Covid-19 & Colonialism: A Test Run for Climate Change
How the mishandling of Covid-19 by Malaysia & other Global South governments will define how Climate Change would be handled: Badly
Malaysia recorded a whopping 17K new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday & will reach 20K soon. Based on how Malaysia and other Global South nations are handling Covid, this is a test run for how nations born out of colonialism will handle climate change: Through apathy & incompetence.
Malaysia's handling of Covid includes bizarre lockdown SOPs and allowing politicians to break them at their free will. It will be the same with climate change, as politicians will get a free ride to escape climate catastrophe while the working class drowns to their death
Many Malaysian politicians have real estate in Western countries, which means that they can escape the climate crisis in the comfort of the Global North. Former PM Najib Tun Razak has a home in London for example, and this is also common among most Global South leaders
And if you asked the average Malaysian about climate change, they would respond with either ignorance or apathy. This is actually common in Asia & The Global South though, as seen in this Asian Boss video
Even if they believe in climate change, they'd still be opposed to any calls for action by G7 countries because surprise surprise, Global South nations like M'sia rely on industries like palm oil for economic growth despite the environmental consequences.
However, this isn't uncommon in the Global South though, as countries that declared independence against colonial empires ended up exploiting their natural resources for maintaining their independence as agreed to by their former colonizers. And countries that declared independence without natural resource dependencies are punished by their colonial empires. For example, Haiti still pays debt to France over its revolution that called for complete independence from France 200 years ago.
This isn't different from what's happening in Cuba, where Casto's nationalization of major industries for domestic consumption led to a major embargo by The US as a form of "punishment" because Cuba refused dependency on American capital interests. Hell, let's not forget how instead of Global South nations producing their own Covid vaccines, they had to depend on The US, Chinese and British governments because Bill Gates told Oxford to sell its Covid vaccine to AstraZeneca. Even when Cuba can produce its own Covid vaccine, The US embargo on Cuba prevents the exportation of their vaccine to The Global South, resulting in more Global South dependence on US, Chinese and British vaccine manufacturers instead.
And let's not forget the Elephant in the room here: Authoritarianism played a role in the mishandling of Covid by the Global South. Malaysia's authoritarian policies were supported by US & Chinese corporations to the detriment of the population.
This is even worse in Brazil as Bolsonaro's denial of climate change and his refusal to tackle Covid is destroying not only Brazil but also global vaccination efforts. Bolsonaro received glowing praise from The Trump administration and other EU/G7 leaders, and this helped him to enact disastrous authoritarian policies surrounding climate change and Covid.
This is why The Global South can't properly fight Covid and Climate Change as they still have to bow down to Western pressure either through debt (Haiti), embargo (Cuba), natural resource dependency (Malaysia), or Western-backed authoritarianism (Brazil). It’s also why so many in The Global North have completely given up on fighting climate change and thus embracing climate doom, as seen in the responses to Matt Yglesias' out ot touch tweet about "solving climate change"
It also doesn't help that just like how The Global North exploits The Global South and causing climate destruction, The Global North's failure to tackle Covid also plays a role in the failure of The Global South to fight Covid. For example, Britain's disastrous "reopening" helped to grow the spread of the Delta variant in The UK. The Delta variant first surfaced in India thanks to the disastrous policies of India's far-right Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Narendra Modi was heavily praised and backed by Western governments. This allowed him free reign to brutally discriminate against Muslims, privatize farms, and now creating the worst variant of Covid thus far.
In short, this will be the modus operandi of climate change (mis)management. If countries couldn't either stop or bother to stop Covid-19, would they even try with Climate Change? The response would not be solidarity, it would be apathy, dependency, and authoritarianism.