Michael Northcott, from the University of Edinburgh, gave the third plenary talk on Saturday at the climate change conference.
- Fossil fuels are a subterreanian forest.
- Capitalism is run on underground stored carbon. Burning it threatens the 10k years of climate stability in which civilizations have endured.
- Deforestation is responsible for more than 20% of annual carbon emissions.
- Inequity is the central ethical feature of climate change.
- The earth system makes neighbours of the rich & the poor.
- Neighbours have moral duties of care & love but distance diminishes the sense of duty.
- How do we get over the distance? “We believe in the communion of saints” Duties across time & space.
- The atmosphere is a common realm. Commons are traditionally managed by communities.
- Neoliberalism is the current regnant business & economic ideology.
- It sustains the idea that there are only two devices – states or markets – for managing collective goods.
- Climate change is about the strong oppressing the weak.
- Money is a construct which emerges out of human & ecological relationships. It gives dominion over people.
- Real wealth is relational.
- We need monetary accounts that reflect real-world events.
- Forest people look on carbon trading as another attempt at colonial landgrabbing.
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