Monday brought climate news that can only be described as, well, frightening. An apparently-unstoppable melting process of the huge West Antarctica ice sheet has begun, which will almost certainly lead to long-feared rises in sea levels. The total rise over the next few centuries could be ten feet or more—far beyond the point that would be catastrophic for millions living in coastal areas.
The news provides a good reason to read—if you haven’t already—Chris Hayes’s recent essay in The Nation calling climate activism “the New Abolitionism.” Hayes is careful to insist that “there is absolutely no conceivable moral comparison” between carbon emissions and chattel slavery. Instead, the essay is intended to draw attention to an overlooked economic point: Because slavery was connected to an unbelievable amount of America’s prewar wealth, calling for its elimination was an almost unthinkably radical demand. Before the Civil War, slaves represented about 16 percent of total household assets in the entire country, and they were at the center of the booming Southern cotton industry. Abolition was therefore not just a moral crusade; it was a call for the dismantling of an entire system of wealth and labor.
See full Article: http://www.democracyjournal.org/arguments/2014/05/climate-abolitionism-and-the-economy-lie.php
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