The climate crisis is hitting the working classes the hardest on the planet and they know it
“What do you mean, ‘why am I working in this heat?’ If I don’t work, we will starve. This is how Shiv Kumar Mandal, a rickshaw driver from Delhi, explained why he continued to transport passengers during a prolonged and horrific temperature spike that experts attribute to global warming. Mandal, one presumes, does not see global warming as a topic relevant only to the wealthy. Yet, in the wake of the Australian federal election, we hear versions of this claim again and again and again. Think of how Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes – a leading spokesperson for the Climate Coalition, no less – recently dubbed global warming “almost like a luxury thing”. Similarly, Quillette editor Claire Lehmann says those advocating for renewable energy do so primarily to signal their own wealth, while Rebecca Weisser of The Spectator calls the poll a victory for the “green and teal elites at home”. rent-seeking” (which she describes as having “been aided immeasurably by an education system that indoctrinates children and young adults, from kindergarten to college, into the cult of climate catastrophism, legitimizing climate ‘strikes’ during school hours, openly attended by the Greens and the Socialist Alliance.”). Meanwhile, Lillian Andrews goes so far as to claim that the election reveals the Liberals are ‘becoming the new party of ordinary people’, with their climate stance revamping ‘what were once core Labor values of protecting working class and defending their rights. Well, it’s good to have imagination. In the real world, anyone who cares about today’s working class recognizes that, always and everywhere, global warming hurts the oppressed and the poor the most. India’s horrific heatwave means temperatures in Delhi have topped 42C for 25 days since the start of summer. Yet millions of workers still toil outdoors, simply because, like Mandal, they cannot afford to stay out of the sun. Under unbearable conditions, all suffer – and some die. “It’s not just exhaustion or discomfort,” says Avikal Somvanshi of the Center for Science and Environment’s Urban Lab. “It actually kills people.” The same distinction between the rich, who can protect themselves from a warming planet, and the poor, who clearly cannot, is evident in the developed world. As the heatwave hits the United States, authorities have urged around 100 million Americans to stay indoors. Alexia Gonzales works for Instacart. Her employers can sit in air-conditioned comfort, but she certainly can’t. “It’s too hot to work,” she told the Guardian, “but that’s when people want deliveries.” Across the planet, rising temperatures mean densely populated areas are becoming “urban heat islands,” as concrete landscapes inhabited by working-class families soak up the sun and then warm the air. By combining satellite measurements with census data, University of North Carolina researcher Angel Hsu showed how heat is correlated with both poverty and race. Surprisingly, almost everywhere in America, communities of color endure higher temperatures on average than those faced by non-Hispanic whites. Similar factors drive people’s exposure to the climate crisis in Australia, where, for example, western Sydney gets a surprisingly 8-10 degrees warmer during heat waves than eastern parts of the city. It’s not just a matter of temperatures either. We know that carbon pumped into the atmosphere means more fires and more floods – and we know who will bear the brunt of the entirely foreseeable disasters that will follow. Researchers studying the 2019-2020 bushfires say that “the most socio-economically disadvantaged communities experienced disproportionately higher risk exposure during the black summer than relatively advantaged communities”. Similarly, the 2022 floods affected the poorest households the most, who were more likely to live in higher risk areas and less likely to be covered by insurance. To put it another way, if you don’t fight global warming, you don’t care about the working class, no matter how often you take to Sky News to rhetorically rage against the “woke elites”. Given what’s at stake for ordinary people, one wonders why environmentalism hasn’t been unequivocally tied to combatants to the point where green could be proclaimed the new red. Part of the answer lies in the fact that so many of the climate “solutions” embraced by mainstream politicians come straight out of the neoliberal toolbox. Decades of philosophical dominance by right-wing economists has meant that since the 1990s the default response to global warming has centered on market-like mechanisms that, for everyone outside the political class, turned “reform” into a dirty word. When policy makers get excited about emissions trading systems and other free market remedies, to many ordinary people they look like the masterminds who “reformed” public services, industrial relations, well -being and education. Labour’s long association with neoliberalism also embraced by the Liberals helps explain the continued drift of rusty voters away from the two major parties. But acknowledging this disenchantment does not mean embracing fantasies about liberals somehow establishing themselves as the proletarian choice. It is wrong, for example, to see the election results as showing progressivism as “a politics of the rich” and conservatism as “the politics of the wrestlers.” On the contrary, in his granular breakdown of voting trends, data scientist Shaun Ratcliff shows that, despite the success of the Teals, the Liberals remain largely the favored party. “[I[tisstillmostlytrue”hesays“thatwell-offandestablishedvotersaremorelikelytovotefortheCoalitionandlower-incomeworking-ageAustraliansgenerallycontinuedtovotefortheCoalitionandlower-incomeAustralians2022generallycontinuedtovotefortheleftin2022”[Je[c’esttoujoursvrai»dit-il«quelesélecteursaisésetétablissontplussusceptiblesdevoterpourlaCoalitionetlesAustraliensenâgedetravailleràfaiblerevenuontgénéralementcontinuéàvoterpourlagaucheen2022»[I[tisstillmostlytrue”hesays“thatwell-offandestablishedvotersaremorelikelytovotefortheCoalitionandlower-incomeworking-ageAustraliansgenerallycontinuedtovotefortheleftin2022” This should come as no surprise. Working-class voters – in Australia and around the world – are increasingly suspicious of all established parties. But that doesn’t make them inherently conservative. The cow tends not to vote for the butcher. Understandably, workers want reassurance that in a low-carbon future they will not lose the social gains they have made in traditional polluting industries. But generations of trade unionists who earned relatively high wages in the mines would turn in their graves at the suggestion that coal – a substance stained for a century and a half with the blood of those who mined it – was inherently good for the class. factory Girl. And they would roll even further at the idea that the big corporations that profit from planetary destruction care the least about the consequences for ordinary people. Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist