Our mindset is still locked in old forms of warfare, but a new form of war is right at our doorstep.

Albert Einstein famously said, “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
We know now that a key weapon in World War III is disinformation and the enemy is Climate Chaos. While our mindset is still locked in old forms of warfare, a new form of war is right at our doorstep, and we are grievously unprepared.

Due to its sheer magnitude, the havoc that climate chaos will wreck on the planet is going to be far worse than any war the world has seen. What does a war do? Kills people, destroys cities, creates refugees, crashes economies, and causes widespread damage & suffering. Climate chaos is going to do all this and more. It is going to threaten humanity’s very existence.

Whether its sea level rise, extreme weather events, water scarcity, food shortages, mass extinction of species, humanity’s future is under attack. It’s immaterial whether buildings get knocked down by bombs or flooded by rising seas; they still become uninhabitable and make people homeless. Several coastal cities and some entire nations are destined to disappear from the map giving rise to an avalanche of suffering and creating an unprecedented wave of climate refugees.

A quarter of humanity faces looming water crisis. From India to Iran to Botswana, countries around the world are under extreme water stress, meaning they are using almost all the water they have. Groundwater is going fast and rainfall is becoming erratic. What happens when major cities such as Cape Town, Delhi, Sao Paolo, Chennai etc. run out of water? The scope of impact on regular folks’ everyday lives strains the imagination. It would also lead to an unprecedented migrant crisis and social unrest.

Nineteen of the twenty warmest years have occurred since 2001. Every year previous records are shattered and new ones made. The hottest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic Circle as well as the hottest temperature reliably recorded on the planet occurred in the last few weeks. The planet doesn’t heat up evenly across the board, so some places are going to become punishingly hot on a constant basis and the rest would experience extreme spikes. At the current trajectory, temperatures in parts of the Middle East, Northern Africa, and South Asia could eventually exceed 130° Fahrenheit (54°C) making it life-threatening to be/work outdoors, straining power grids, and bringing whole economies to stand-still. Add to this heat extreme humidity and just 95° Fahrenheit (35° C) would be lethal even for the fittest of humans, even under shaded and well-ventilated conditions. The only refuge will be in air conditioning but no grid would be reliable in such extreme conditions, and power cuts would mean death. Besides, how many people in the global south have air conditioning?

Extreme weather events are the new normal; super-hurricanes such as Maria that devastated Puerto Rico and other Caribbean countries, droughts followed by floods that have impacted several countries in the Horn of Africa, massive wildfires that spawn “firenados” (fire tornadoes) as in California or in the case of Australia where successive droughts, fires and floods have caused disasters of biblical proportions. Add to it the plague of locusts stretching from Australia to East Africa devouring scarce food sources, and large scale famines start to become the new reality.

Just like us, our crops are adapted to the Holocene, the 11,000-year period of climatic stability we’re now leaving. As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to flee their homes resulting in the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen. In just another decade, two billion people will live in slums with little water or electricity, where they are more vulnerable to flooding or other disasters. The slums fuel extremism and chaos. Governments of nations that suffer from a relentless confluence of drought, flood, bankruptcy and starvation, could topple as whole regions devolve into war, in what the US Defense Department refers to as a “ threat multiplier “.

The planet is undergoing a “mass extinction” event, defined as a loss of about three-quarters of all species in existence across the Earth over a “short” geological period of time. While such events have occurred before, this crisis is a direct result of the planet’s exploitation by humans, leading scientists to coin a new term for this Geological era; “ Anthropocene “. Biologists warn half of Earth’s species could go extinct by 2050 and scientists predict collapse of all seafood fisheries by 2050. By underestimating our inter-connectedness with other species, we are paving the path for our own eventual extinction.

Humans are typically bad at understanding exponential growth, we tend to think linearly. However living under the shadow of COVID-19, most of us now have some experience of living with exponential growth; not only in terms of a virus’ infection rate but also how such events impact the economy. Much of climate chaos will also be felt on an exponential basis.

Every war has its allies, adversaries, and collaborators, so does the war against climate chaos. The allies are the global scientific community, the renewable energy industry, NGOs and activists tirelessly fighting on the frontline challenging the status quo, regular folks making conscious choices and sacrifices in their lives for the collective good.

Most of the Fossil Fuel industry is an adversary; its interests invariably linked to the collapse of our ecosystem. Another adversary is Russia; one of the few countries that will benefit from climate chaos, for it will provide Russia access to new trade routes, fresh oil deposits in the Arctic, a more hospitable Siberia etc. Russia harbors ambitions to be a super-power again, the demise of Europe and United States is considered a gain by Putin. No wonder the Russian state has become the purveyor of global disinformation; a disunited world presents more opportunities for its resurgence. The world’s loss is Russia’s perceived gain — at least in the short term, until one or more ancient virus comes to life in Siberia due to thawing Permafrost.

No conversation about the adversaries in the war against climate chaos is complete without mentioning the direction the USA has taken under President Trump. By withdrawing the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, opening up vast swaths of public lands such as Alaska’s fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, supporting coal, undermining/ reversing hundreds of Obama-era environmental regulations, and going so far as brazenly deleting the words ‘climate change’ from websites across the federal government as part of its widespread effort to delete or bury information on climate change programs, Trump’s administration has an absolutely abysmal environmental record and has cemented its legacy as one of the worst perpetrators and enemies in this war.

