(Bloomberg) -- The developed world has money to fight climate change, but it’s choosing to direct trillions of dollars a year toward military armaments instead, according to Indian author Amitav Ghosh.
Ghosh, whose acclaimed books have centered on socio-economics and global warming, spoke to Bloomberg Green ahead of this year’s United Nations climate talks at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia, on Oct. 27.
While developing countries at the UN summit in Baku, Azerbaijan this week are asking rich nations for at least $1 trillion a year to help them embark on the green transition and build up resilience to the impacts of climate change, Ghosh said it’s unlikely they will see the amount they’re demanding anytime soon. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Bloomberg Green: In your book The Nutmeg’s Curse you wrote that seeing the world as just a “resource” has brought us to the brink of a climate catastrophe. You also mentioned in a panel here in Ubud that countries in the Global South now feel, perhaps justifiably, it’s their turn to profit, it’s their turn to prosper off the planet. Where is that kind of thinking going to lead us?
Amitav Ghosh: It’s a horrible way of thinking, and I think it’s going to lead us straight to disaster. The way that Indonesia is now mining nickel, the incredibly extractive ways, is dooming so many indigenous peoples. And the same thing is happening in India.
What India and Indonesia are going through is a form of auto-colonization, where they’ve now taken on full-scale the extractivism ideologies of colonizers with the explicit intention of making [their] countries into Western-type countries. This is of course a disaster. Gandhi said it so well a very long time ago, that if everyone were to treat the Earth as Westerners do, we would all eat up the world like locusts. And that’s what we have become.
When someone in the Global South says it’s our turn to be like them, what are they actually saying? They’re expressing a sort of mimetic desire, where they want to be like the other. And that’s not going to change until the other changes. So it’s up to the other to change. So in effect, what [rich nations] have to do is to demonstrate by example, that they are abandoning the path of extractivism. That mimetic desire can be very destructive, but it holds within itself the potentiality for change.
BG: You’re saying the West should change its behavior. What have their past actions done to the capacity of the Global South to change its own behavior and potentially follow a different path to prosperity?
AG: Affluent countries have for centuries been telling us that their way of life is the best, so then how can they blame us for wanting to recreate that way of life? This was the whole point of the Washington Consensus, that everyone should be like an American with several cars and all those consumer goods and so on. They wanted those aspirations put in place. They wanted to create a world of consumers and they’ve succeeded.
BG: At COP29, developing countries are arguing a current $100 billion a year climate finance commitment needs to be upped to at least a $1 trillion a year, even though rich nations have had enough trouble hitting the $100 billion target. Do you think the $1 trillion-plus agreement will happen or be delivered?
AG: Absolutely it will not. They didn’t even produce $100 billion. [Editor’s note: There is lots of dispute on how much has actually been delivered.] They say, ‘We don't have money,’ but then suddenly they’re spending trillions on armaments. So that shows you very clearly where their priorities are. I wish things were different, but we should make no mistake about it: when it comes to geopolitics, when it comes to the questions of global dominance, the West will never compromise. But they’re in a situation now. We are currently living through the greatest geopolitical transformation of the last 400 years. The west is for the first time in 400 years, actually losing its geopolitical dominance. And as we can all see, it's driving them nuts.
BG: You say geopolitical dominance is changing, but the dominant socio-economic order of our time — profit-driven capitalism — that’s not changing. Can we change it?
AG: It’s not changing at all. If it’s going to change, that change would have to come from affluent countries. And can I see that change occurring? Can you see that change occurring in the United States? Never.
But let’s not forget that Jimmy Carter not so very long ago talked about tightening the belt. He talked about changing lifestyles and so on. That’s why he lost the election. But he did talk about it. It's not impossible that those ideas will again be voiced in public.
BG: What are you reading now, do you have recommendations for climate reads?
AG: Amy Westervelt, I would say is a very interesting and important writer. There’s Rebecca Solnit, Elizabeth Kolbert, Emily Raboteau. And I don’t think it’s surprising that they’re all women, because I think women actually have a much better perspective with these issues.
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