~a column by Colleen O’Brien
A 23-year-old hero takes on her life’s work early: “I have been changing things in my lifestyle for a long time to try and be more eco-friendly, but I had a realization a few months ago that it doesn’t matter if I go vegan or zero-waste if the government doesn’t do anything. There need to be big structural changes,” says Mikela Loach.
Mikela is a Jamaica-British med student in Scotland who worries about the planet, its migrants and who’s to blame for the financial ruination of the first and the rabid treatment of the second. She was named, in 2020, by Forbes, Global Citizen and BCC Woman’s Hour one of the most influential women in the U.K. climate movement.
She marches, she litigates, she writes, she podcasts. She does not take talk cheaply. Here is a woman who worried about climate crisis and laid blame in the right place by suing the British government for giving taxpayer money to gas companies. She attended the Bill Gates Foundation annual get-together where she announced to the audience, “I think billionaires shouldn’t exist. And I think the climate crisis was caused by capitalism.”
The audience gasped.
“These spaces rarely get challenged,” she added.
Obviously.
“I think people were quite shocked that there was someone who was actually kind of speaking that truth to power,” she said later.
‘…kind of’?
I wish I’d been there.
Here is a young individual who has chosen to do more than just recycle the cardboard from her toilet paper roll.
Loach understands that the poor south will remain poor until the rich north cancels their debt…which happened when the rich north colonized the poor south and started taking all its stuff – diamonds, oil, land, labor, cultural artifacts, history – helping them a little once everything was gobbled up and then charging them for helping them. She believes it is a white privilege maneuver of long-standing.
Loach believes that white colonists incorporating in countries that didn’t belong to them, enslaving people from these countries, ruining the air and water by extracting everything they saw – forests, fish, pelts, gold, uranium, people, art, music, recipes, views, land…are to blame for the swiftly accelerating climate crises we’re experiencing, and so they might consider leaping in to pay for it, fix it, spend their ill-gotten gains saving the nest they’ve gutted and polluted; and pay back the countries and people they’ve raped.
The subjugated suffer and never speak up; the unsubjugated, look on and too seldom ever speak up. Loach is an act to mimic.
This giving away tax money to big corps or accepting money for personal gain is how governments can’t afford proper schools for the poor – education for all – health care for all, decent roads and bridges, clean air, clean water. Rich countries have plenty of money and plenty of people who could add to the health and welfare of the entire planet if everyone paid their share of taxes. And there are wealthy in the poorest of countries ripping off everything they can at the expense of the people they rule.
It is no secret why the poor have always been with us. Income disparity has always been a man-made situation.
British Petroleum’s original name was “First Exploitation Company.” Shell was benefitted many years ago by British colonialism when the U.K. sold Nigeria to them, an oil company! And exploitation began there for the soon to be poor Nigerians.. Colonialism-imperialism-corporations are inherently the midwives to white supremacy.
From her ongoing medical education, Loach understands that “…if we’re going to tackle this crisis, we have to tackle these root causes.”
According to bank Credit Suisse, there are now more than 215,000 individuals worldwide who are worth $50 million. According to Forbes, there are 2,095 people in the world worth at least $1 billion. Not all of them inherited wealth from the dirty dealers of former centuries. Many (all?) have figured out how not to pay taxes.
What does one do with $50 million? Let alone a billion? It seems to me it’s time for a reckoning. The planet is fed up; it’s gotten serious and is going to fix itself with fire, drought, deluge – however it can, as we know, for many are already suffering. Migrants are on the move – we would be, too, if we were they. Perhaps the uber wealthy can figure out that their uber millions and billions aren’t going to save them unless they take part in fixing the demoralization of the humans and the depletion of the planet – a catastrophic dilemma created by their ilk over many centuries.
They can still have their mansions and castles and swim in their money just like Scrooge McDuck. Are they stingy? Are they hoarders? Do they plot how to spend a billion?
They want to keep the refugees from our borders. Surely they wouldn’t miss a billion here or there to keep them off their grass.