Besides the USA and Russia, China and India are the other two top emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. Decades of rapid economic growth have dramatically expanded the energy needs of both countries. Both also have a muddled report card when it comes to efforts to combat Climate Chaos. While China is the world’s leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, it is still increasing fossil fuel use as well, its grid becoming only about 1% cleaner per year, similar to the US. India has self-proclaimed ambitious targets for clean energy yet the reality is that like China, it is still increasing fossil fuel use, the clean energy mix of its grid also improving by only about 1% per year. Improving by a meager 1% per year is simply not enough; at this pace it will take 70 or 80 years to be where we need to be. The war would certainly be lost by then.

The collaborators in this war are the climate deniers refusing to acknowledge the facts. Certain media such as Rupert Murdoch’s Empire, that have done unconscionable damage by sowing doubt and disinformation about this settled science. Akin to Nazi propaganda films that fueled doubt about the nature of concentration camps, Murdoch’s media empire continues to fuel doubt about the causes and repercussions of climate change, and has turned a scientific issue into a divisive political one, making it a deliberate collaborator.

A negligent collaborator is Capitalism itself. By externalizing social, environmental and human costs from its narrow definition of profits, the framework of Capitalism has aided and abetted climate chaos and continues to work against humanity’s interest. Its flawed definition of profits has exacerbated income inequality around the world, now the worst effects of climate change are going to be felt disproportionately harder by poor and marginalized around the globe.

So how do we win? During WWII, the USA emerged as the strongest economy in the world through working hard on “mitigators” to prevent the worst of the war from reaching its shores. It created the necessary tools to win that war and engaged every American in the war effort. The necessary tools to win the war of climate chaos require building a carbon-free green economy with everything it entails — wind turbines, solar panels, carbon accounting and perhaps even rationing, sea walls, sustainable agriculture and building & maintaining international coalitions such as the Paris Climate Agreement. There is no time to find a new economic model; instead we must use the levers of Capitalism itself to fix this issue, starting with a carbon tax that truly values the environmental costs of carbon pollution.

There comes a time in a war when we must all pick a side. Staying on the fence is not being neutral; it is acting on the side of the adversary because it supports the status quo. History doesn’t look kindly on bystanders, we must choose to be on the right side of history, or there may not be a history at all. We must take all the steps we can collectively and individually as quickly and aggressively as possible, in order to prevent the worst predictions becoming facts. We must find all the ways we can to stand up against entrenched interests. As Mr. Dagfinnur Sveinbjörnsson, CEO of ‘The Arctic Circle’ says “In the fight against Climate Chaos, it will not be enough to sustain scientific research and the creation of knowledge, if we do not nurture the virtues of open public discourse and defend the right to speak truth to power.”

The massive mobilization for World War II prompted an unprecedented government campaign urging the public to conserve resources necessary for the war effort. Allied citizens were asked to make sacrifices in many ways. Rationing was one of the ways they contributed to the war effort. In UK, US and elsewhere, supplies such as gasoline, butter, sugar and milk were rationed so they could be diverted to the war effort. The most important items to ration in today’s war are meat and milk as going vegan creates the single biggest impact an individual can have on climate change. Indeed, eating further up the food chain makes us an adversary.

A famous WWII American poster read, “When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler.” In the global war we confront today, we must also understand the need to act collectively. When we consume mindlessly we are that lone rider. When our choices are driven by greed, status and ego-fulfillment rather than a sense of sacrifice and collective good, we are that lone rider. We can have the fun of being lone riders for a few more years and lose the war or we can inform ourselves, gather our courage and rise to the challenge by acting decisively to win this war. The decision is up to us.

Swati Srivastava is a film-maker and an environmentalist. She can be reached at swati@TiredAndBeatup.com. Mark Bartosik is an engineer and an environmentalist. He can be reached at Mark@NetZeroEnergy.org . Rajesh Mehta is a Leading International Consultant & Policy Professional. His twitter address is @entryIndia and he can be reached at rajesh@entry-india.com .

Originally published at https://www.americanbazaaronline.com on August 27, 2020.

The intersection of caste, class and gender make Dalit women the most unsafe women in India, their official rape figure of 10 rapes per day is NOWHERE near the truth.

Another day, another gang-rape story. A victim, whose biggest fault is being a woman, in a culture that regards women as lesser humans. Several perpetrators, whose biggest strength is to be men in a society where might makes right. Politicians, whose sole concern is power. TV news anchors, whose sole aim is ratings. Amidst the cacophony of agendas, a girl fights for her life; her tongue cut off, her neck broken, her body racked with pain. She probably knows she won’t make it but she fights nevertheless. She must live long enough to tell her story, to tell their names.

Can you say for sure which story I am talking about here? The Hathras gang rape case? Or the Balrampur rape case? Or the Hyderabad rape case? Or the Unnao rape case? Or the Badaun rape case? Or the Nirbhaya rape case? Or any of the myriad rape cases that never make the news, yet we are all too aware that they happen, in villages, towns, cities and communities all across India, almost always with impunity? Thousands upon thousands of stories of nameless women. If our conscience was shaken every time a woman was raped in India, we should find ourselves buried under an avalanche of conscience-triggering earthquakes.

When it comes to sexual violence, India is the world’s most dangerous country for women, with four cases of rape reported every hour. Sit with this for a second. Imagine a woman you know as the face of that number. In the time it takes for you to finish dinner tonight, four women you know would have had their lives upended; many left to die, others to live in disgrace, for in Indian society the shame of rape falls upon the victim, not the perpetrator. In almost all of the cases, those women were simply going about their daily lives — cutting grass, riding a bus, hailing a taxi, shitting. They were not trying to navigate their way in a dangerous war-torn country like Afghanistan or Syria, or as proud proponents of Hindutva would claim, surviving in a “backward Islamic state” that doesn’t care about women’s rights. They were living in the world’s largest democracy, in which the predominant religion teaches men to worship female Goddesses. And to rape female humans. The gut-wrenching story of a Hindu girl who lived in a village called “Valmiki” and was raped by four men, two of whom were named “Ram(u)” and “Luvkush” makes it too hard to ignore the cruel irony of events in a state whose leaders have publicly called for a new “Ram Rajya”.

