Jun 7, 2025
Aaron Dunbar
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
On the morning of May 2, the humanitarian aid vessel known as the Conscience was struck by drones in international waters off the coast of Malta. The ship, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was en route to Gaza in a valiant attempt to break Israel’s brutal and inhumane blockade of the Strip, which has pushed some 2 million Palestinians to the brink of starvation. Among the passengers who was shortly to board the Conscience in Malta was Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg, arguably the most famous climate activist on the planet. It’s been speculated that Israel struck when it did in order to avoid the international blowback they would’ve received had Thunberg already been aboard when they attacked.
The level of ire this bold young activist provokes from her critics, especially grown adult men, is difficult to wrap one’s head around. In 2020, the Alberta oil company X-Site Energy distributed decals to its employees depicting then 17-year-old Thunberg being held by the pigtails and raped.
This past weekend, as Greta boarded yet another vessel in an attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians, Israeli “international human rights lawyer” Arsen Ostrovsky commented to his 300,000 Twitter followers: “Oh look, the little jihadi @GretaThunberg is trying to get into Gaza, to show solidarity with Hamas. It would be so sad if something were to happen to her flotilla …”
Not to be outdone, South Carolina Senator and million dollar AIPAC investment Lindsey Graham offered a death threat of his own on Sunday afternoon: “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!”
Just to reiterate, these despicable incitements to violence are against an unarmed humanitarian vessel attempting to deliver food and aid to millions of starving people.
There are many, no doubt including some reading this column, who may ask themselves why a climate change activist should be so vocal about an issue like Gaza? And it’s deeply encouraging to me to see someone like Greta, who could just as easily have “stayed in her lane” and gotten obscenely rich touting uncontroversial, greenwashed solutions to climate change, instead realizing that anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle are inextricably linked with the survival of our planet.
As Greta put it in a Facebook post shared on Monday: “This mission is only part of a global movement for social- and climate justice, liberation and decolonisation led by marginalised people. If we are to stand on the right side of history, it is our duty and about time that we join that movement.”
First and foremost, I consider the situation in Gaza to be the holocaust of our time. Every decent American should be protesting vehemently against the starvation, dismemberment, extermination, and forced expulsion of 2 million Palestinians, carried out with the full consent and participation of our government. On a more direct environmental level, a study recently quoted in The Guardian found that “the carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza will be greater than the annual planet-warming emissions of a hundred individual countries.” It’s a common adage that war is hell — and now the same flames that burn displaced Palestinians alive in their tents are helping to create a literal hell on earth.
Our own military, meanwhile, is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, similarly dwarfing the emissions of entire countries on an annual basis. Nearly 80% of our government’s emissions come from the Pentagon’s gluttonous consumption of fossil fuels. These numbers are only likely to increase as we continue to escalate tensions around the globe — further reporting in The Guardian notes that NATO, itself a force largely designed to protect American hegemony, will soon add some 200 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere per year through its efforts at rearmament.
Similar to Greta, I’ve reached a point in my activism where I feel I can no longer make a distinction between our struggle for the planet and the fight against U.S. imperialism. As the slain Brazilian activist Chico Mendes once put it, “Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.”
There’s this concept in environmentalism of “sacrifice zones,” areas where poor populations are subject to increased health and environmental risks in order to facilitate the enrichment of others. While we’ve deliberately been conditioned not to view it in this way, America’s foreign policy and how it relates to the rest of the world is entirely contingent on sacrifice zones of a mind-boggling scale, a global underclass of the exploited who exist solely for the benefit of the wealthy few.
The West refuses to acknowledge the humanity of Palestinians for one simple reason — they happen to be inconveniently located in a prized sacrifice zone. Our strategic influence in the Middle East and the access to resources (including, yes, fossil fuels) that might be gained through the ethnic cleansing of Gaza are of far greater importance to us than the commitment to human rights which we otherwise love to champion, usually as a pretense to bomb and invade other countries who aren’t doing what we want them to do.
