Israel, Palestine and a climate of death
Are we doing enough?
What I did not expect when I became a climate reporter three-and-a-half years ago was that I would struggle to keep track of all the deaths.
I had no idea I would read about so many people dying, in such vast quantities, with such regularity, that the body counts would start to overwhelm me.
Last month, there were 4,000 dead and 9,000 missing in climate-fueled flooding in Libya. This summer, hundreds were killed by Cyclone Mocha in Myanmar, floods in Sudan and extreme heat in the U.S. Last year, 1,739 died in floods in Pakistan, 24,501 in Europe’s heat wave and 43,000 in Somalia due to drought. And every year, 7 million die from air pollution.
This is a very, very incomplete account.
I thought about this record of loss as the past few weeks have pushed me, and I suspect you too, to think even more about death.
We know one toll: Hamas killed some 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians, and kidnapped a reported 222 more. The other is larger and growing: Israeli forces and bombs have already killed nearly 6,000 in Gaza, many of them children. More bloodshed seems all but certain, with millions of Palestinians at risk in Israel’s ongoing bombing. Israel is preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza; Hezbollah is threatening on the Israel-Lebanese border; the threat of a spiraling conflict looms.
For all the horror of these figures, they too offer a deeply incomplete account. They represent merely a moment in time, a snapshot of the most recent pain and horror, not the death and suffering stretching backwards into years past, and very likely forwards too. And while I hope the marches and the organizing move leaders to peace, it feels like decades, if not centuries, of choices make it all but certain that the bloodshed will continue.
The voices that I most respect all seem to espouse, in one form or another, the same message about the current situation in Israel and Gaza, and it’s one I agree with: We should denounce the immorality of Hamas, and grieve the victims of their massacre, while also condemning Israeli’s killing of civilians, its long occupation, and stand against it inflicting further suffering. Case in point: the UN Secretary General’s recent comments.
In the early days of the conflict, I also heard many commentators repeat a similar exhortation: we must hold multiple truths in our heads at once. I wonder if we can extend the same courtesy to the lessons this tragedy holds for the climate emergency.
Can we give these deaths the space and respect and consideration they deserve, on their own terms, while also allowing the meditation on death and responsibility that they demand to be a guide amid the ever-widening climate emergency?
After all, it is not often our collective discourse turns to such questions, plunging us into joint reflection on mass casualties on an incomprehensible scale. Even amid another major war, ie, Russia invading Ukraine (500,000 and counting), let alone ongoing conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar and Maghreb, this moment feels different. Yet I fear that we will have even more frequent reasons to do so in the coming years, a parade of death tolls sounding the failure of our actions and inactions on the climate emergency.
Like the Israel-Palestine conflict, decades if not centuries of choices have made all but certain the climate we have created will continue killing us. And like the current bloodshed, it is those with the least power and the least money and the least say in what happens next who are most likely to lose their lives, or their loved ones, or their lands and livelihoods, in coming climate-driven catastrophes.
I believe that to solve either crisis will require less of our heads than our hearts. We must extend our compassion to all those at risk, but particularly those with neither money nor power to protect themselves, and consider what we would have the world do if we were in their place.
And that too is where, perhaps out of a need to find some measure of optimism, I see the potential for a brighter tomorrow. Untold suffering around the world has resulted from an inability to see ourselves in our neighbors, let alone in strangers. The climate crisis is a call to change that. We must feel urgency in the Marshall Islanders losing their homeland day by day, or Indigenous peoples in the Arctic losing the foundations of their culture. If we can summon that compassion — and more importantly act on it — imagine what could be next.
The climate emergency is, ultimately, less a math problem than a moral challenge. Tons of emissions and measures of parts per billion are important for scientists and policymakers. For the citizens of Western countries — in other words, people like me, and likely you, whose lives and predecessors are responsible for nearly all the emissions that have brought us to this tipping point — it is a question of whether we are doing enough.
By now, you have probably chosen where you will send any donations, but in case you do not, here’s two thoughts. Know a good list of groups? Please share in the comments.
Back relief. Help address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, such as through UNRWA.
Support peace. Donate to groups of Israelis and Palestinians working hand in hand for a different future, like Standing Together.
This newsletter is typically a collective project, but this issue is a solo production. As always, any errors of fact or judgment are on me.