Do Dalit Lives Matter?

Yes, the story I am talking about is the Hathras gang-rape and murder, where her Dalit identity made a poor young girl vulnerable in such a perverse way that she could be subjected to any manner of indignity, and that is exactly what happened. The 19-year-old girl lived in the lower class “Valmiki” colony; most villages in India are divided into upper caste and lower caste colonies. The men who raped her are Rajputs/Thakurs, upper-class land-owners, who lead their lives awash in an entitlement that sees those belonging to lower classes as mere objects. Dalits are forbidden to participate in village functions, their children are prohibited from mingling with upper-caste kids, often forced to bury or cremate their dead in a separate graveyard or cremation ground. In almost every meaningful way, they are treated as “untouchables” except when it comes to raping their women, then touching seems to be acceptable. Often the rape of a Dalit woman is done by upper caste men to teach the former communitya ‘lesson’, it’s unclear if this was the primary motive in this case, although the victim’s family has claimed of a family feud going back two decades with one of the accused assaulting the grandfather of the victim some years ago.

After the rape, the men having left her for dead, the family found their grievously injured daughter and went to the local police station to report the case, but their claims were rejected. This was not unusual. According to Dalit Women Fight, India’s largest and only Dalit-women led Collective, in 99 percent of crimes against Dalit women, the police hand over an acknowledgment for a Non-Cognizable Offence aka misdemeanor instead of filing a First Information Report (FIR), and only file an FIR when activists or lawyers exert pressure, or the case starts getting traction as what happened in this case. The police finally registered the complaint on September 20th, SIX days after the crime had occurred. They recorded the victim’s statement on September 22nd and her forensic samples were collected on September 25th, a full ELEVEN days after the incident, even though government guidelines strictly call for samples in rape cases to be collected within FOUR days. Yet that discrepancy didn’t stop the Additional Director General of Police, U.P. from making the claim that the absence of semen/sperm on the victim’s body in the forensic report proved that there was no rape. When it comes to protecting or absolving upper-class perpetrators, the state seems to leave no stone unturned, whether it is through delaying FIRs, impeding the collection of forensic samples or giving false/misleading statements to the media.

The indignity of being a Dalit followed the victim not just in life, but also in death. After she passed away and an autopsy performed, her body was taken over by the police, instead of being given to her inconsolable family, who were seen in photos & videos on social media, sobbing and begging for her body to be returned to them. In a shocking turn of events, she was subsequently cremated in an open field in the middle of the night, in the presence of nearly two dozen police officers and other officials, but in the absence of her own family who claimed they were locked in the house while her body was doused with petrol and burned. In the days that followed, the police seized the cell phones of her family members in an apparent bid to prevent them from speaking to the media, sealed their village and barred entry of media and opposition politicians, turning the village into a fortress. A video emerged in which the Hathras District Magistrate himself can be seen pressuring the family into changing their statement, his words a veiled threat against the family’s precarious existence in the community.

One is forced to ask why such extreme steps were taken by the state; starting with utter indifference, which was then compounded by criminal negligence, then blanketed by obstruction of justice, if not to provide protection and immunity for the upper-class perpetrators and/or the machinery of the state itself. Dalits languish at the bottom of India’s unbending and harsh caste hierarchy, with Dalit women among the most oppressed women in the world. Many of us are willing to see this gang-rape case as oppression against women, which it is, but have a hard time seeing how the intersection of caste, class and gender make Dalit women the most unsafe women in India; harassed, abused, molested, raped and murdered with impunity. According to “official” figures, 10 Dalit women were raped every day in India in 2019. However, in a survey done in four states in 2006, nearly half of Dalit women reported being sexually harassed and nearly a quarter reported being raped. The numbers didn’t add up, so I did a little research myself (you are welcome to check my math here and write to me if you think I have made an error). If the survey figure is to believed by extrapolating for the population of Dalit females in those four states alone, the approximate number of rapes per day would be about 417, a 99 percent under-reporting, which is exactly in line with what Dalit Women Fight have been asserting for years. This is not just a matter of all Indian women being unsafe, it is a matter of highly marginalized Indian women being highly unsafe and crimes against them hideously under-reported. Every report on the exploitation of Dalit women underlines how Dalit rape cases unfold, with the police refusing to lodge the case, delaying an investigation, the rape itself questioned and doubts sown as to whether caste played any role at all, with authorities often shielding or siding with the upper-class perpetrators. The enormity of the problem is often misunderstood because although 17 percent of the country is Dalit, they have hardly any representation in police or administration or media-houses, leaving their voices unheard. If we take off our blinders and pay attention, we would hear their voices screaming “Dalit Lives Matter.”

