LOL: New Zealand Climate Change Group Cancels Itself for Racism

Matt Philbin | June 16, 2021
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Here's the feel-good story of the week: A New Zealand environmental group has collapsed under the weight of its own wokeness. 

According to The Guardian, School Strike 4 Climate's Auckland chapter announced its formal dissolution in a Facebook post that sounded an awful lot like the transcript of a Maoist "struggle session." It had “avoided, ignored and tokenised BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of colour] voices and demands” and  been “a racist, white-dominated space.” Well.

The Auckland chapter also accused the national group of having a "big problem" with racism. For their part, the Aucklanders promised to “uplift BIPOC-led climate justice spaces.”

Why, you ask, was School Strike 4 Climate so mean to the BIPOCers in its ranks? And why was it necessary to snuff out its own existence rather than making the needed changes and getting on with its mission of demanding grownups provide better weather? 

Who cares? But it may have something to do with the fact that, per The Guardian, "The global School Strike movement emerged under the leadership of Greta Thunberg, who began skipping school in 2018 to protest outside the Swedish parliament." Shrill self-righteousness is in its organizational genes, and maybe it metastasized. 

Related: Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Nominated For a Nobel Peace Prize

Or maybe the inherent tensions in the myriad lefty agendas just can't be "intersectionalized" indefinitely. The organizational Facebook suicide note read “BIPOC communities are disproportionately affected by climate change, so the fight for climate justice should be led by their voices and needs, not [white] ones.”

Just so. On the great campus of climate activism, BIPOCers need their own dorms and student unions -- maybe their own graduation ceremonies. (just kidding: environmental alarmism will always be with us. Nobody's graduating.) 

Just so we're clear on the kind of clear-thinking, sharp-as-a-tack people we're dealing with, I quote The Guardian at length:

The announcement drew praise from some. Anevili, a spokesperson for Indigenous youth climate advocacy group Te Ara Whatu who goes only by their first name, supported the decision.

Noting that racism is prevalent in many New Zealand organisations, Anevili said, “Decolonisation is a big task, and it’s a brave call for them to say they have problems with racism … and then step back and say that disbanding is the right thing to do.”

[Emphasis mine.] 

These folks don't know if they're the Judean People's Front or the People's Front of Judea

 

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