In Winners Take All, The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Anand Giridharadas explores corruption in nonprofits. But he and the New York Times missed the biggest charade of all, the one most driving the suffering and death unfolding as the climate degrades and temperatures increase.

Concentrations of wealth and power, including philanthropic funders, in those nations most responsible for the climate crisis often use institutions and individuals – media, nonprofits, universities, agencies, think tanks, celebrities, etc. – to create a fantasy world of social justice impact that hides liability. The fantasy world ensures  wealthy whites benefit at deadly cost to mostly persons of color.

 

 

Not addressing birth inequity allows some to treat inherited wealth and other privileges as somehow magically outside of the democratic process, and to use it, their positionality, and growth to slowly disenfranchise the average voter. We are now at a place where these families and their concentrations of wealth and power can use the wealth they made through the sustainability scam to attack the democratic process itself. The solution to this problem is to recognize that governments have no inherent authority, but only what is derived from and conditional upon them empowering their constituents, and that includes any authority to entitle wealth made at deadly cost to others that is partially owed in climate reparations.

In this sustainability scam there are always at least two standards for values like sustainable, green, humane, democratic, eco-friendly, etc. There is one standard for the rich investors and their kids, who are often funding the organizations promoting the terms and any impact their work is having in furthering them.

These standards are artificial, arbitrary, and designed to allow a particular form of economic growth that benefits some – mostly whites – at deadly cost to others. This first standard – anthropocentric and adopted circa 1968 by UN agencies bowing to wealthy families – does not require birth equity. It uses an unsustainable form of welfare as the basic currency or value.

 

 

The wealthy in polluter nations use this standard to undo upstream, what we are pretending to do downstream – selling vegan products in growth markets that do more harm to animals than our sales do good, suing over immediate threats to endangered species that will go extinct long-run, centering children’s needs well after they arrive in the world and most of the damage is done, focusing on political candidates when their ability to represent is being slowly eroded.

We use this first standard to knowingly undo upstream with one hand, with growth and inequitable shares in our democracies, what we seem to be doing with the other.

This first standard allows significant deviation from the ecosocial baselines, the ecocentric standards, that would have actually prevented the climate crisis. These latter are the real standards – which can be measured along at least eight metrics like restorative levels of greenhouse gas emissions and inclusive-level representative ratios that ensure actual representative democracy. Deviation from these standards  – which are based on self-determination or freedom, and the equitable shares in democracy that comes with it – covers the full experience of the climate crisis that is killing millions.

 

 

Funders in the polluter nations facing significant climate liability fund institutions – media, nonprofits, universities, agencies, think tanks, celebrities, etc. – to create a fantasy world of impact to support the first standard, and the birthright of wealthy whites to benefit and deadly cost to mostly persons of color.

This allows wealthy families to treat inherited wealth and other privileges as somehow magically outside of the democratic process, while they use it, their positionality, and growth to slowly disenfranchise the average voter. We are now at a place where they – the Trump family, for example – can use the wealth they made through the scam to attack the democratic process itself and try to step outside of it.

 

 

There is an effort underway at the United Nations to require assessments of climate damages be 1) set around the ecocentric standards in order to account for the actual harm, and to avoid using the same standards that created the crisis to enrich a few at deadly cost to many. And 2), to treat that standard and the recovery of climate reparations as the first and overriding human rights, a right that preempts government’s authority to assign wealth contrary to it, and allows citizens to engage in preemptive acts of self-defense to protect themselves and their children.

The concentrations of wealth in the polluter nations face a challenge – having created vulnerable classes in their own countries who have common interest with those in the vulnerable countries most suffering from the crisis. To identify which standard any person or organization supports, they can simply be asked to account for how we should protect children entering the world, and whether they deserve to be protected, ensured equity and enabled to be self-determining, as their birthright. Those who refuse that higher standard, or cannot explain how they are helping to ensure it and offset their benefitting at deadly cost to others, are choosing to exacerbate the crisis and undermines the freedom of all.

 

 

You can take legal action

States attorneys generals and other law enforcement agencies are obligated to account for the full spectrum of harms created by the climate crisis and its drivers, and to contrast them with potentially fraudulent claims many individuals and institutions make about their impacts. This assessment includes deviation from baselines that would have prevented the crisis, birth inequity that ensures those who benefitted from the crisis live while those least responsible die, political inequity and vote dilution that means the average voter has little influence on who can control their lives, etc.

We can identify – on a binary spectrum – those who believe in linking children to debt/savings accounting to move towards self-determination, and those who do not. The rights of those who stand in the way are contingent on their supporting the rights of others, and their children will inherit their death debt if they do not pay it. Knowing the truth – that the default for what is fundamentally permissible depends on how we include and empower others – lets us overcome the most influential barriers to justice, and ensure a better future for all.