Say Her Name

While we think about the voices that are struggling to be heard, let’s also take a moment to question the very idea that rape victim’s identity MUST be kept secret. In India, it is a criminal offence to disclose the identity of victims of offences committed under sexual assault. A few states in the U.S, have similar statutes. No doubt confidentiality is a human right when it comes to any victim, but an unfortunate effect of such laws is that they serve to support and perpetuate the stigma and shame of rape, so pervasive in India that the first response to rape is often silence, a close second victim-shaming. The mother of Jyoti Singh; the victim in the world-famous Nirbhaya rape case of 2012, for which the entire country came together, publicly revealed her daughter’s name stating that she felt no shame in announcing it, and her father said on record that the laws that come out of her case should be named after her, to ensure she is immortalized in public’s memory. Many countries including the United States have a history of naming laws after the victim. Family members in the Hathras rape case have also expressed their wish for the girl’s name to be revealed. Other rape victims, tired of being victimized, and feeling suffocated by the shame & silence around the topic, have courageously reclaimed their names, instead of being known as “city/place victim”.

When we name someone, we honor them as a real person with a real identity. We say their name not just so they hear it, but so we remember that the person who was raped or killed lived just like us; a flesh & blood human, we are forced to acknowledge and honor their humanity. This is the reason why there are walls of remembrance in cities around the world, whether inscribed with the names of innocent citizens such as the ones that died at the site of 9/11 in New York, or of soldiers who lost their lives in battles such as the ones inscribed on India Gate in New Delhi. We take the names of heroes; we hide the names of victims. We are proud of the former, while the latter live in ignominy. We also take their names as a call for justice; this is why cities across America and the world are ablaze with chants such as “Say Her Name: Breonna Taylor.”

The criminals that raped and killed Manisha Valmiki cut off her tongue so she couldn’t say their names, but she did nevertheless. She told us their names: Sandip, Ramu, Lavkush and Ravi. In honor of her undying courage, and as a call for justice in the names of all women and especially Dalit women, let’s come together and say her name: Manisha Valmiki.

Swati Srivastava is a film-maker, an activist, and an environmentalist, who loves to tell stories with an analytical spirit. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

Originally published at https://browngirlmagazine.com on September 28, 2020.

My earliest “memory” of America is of my father telling me about the moon landing. “ John F Kennedy said we will put a man on the moon in 10 years and the Americans did it. “ As a little girl growing up in India, I imagined a country called America whose presidents were visionaries, whose people believed in science, and whose spirit was ambitious.

My second “memory” of America is reading about WWII. “ Roosevelt told the American people not to fear, and it was under his leadership that the Allies won the war “. I imagined this president who had suffered from Polio himself; his determination forged in the crucible of personal trials, and I imagined Americans as a courageous lot, willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good.

My third “memory” of America is of watching the news about the first Gulf War. “ The US president George H.W. Bush is a Navy pilot himself, who flew 58 missions in WWII “. By this time, I was fascinated by American leaders — full of enterprise, conviction, and personal courage. And my heart was full of respect and admiration for this far-off place.

That America; the country of my imagination is what I immigrated to as a young woman. I came to America because I thought it was the best country on the planet, and I came to offer it the best I had. I came to America because I believed in the ideals that I thought were seeped into the soil of this great country. I am not the only one who came for that reason. Many of us who grew up in countries around the world imagined America to be a receptacle for the best one has to offer, a place where dreams and ambitions came true, a shining city on the hill.

Living in America, I came to know more about its history. I learned that the truth was far more nuanced, the country far more complex, its policies and leaders far more flawed than the little girl had imagined. Yet with all its flaws and complexity, it was a country that, to my immigrant eyes, appeared to forever strive to become a more perfect union, a place where people hardly cared about where you came from but were always interested in where you were going, a place where mastery of craft was valued over superficial achievements, a place where what you knew was more important than who you knew. I felt at home in such a place.

I saw the twin towers fall on 9/11 and cried alongside hundreds of thousands of Americans — the gaping hole in the NYC skyline left a hole in my heart too. When yelled at by a bunch of white teenagers in a car next to me telling me to f*** off, and go back to my country, I was shocked at first, but quickly understood it to be misplaced anger of young Americans who also had a hole in their hearts. I was against the war in Iraq, and so I marched alongside thousands, participating in the finest American tradition of non-violent protest — the tradition that brought India its own independence from the mighty British Empire, the tradition that had made its way from Thoreau to Gandhi back to MLK Jr. in a karmic loop between my two homes. I felt dismayed at the cacophony of fake debate around climate change fueled by the fossil fuel industry and perpetuated by the likes of Fox News. Although I couldn’t vote yet, my heart swelled with pride when Americans elected their first black president, and when that president corralled every single country on the planet into the Paris Climate Agreement, in an effort to save the world from imminent climate disaster, I told friends and family back in India — this is what American leadership looks like, it’s still alive! They didn’t need to be told, they knew it too.

Nothing prepared me for the shock of Donald Trump. I remember when I first heard Donald Trump as a candidate — I was caught speechless at the parallels I saw and heard between what he said & how he behaved, and the politicians I had grown up listening to & watching in India. Nothing about him felt “American” to me — no vision, no courage, no brilliance, no statesmanship, no building of bridges. All I heard was hate-mongering, fear-mongering, and showmanship of the worst kind. Having grown up in a deeply sexist country, it was Donald Trump’s treatment of and rhetoric on women that told me that sexism is not only very much alive in America but is now acceptable in American leaders.

I couldn’t believe what else I was learning about candidate Trump — the fraud his businesses indulged in, the thousands of lawsuits he was embroiled in — many of which he openly gloated as bullying tactics against people far less powerful than himself — when did fraud and bullying become something to gloat over in America? Unlike other presidents before him, Trump neither served in the military nor showed respect for others who did, calling John McCain a loser. He rallied his followers into obscene chants to lock up his political opponents and brandished the possibility of an armed revolt if he happened to lose the election. I was awestruck — American democracy and its political landscape were devolving in front of my very eyes.

