“At the end of the day, the climate *crisis* is much, much more than just climate change. Even outside of any changes in weather patterns, the fact that millions of Filipinos consistently lose their livelihoods, are displaced by typhoons, etc. every year is a crisis in itself.
Even without global warming, these problems still need to be solved. And the solution is still largely the same: hold the imperialist Global North & the local ruling elite accountable for their historic role in developing the underdeveloped, vulnerable status of our country, and ultimately break away from the imperialist world system.
In understanding climate change, science is illuminating another arena of struggle. We now know more about what colonial capitalism has stolen & what we must (re)claim — enclosed atmospheric space, climate debt, etc.
No need to wait for science to categorically state that these Odettes & Ulysseses are products of climate change. The climate *crisis* is here regardless, and our work continues to dismantle and replace the imperialist world order that turns typhoons into disasters.”
You might have heard that provinces in Visayas and Mindanao have been battered by Typhoon Odette (international name Rai). A link has been stickied to the corner of my site since last year, a dozen typhoons ago, and I don’t think I’ll take it down anymore because there’s always a new one — a mirror of the quote. There will always be calls for help in the Philippines, from [there is no such thing as natural] disasters to pandemics. We get donation fatigue. We are done with thought-terminating clichés of “resilience”. (How much of bayanihan became culture because we’ve always been left to fend for ourselves?) Communities keep having to endure, recover, and rebuild. All of that is a crisis that should not be downplayed once the storms stop raging.