climate desperation, pushing solutions like the Paris Climate Agreement that are rapidly becoming more tainted than remaining global freshwater supplies.
So why are individuals and organizations clamoring to get to Brazil’s COP 30, and spending 10s of thousands of dollars in the process, to debate elements of a Paris Climate Agreement that has no legitimacy, and never had any in the first place? The answer may be due to the fact that far too many climate “activists,” organizations, and think tanks want the issue more than the solution. Actual solutions would bring an end to climate organizing, which should be the goal in the first place. But then executive directors of certain environmental organizations couldn’t collect a nearly $1 million dollar annual salary and majority white people working for Big Green organizations wouldn’t be able to pay for those $600,000 - $800,000 mortgages in gentrified parts of Washington D.C. and the San Francisco Bay Area. And just like the Paris Climate Agreement, many actors in the climate “movement” are pushing illusions of action that allow the positions of climate denialists like Trump to actually be, somewhat, vindicated.
For years I have seen many organizations that I actually care about and respect demanding language in certain sections of the Paris Agreement be reformed, or demands for elements of the agreement that promised finance to intentionally underdeveloped nations to be referred to as “reparations” or “loss and damage” rather than rejecting the agreement altogether. Harriet “Moses” Tubman, Nat Turner, and John Brown didn’t seek to tinker with chattel slavery and find ways to make it more humane or acceptable - they did what they needed to do to abolish it altogether, which lifts up the notion as to why more climate activists ought to read more Mariam Kabba and Angela Ritchie than climate writers evoking the Beatles instead of Ozzy Ozborne and Black Sabbath - because we don’t need to be singing about the sun when we really need to be more Paranoid about ineffective climate action like the Paris Climate Agreement.
Perhaps we should start referring to the climate “movement” as the Houdini “movement,” as it clearly has become a master of illusions rather than an apparatus of actual action that continues to bamboozle the masses and corporate philanthropic actors who either continue to invest billions of dollars every year because they are complicit in the illusion, willfully ignorant, or never had any intention of providing largesse that actually saves the world and all life on it - or perhaps it’s all of these reasons as they continue to push “all of the above” energy strategies, which includes the continued use of profligate and feckless use of fossil fuels. Certain environmental philanthropists are even pushing ideas like the neoliberal version of abundance, which is nothing more than an attempt to continue a capitalist status quo under the illusion of climate action.
Conclusion
Just as the two state solution has been nothing more than an insouciant idea and talking point that has allowed for the slow, though more recently rapid, genocide of the Palestinian people, the Paris Climate Agreement has allowed for the accelerated ecocide of the planet. Both are profound examples of the doublespeak articulated by Orwell, and without an actual, comprehensive global agreement that actually holds nation-states and fossil fuel cartels accountable for their emissions, it’s not so much that the climate clock is about to strike midnight - that has long passed as we are now a few hours away from the dawn of climate barbarism.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
Charlie Kirk's assassination has become the pretext to accelerate a pre-existing fascist agenda, targeting a broad spectrum of forces, from leftist organizers to mainstream institutions.
Walkouts in over 60 cities disrupted trains, ports, and schools to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The ongoing hybrid war against Venezuela exemplifies imperialism’s evolving tactics for regime change used against Global South nations.
A fifth African state, the Republic of Ghana, has been subjected to widespread criticism and legal actions for its participation in illegal deportations from the United States.
In this week’s segment, we discuss a new book that analyzes the latest iteration of fascism currently emerging in the United States. But first, we are joined by a journalist and activist who has…