The idealist part of me couldn’t believe that Trump could possibly win the hallowed office of the American presidency. But another part dreaded what it innately knew from having a lived experience of a far more corrupt, dog-eat-dog political system — people like Trump win, and often, not despite their hateful rhetoric but because of it. There are leaders who call for us to be guided by the better angels of our nature and not give into fear — great visionaries like Lincoln and FDR. And then there are those who give permission to act out our worst inclinations, goad us to fall for the lowest common denominator. I saw many such politicians win elections over and over in India. I thought it wasn’t possible in America — my shining city on the hill. I was wrong.

November 9 , 2016 — I knew in my bones that American democracy had been dealt a severe blow, I felt in my heart that the American promise of democracy — with malice towards none and charity for all had been ripped asunder, I saw the promise of America fade for friends & family abroad, almost overnight. I could only hope that President Trump would be a better man than candidate Trump.

Four years of his presidency proved that hope false. Every day I see a president, who refuses to rise to the stature of his office, lies ad nauseam, insults the military, denies science and disrespects scientists, surrounds himself with criminals and when they are convicted pardons them, keeps petty scores & tweets against ordinary Americans and American businesses. A president, who brazenly indulges in nepotism; his appointment of family members to cherished positions in his administration acutely reminds me of the nepotism rife in Indian politics. A president who had promised to “drain the swamp” but has instead turned the government into a cesspool of corruption like never before, with every department headed by industry lobbyists, pillaging people’s money for private profit.

Friends and family around the world marvel at what my fellow Americans bought into but I have no answer to them. I am not sure if ordinary Americans are able to see how much this country has changed in the span of 4 years. If the old adage, “united we stand, divided we fall” is something to learn from, we have fallen very far indeed. I see signs on lawns around where I live saying “make liberals cry again”; emblematic of a country full of hate and division, and I wonder how it came to pass, that happiness to some is to make their fellow Americans cry. I see signs at white supremacist rallies saying “Diversity = White Genocide” and I realize I am being told that my very existence as a brown person is a threat to theirs, that this country belongs to white people & white immigrants — meaning my white immigrant husband is welcome but I am not. I remember those kids in the car after 9/11, telling me to go back to my country. Except that this time, it is the American President himself saying those words, for that is what he tells me when he calls those white supremacists “very fine people”.

For 4 long years, Donald Trump simply refused to be my President. He refused to be my President when he refused to govern with any manner of decency or grace. He refused to be my President because he refused to inspire Americans to come together in a common purpose, instead pitting them against one another, so they are more divided than ever before since the civil war. He refused to be my President when he put immigrants — asylum-seekers & their children; the proverbial “tired, poor and hungry” in cages — is this how America treats its immigrants? He refuses to be my President when he undermines the work of medical professionals, scientists, and state governors, even as 200,000+ Americans have died under his watch. He refuses to be my President when he refuses to acknowledge the enormity of Climate Chaos, squandering what could have been another “moon-shot” moment for America, willfully pushing Americans and the world closer to the edge of disaster. He refused to be my President because he could not ascend to the stature his office behooves, warranting a spirit of humility, perseverance, and self-sacrifice. Instead, he has turned the country I was proud of, into an object of pity around the world. So much for the promise of making it great.

Despite his self-proclaimed greatness, comparing himself to Lincoln and asking for his face to be added to Mount Rushmore, Trump has left the American spirit and its moral ascendancy around the world in tatters. He is already ranked by historians & scholars, and seen by much of the world, as one of the worst American presidents ever. In its nearly 250-year-old history, America has had 45 presidents, all of them powerful for a brief period, yet most of them forgotten soon after. That’s the nature of history; it turns the once-mighty into nothing but dust, it is poised to do the same to this one.

But from the eyes of this immigrant, Donald Trump would forever be seen and remembered as the President of the Divided States of America.

Swati Srivastava is a film-maker, an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

Originally published at https://indiacurrents.com on October 28, 2020.

Remember the scene from the movie “Titanic”? The ship has hit the iceberg and taking-in water rapidly.

Rose: Don’t you understand? The water is freezing and there aren’t enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are gonna die.

Cal: Not the better half.

Now re-imagine the scene such that the iceberg is Climate Change, and the sinking ship is planet Earth, the crash event has already occurred. Are you one of those who are going to sink/die? Or do you, by an extraordinary turn of luck, find yourself in the “better half” category, thinking you would be able to save yourself, by paying for your passage on a “lifeboat”?

With climate fires raging on one side of the country, climate hurricanes and climate floods on another, while we are in a midst of a pandemic that’s killed more than 200,000 Americans alone, surely your certainty must be a little bit shaken, no matter who you are or how you vote? If you are still wondering, look out — perhaps from your window, or at photos and videos, of the wildfires on the west coast, burning trailer parks and mansions alike, choking the lungs of the homeless as well as the billionaires. Climate Change is the iceberg that none of us are going to survive, at most it will buy the rich a few extra years on a dying planet. Whether we like it or not, we have finally arrived at a time in history when our fates are inter-twined, no matter where or how we live. The only way to survive this impending disaster is for us to start walking on a path of compassion, perseverance and self-sacrifice, guided by science. For nations around the world to act in such a manner, we need to elect leaders who inspire such qualities. It’s a no brainer then that “45” must go.

