Hoodwinked in the Hothouse Panel Discussions
“The world uses machines to make meaning of life - where Mother Earth is objectified like the objectification of woman and treated like a machine made of parts that can be replaced, redesigned, or engineered.”
Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: Resist False Solutions to Climate Change is a 42 page zine assembled by environmental activists. It outlines several problematic practices that are being marketed as environmental solutions but only serve to expand the capitalist systems that destroy the environment in the first place. The New School hosted two panel discussions regarding the topics covered in the zine.
The first panel discussion of Hoodwinked in the Hothouse begins with a critique of the United Nations conferences and the subsequent environmental protocols that have resulted from these international discussions. One of the panelists refers to the UN conference as “the festival of false solutions” because the climate solutions that have come out of these conferences have been counterproductive for environmental progress. Billions of dollars of public and private funding are already being poured into these destructive pathways.
The panelists discuss red flags for climate solutions. For example, some panelists believe that citizens should be cautious of government plans such as the Green New Deal because there are many financial conflicts of interest in the government. Proposals for a “green economy” have been full of fake solutions such as carbon credits that only subsidize heavy-polluting industries. The panelists even warn about “olive branches” with ulterior motives or well-intentioned but misguided allies. Watch the video below to learn more.
In the second part of this Hoodwinked in the Hothouse discussion, five panelists discuss their frontline fights in protecting their Indigenous communities from environmental degradation.
One of the panelists discussed the history of Indigenous communities in North Dakota and their displacement by hydropower and oil rigging projects. Furthermore, she draws connections to how these government-approved projects have destroyed land, food, and water sovereignty in Indigenous communities and thus continue to cause systems of violence. Indigenous people have had no choice except “becoming economically dependent on [their] own destruction”. Another panelist discusses nuclear colonialism in New Mexico. Often touted as an environmental solution, nuclear power is a false environmental solution since the nuclear waste and abandoned mines are concentrated in frontline communities, particularly Indigienous ones. The other panelists discuss illegal land grabbing in Chile, Canada, and Mexico that directly impact Indigenous territories.
Indigenous communities have first hand experience with false climate solutions because they disproportionately suffer the consequences. Therefore, climate solutions need to come from Indigenous and frontline communities, and not from philanthrocapitalists, industrialists, or UN officials who are removed from the consequences. Watch the full discussion below.
Read the Hoodwinked in the Hothouse zine here to learn more.