Who Owns the Earth?

Kimberly N. Ruffin, a professor of English at Roosevelt University, asserted years ago that movements that attempt to address environmental concerns — “human access” to “non-human nature” — historically have been mostly “the domain of middle and upper class European-Americans” while, on the other hand, “environmental justice” (the movement and the issue) is populated by black Americans, Native-Americans, working class European Americans and Latinos.

This arrangement racial/ethnic “bifurcation” does not seem to be accidental. It suggests that the big plans for human existence on the planet are the dominion of the Europeans exclusively.

Who owns the earth, in other words? This is troubling.

Despite, the implicit bias self evident in Ruffin’s assertion, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave us an answer in 1967 to how to process this and perhaps fix it. No one, King proclaimed, owns the earth, because all our lives rely upon this planet, and our lives are “interrelated.”

“We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny,” King famous stated in that sermon. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

In the sermon, Dr. King then methodically breaks down how way back in 1967 the world was one.

“We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality,” he said, one where “you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman.”

King’s sermon is long before there was a concept called globalization or complaints about it too. We were already connected. The only thing globalization really did was opened up more free markets to spread the connections through capitalism.

King added that “then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African.”

Every aspect of our early morning behaviors back then was connected to other parts of the world. Today, with the rise of economies in other countries in the Global South, we are even more connected. King, a man of spiritual groundings, and devotion, noted that “this is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality.”

…

“The United States is responsible for 40% of the climate breakdown the world is experiencing today, and the European Union is responsible for 29%, according to new research. In total, the Global North is responsible for 92% of excess global carbon emissions.”

Yet, we all know that as far as climate disruption is concerned, we are interconnected but most of the destruction to the sustainability of human life on this planet has been done in the Global North. The industrial powers of the global North are the polluters of the planet. And they won’t correct themselves.

The United States, Great Britain, Canada, Austrailia, and other Western powers have historically emitted the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (92 percent historically). China is now one of the big players but mostly, it is the West (Global North). The Global South, on the other hand, is the part of the planet that is suffering the most immediate effects of this lifestyle and cannot develop their economies as much.

In other words, Kimberly Ruffin’s paradigm is a global paradigm in more ways than most think about. The European nations pollute making life for the non-Europeans unbearable. And when the non-Europeans come North out of need and desperation, the door is slammed in their face.

If the world is serious about climate disruption, the paradigm must change. The Global South’s vantage point must begin to be taken seriously and respectfully. The Global North must accept responsibility and seed the space of what should happen regarding climate change and recognize the need to change its approach. There is no other choice.

Heed Dr. King’s message of an interrelated world of equal needs.

Who owns the earth? No one, but we all are caretakers equally and holistically.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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