Donald Trump is the most anti-science and anti-environment president America has ever seen. Let us consider some of the other men who have occupied the highest office of the land in the last 100 years or so. After becoming president in 1901, Teddy Roosevelt; a Republican, established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks and 18 national monuments. FDR; a Democrat, created the Civilian Conservation Corps putting unemployed men to work on conservation projects — fighting soil erosion, planting trees and improving wild life habitats, he added over one-quarter of the areas in today’s National Park Service system. Nixon; a Republican, championed path-breaking environmental protections for Americans, by creating the EPA, and signing the Clean Air Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act. Carter; a Democrat, supported legislation for the cleanup of toxic contamination and protected swaths of land in Alaska, he also had the courage to exhort Americans to rein in their consumption of gasoline and electricity. Bill Clinton placed millions of acres of federal land off-limits to development as national monuments, surpassing the acreage that Roosevelt had set aside. It was no small feat of leadership when President Obama; despite the hostility of Republicans in Congress, managed to corral every single country on the planet into the Paris Climate Agreement, in a last ditch effort to save humanity from imminent disaster. Fast forward 1.5 years later, President Trump who had alternately called Climate Change “a hoax”, “not a hoax”, “a hoax invented by China” and a “very serious subject” promised to withdraw America from the Paris Climate Agreement. That marked the beginning of his legacy as the President with the worst environmental record ever.

Pursuing an unrelenting fossil fuel agenda, Trump placed former industry executives and lobbyists in control of the EPA, who promptly scaled back or eliminated over 150 environment measures for the sole benefit of the fossil fuel industry. His administration rolled back auto emission standards, rejected regulations on airborne emissions of mercury; a potent neurotoxin & other toxic substances from power plants, and reduced regulation on the disposal and storage of coal ash. It opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, national monuments in Utah and coastal waters all around the United States to drilling. It weakened rules that limited venting or flaring of methane from oil and gas production on public lands. Just as the nonpartisan auditing agency; Government Accountability Office (GAO) was issuing the Climate Change warning that natural disasters had cost America $350bn in the previous decade alone, Trump administration was quietly removing “Climate Change” references from government websites. While the country was reeling from the effects of climate hurricanes Harvey and Maria, his administration relieved federal agencies from having to consider a project’s impact on Climate Change during the review and permitting process. While our attention span has been consumed by the President’s ridiculous tweets, his administration has been steadily and ominously working behind the scenes to further its all-out assault on the environment.

Every attempt to discuss environmental issues is overshadowed by disingenuous arguments claiming its adverse effects on “job”, “economy”, “business friendly environment”, “burdensome regulations” etc. This is simply lying propaganda. Most of Trump’s regulatory rollbacks are intended to boost fossil fuel production and use, to line the pockets of the fossil fuel industry because it donates millions of dollars to the election campaigns of those who champion them. What else would explain the burying of a proposal to improve the connection between the east and west coast electricity grids, which would have meant more jobs, cheaper electricity, greater resilience and less pollution, but also death to the least efficient means of power generation aka coal? It was not buried to benefit small businesses or the lives of ordinary Americans. The lives of ordinary Americans would greatly benefit from not having to breathe air laden with toxic pollutants or drink water laced with lead. The lives of ordinary Americans would vastly improve from the millions of new and well-paying jobs that the Green Deal offers. The lives of coalminers dying from black lung would vastly improve if employed in clean green jobs such as making wind turbines, right where they live. The lives of Texans, Puerto Ricans and Louisianans would be infinitely better if their homes were not flooded and towns not devastated by hurricanes growing ever more powerful due to warming oceans. Same goes for the lives of Californians, Oregonians and Washingtonians, which are increasingly impacted by wildfires, intensifying each year due to long periods of drought.

Whatever else Americans may think of the President, there is not much doubt that he is not the brightest when it comes to Science — looking at a solar eclipse with naked eyes, suggesting Americans inject bleach or take Hydroxychloroquine to fight COVID-19, ignoring the advice of his own scientists and doctors. Why then should Americans trust him with a challenge as complex as Climate Change? Imagine your cardiologist told you that you were going to have a heart-attack, unless you hit the gym, cut back on meat, and got your act together. Would you keep doctor-shopping until you found one who told you that your diseases will just “miraculously disappear”? What if 98/100 doctors you consulted, told you that your prognosis was bad? That’s the terrifying prognosis of Climate Change. His mindboggling anti-science stance is precisely the reason why hallowed American institutions and publications such as Scientific American and The New England Journal of Medicine have for the first time in their 175 and 208 year history respectively, decided to publicly warn Americans about the dangers of re-electing this President.

Whether its sea level rise, extreme weather events, water scarcity, food shortages, mass extinction of species, humanity’s very existence is under attack.Yet, this President has chosen the path of extreme apathy, willful ignorance and deceitful talking points, instead of preparing us for this unprecedented disaster looming at our doorstep. Just like pandemic scientists had been warning us for years about the possibility of a deadly disease like COVID-19 striking the world, climate scientists have been sounding similar alarms with far more terrible consequences. Do we really want to be caught as ill-equipped by the worst effects of Climate Change as we were by the pandemic? Unlike the pandemic, Climate Change won’t be solved by a single vaccine. Its death rate won’t be as low as 1% either. And unlike the President if/when we find ourselves sick or homeless, we won’t have the luxury to be air-lifted by Air Force One, out of the mess we ourselves created.

If there is any good news on Climate Change, it is that we have the tools to slow it down and mitigate its worst effects; all we need is the will — political, individual and collective. Like tropical storms that turn into hurricanes, and outbreaks that turn into pandemics, the marvel of today’s scientific knowledge is that it gives us time and ability to forecast and plan ahead. That science is telling us that we don’t have much time left, it is telling us the steps we need to take NOW or countless lives would be lost. By refusing to look at the science, Trump is waging a war on Americans themselves, abrogating his single most important duty as commander-in-chief. On November 4th, the United States would officially pull out of the Paris Agreement, ending any real hope for the environment, the world and our very own future. On November 3rd, the eyes of the world would be upon us — watching to see if America is still the country that won wars and dared to stand on the right side of history, or if we have devolved into a clueless careless lot, that would happily re-elect the enemy of the people himself.

If we do, we might as well kiss our children good night, the water is going to be cold.

Swati Srivastava is a film-maker, an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

Originally published at https://indiawest.com on October 16, 2020.

A hyphenated identity doesn’t mean we always get to play on both teams.

As an Indian American, it is hard to escape the cacophony of diatribe for and against four more years of President Trump. Indian-Americans have traditionally affiliated themselves with Democrats but today their loyalties are split; two seminal events — the election of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 and of Trump in 2016, along with the perceived friendship between Trump and Modi has drawn a wedge in the community, with both sides claiming an urgent moral right.

The opponents of Trump see his continued presidency as a threat to diversity and empowering white nationalism, continued governmental incompetence as COVID-19 wrecks havoc on lives and economy, and a level of corruption that is perceived to be an existential threat to American democracy itself. The supporters of Trump on the other hand, see his presidency as upholding a “law & order,” good for their pocketbooks and the economy, and continued unquestioned support for the Modi government policies in India. There is also a sense in the support group that Trump is better for the Indian economy and that India will enjoy a more special relationship with the U.S. under another Trump presidency. Upon closer examination, however, this turns out to be flawed thinking.

As Indian-Americans we live a hyphenated identity that tugs on our hearts in two directions. So, it’s important to learn the facts about which candidate is truly a friend of India. President Trump has proved time and again that he is nobody’s friend; his administration revoked India’s special trade partner status, levied tariffs on Indian imports, cut visas to Indian immigrants, left many Indians in immigration limbo, produced zero trade deals, blamed India’s greed for America’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, falsely claimed that Prime Minister Modi asked Trump to intervene in Kashmir as well as mediate dispute with China, the list goes on.

On the other hand, it was the Obama-Biden administration that granted India a major defense partner status, signed trade deals with India worth up to $500 billion, improved immigration policies for Indians and Indian Americans, endorsed India to have a permanent seat on the United Nations’ Security Council, supported India against China’s growing influence, and encouraged and executed Paris Climate Agreement with India etc. Biden famously called the U.S.-India relationship “a defining partnership of the 21st century” and as per Richard Verma, the former US.. ambassador to India, there would have been no U.S.-India civil nuclear deal but for Joe Biden. Now, Biden’s campaign has made history by nominating the first Indian-American candidate for Vice President proving that the Democratic Party truly values diversity. The only thing that governs Trump is his own political expediency whereas Biden has a vision that extends far beyond his own nose.

Yet there is a deeper issue that’s lurking behind this debate that we must confront. Of all the topics being passionately discussed in Indian American homes all across America — healthcare & COVID-19, jobs and economy, climate change etc. — one that stands out for me is “Voting for Trump is Voting for India”, a line frequently quoted on social media among Indian-American Trump supporters along with the sentiment “for Hindus, what matters is the candidate supported by NaMo” (NaMo being short for Narendra Modi). For the record, Narendra Modi himself has not endorsed either candidate, but the quote seems to be in circulation and merits a closer look.

If, as an Indian American you find yourself thinking along similar lines, you are likely someone who grew up in India and became a naturalized citizen of America. I want you to pause for a moment and ask yourself, whose President are you voting for? Every Indian American who acquired U.S. citizenship through naturalization took the oath to absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign state, and to defend the constitution and laws of the United States. Thus, the most crucial question we should be asking ourselves in this election is whether the President we support and vote for is someone who respects and defends the very constitution and laws that we ourselves vowed to.

Insight into Another Political System

As Indian Americans we have an insight into the strengths and failings of another political system. If I ask you to name some of the failings of Indian politics, you might start with political dynasty and nepotism. Trump’s administration has had more family appointees than any other U.S. president in history — most famously his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner whose only qualification for the positions they hold in the Executive branch is their relationship to the President. Family relationship has become the new currency in a Trump administration extending to sons and daughters of Trump’s associates such as Rudy Giuliani, girlfriends of Trump’s sons are given cushy positions, and half of RNC’s key speakers were Trump family members.

Another facet of Indian politics that we share disdain for is Indian politicians lining their own pockets. Trump refused to separate himself from his business interests, proposing international conferences to be held at his resort properties, which get free advertising on top of the revenue from lodging his guards and the retinue. Both Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have continued to conduct business on behalf of The Trump Organization and openly benefit from their father’s position; Ivanka Trump snagged a valuable set of Chinese trademarks on the same day she dined with the Chinese president, Kushner family pushed visas to wealthy Chinese who invested in their properties. The revolving door between government and business has never been swung so wide and so blatantly. We have all come to accept a certain level of corruption in the halls of Congress and politics in general but a new nadir has been reached under this President.

Another major failing of Indian politics is the politicians’ general attitude of being above the law; their outright illegalities and incessant lying. There has been no American president, at least in the modern era, who has considered himself to be above the law quite like Donald Trump. This is the President who refused to follow the good-faith tradition set by his predecessors since 1974, Republican and Democrat alike, refusing to disclose his tax returns, even waging a legal battle to keep them hidden — we know now it was an attempt to hide the extent to which his businesses were losing money, further diminishing his sole claim to competency as a savvy & profitable business-man, on the contrary he appears to be an inept businessman and a serial tax avoider crushed by massive debts that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president. This is the President who has been involved in 4,000 lawsuits in his professional career — many of which he openly gloated to be a form of coercion against the less powerful simply as a bullying tactic. He also has at least 126 multi-state lawsuits filed against him since becoming President.

There is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to lawsuits against Trump — sexual misconduct, financial manipulation, employee payment, charity fraud, you name it. This is the President who has been accused by not one, not two but 26 women of sexual misconduct; some of those allegations include rape. This is the President who lies so much that his entire campaign and presidency is propped up on disinformation — by July 9th 2020 the fact checker database keeping the score registered 20,000 lies. This is the President whose key advisors, aides, donors and campaign staff have admitted to crimes, some have even been convicted by a court of law only to have been pardoned by the President himself in a direct contradiction to his claim as a “law and order President.”

Another aspect of Indian politics that many Indian Americans find regressive is the creation and fueling of minority voting blocs called “vote banks.” If we stand against the narrow-minded self-interest perpetuated by voting blocs and the corrupt favoritism such process entails, then we should not ask what the candidates from either party in America can do for “our minority bloc,” rather we should focus on what we can do for America as our adopted country.

Immigrants in an Adopted Land

Many of us left our country of birth and came to America in search of “better opportunity,” is it possible we might have found better opportunity in India itself, if its political system was not rife with greed, corruption, nepotism, being “above the law” and vote banks? How can we turn our face away from the uncomfortable parallels the Trump administration has with the corruption we encountered and suffered in India? How does this President’s sense of legal impunity not offend our sense of right, our sense of law and order? How can the brazen nepotism and corruption rife in the Trump administration not affect our support for him? Four more years of this presidency risks dragging the American political system down to a level par with some of the most corrupt countries in the world, with immense ramifications. What will happen to this “land of opportunity” then?

We are at a time of great upheaval around the world and especially in America. COVID-19 has laid bare the incompetence of Trump’s administration and brought America to its knees. No matter what claim Trump makes, the numbers don’t lie. This is the President under which America is facing the worst economy since the Great Depression and the worst civil strife since the 1960s. This is the President, who on a daily basis, sows hate about minority groups, peddles lies about the greatest pandemic the world has seen in a century, refuses to wear a mask & holds rallies undermining the hard work state governors are doing to keep their people safe, and “takes no responsibility at all” for the mayhem and for the lives lost. Eisenhower famously had a sign on his desk “the buck stops here”, but not this President; he would do anything to shirk responsibility.

This is the President who undermines science and scientists every day, whether it comes to dealing with the Pandemic or dealing with climate chaos without any regard to the havoc and destruction his actions and inactions wreck on real lives. We must open our eyes and see for ourselves that the America we love is currently leading the world in all the wrong ways. Some are calling it the end of the American era , that’s shameful and heartbreaking, a situation that must be fought and reversed by all we hold dear. A Biden presidency cannot possibly solve all our problems. But another 4 years under the leadership of a man who is unable to take responsibility, listen to scientists, or lead by love will simply dig the hole deeper.

As Indian-Americans we have the good fortune to be one of the “model minorities.” But we must not forget how we got here. It was the liberalism of America that gave us the very seat at the table upon which we have made our perch. Liberalism of Lyndon Johnson is what passed the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 that paved the path for a new generation of Indians arriving in America — who despite the color of their skin were not relegated to separate schools, lunch counters or restrooms — a fight won by the blood, sweat and tears of African Americans, a fight that Kamala Harris’s Indian mother participated in and that we should proudly own.

In the ensuing years, both Republican and Democrat presidents supported immigration, the H-1B visa was started under George H.W. Bush and enhanced by Bill Clinton ushering in the second wave of Indians to this country. Bush Jr. was famously pro- immigrant. But under Trump the Republican party has morphed, no longer immigrant friendly. Trump’s rhetoric fans the flames of white nationalism instead. Trump’s party is the only major political party in the world today that stands on the wrong side of the war against climate change; the apocalypse that comes exponentially closer every year we don’t act — and won’t act under another Trump Presidency. If you must consider India in your vote for the U.S. President, then consider that Trump’s policy on climate change threatens the very habitability of India and ultimately its existence.

The uniqueness of America is that it allows and fosters a hyphenated identity. Yet there are limits to this allowance. We are all aware of the awful decision to move Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II because their loyalty to their adopted country was under doubt. If “voting for Trump is voting for India” — aren’t you breaking the oath of allegiance, willfully distorting a domestic election for the benefit of a foreign power? If you are going to indulge in what could be construed as potentially treacherous or at minimum disloyal behavior, how will you defend against the white nationalist viewpoint that is already unfurling signs calling “Diversity = White Genocide” with impunity under a President who calls them “very fine people”?

Jews were the educated and affluent minority — some would say “model minority” in many parts of Europe before the nationalists came to power in Germany in the 1930s. Those “model minority” traits made them the enemy of the nationalists who found them an easy target for their hate and resentment. Many Jews living in the 1930s tried hard to “work with” the rising tide of nationalism around them, the problem with the monster of nationalism is that once unleashed eventually devours everything in its path. To support President Trump and his fostering of white nationalism without stopping to consider its potential outcome for minorities including us is naïve thinking at best.

A hyphenated identity doesn’t mean we always get to play on both teams; sometimes we must pick a side. This election is one of those times. If you are asking the question which candidate is better for India, you are asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is which candidate is better for America, and hope that it aligns with Indian interests. If you simply cannot separate Indian politics from American politics, if Indian politics is all that matters to you, you might as well go back to where you came from and vote there.

Swati Srivastava is a film-maker, an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

Originally published at https://americankahani.com on September 28, 2020.