There is a terrible interconnectedness to all these seemingly disparate tragedies. The same laws penalizing anti-Zionist speech will be used to crack down on environmental organizations. The same AI companies helping the IDF target and murder civilians are being enlisted to help Trump build a database to target undesirable Americans. The same experimental weapons and techniques being used to rip Palestinian children to pieces will be used in future wars driven by climate disasters, and in future genocides, as well as, inevitably, against our fellow U.S. citizens.
We need to realize that this is all one struggle. Every crime against humanity affects every one of us, and it is unacceptable for us to turn a blind eye to one while claiming to care about another.
It’s early Wednesday morning as I submit this for publication. Greta Thunberg and the crew of the Madleen have set sail anew for Gaza, and have already faced multiple encounters with drones flying overhead. It’s impossible to tell what developments might occur in the days to come — whether the fearless members of the Freedom Flotilla will be successful in their mission to deliver aid to 2 million starving Palestinians, or whether we’ll allow a genocidal rogue state to drown the world’s most famous climate activist in the Mediterranean Sea. One thing I can say for certain is that, like the crew of the Madleen, our commitment to humanity must be greater than the inhumanity of those hell-bent on achieving the conquest and annihilation of our world.
***
Aaron Dunbar is a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
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Posted: June 7, 2025 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: One struggle
Jun 7, 2025
Aaron Dunbar
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
On the morning of May 2, the humanitarian aid vessel known as the Conscience was struck by drones in international waters off the coast of Malta. The ship, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was en route to Gaza in a valiant attempt to break Israel’s brutal and inhumane blockade of the Strip, which has pushed some 2 million Palestinians to the brink of starvation. Among the passengers who was shortly to board the Conscience in Malta was Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg, arguably the most famous climate activist on the planet. It’s been speculated that Israel struck when it did in order to avoid the international blowback they would’ve received had Thunberg already been aboard when they attacked.
The level of ire this bold young activist provokes from her critics, especially grown adult men, is difficult to wrap one’s head around. In 2020, the Alberta oil company X-Site Energy distributed decals to its employees depicting then 17-year-old Thunberg being held by the pigtails and raped.
This past weekend, as Greta boarded yet another vessel in an attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians, Israeli “international human rights lawyer” Arsen Ostrovsky commented to his 300,000 Twitter followers: “Oh look, the little jihadi @GretaThunberg is trying to get into Gaza, to show solidarity with Hamas. It would be so sad if something were to happen to her flotilla …”
Not to be outdone, South Carolina Senator and million dollar AIPAC investment Lindsey Graham offered a death threat of his own on Sunday afternoon: “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!”
Just to reiterate, these despicable incitements to violence are against an unarmed humanitarian vessel attempting to deliver food and aid to millions of starving people.
There are many, no doubt including some reading this column, who may ask themselves why a climate change activist should be so vocal about an issue like Gaza? And it’s deeply encouraging to me to see someone like Greta, who could just as easily have “stayed in her lane” and gotten obscenely rich touting uncontroversial, greenwashed solutions to climate change, instead realizing that anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle are inextricably linked with the survival of our planet.
As Greta put it in a Facebook post shared on Monday: “This mission is only part of a global movement for social- and climate justice, liberation and decolonisation led by marginalised people. If we are to stand on the right side of history, it is our duty and about time that we join that movement.”
First and foremost, I consider the situation in Gaza to be the holocaust of our time. Every decent American should be protesting vehemently against the starvation, dismemberment, extermination, and forced expulsion of 2 million Palestinians, carried out with the full consent and participation of our government. On a more direct environmental level, a study recently quoted in The Guardian found that “the carbon footprint of the first 15 months of Israel’s war on Gaza will be greater than the annual planet-warming emissions of a hundred individual countries.” It’s a common adage that war is hell — and now the same flames that burn displaced Palestinians alive in their tents are helping to create a literal hell on earth.
Our own military, meanwhile, is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, similarly dwarfing the emissions of entire countries on an annual basis. Nearly 80% of our government’s emissions come from the Pentagon’s gluttonous consumption of fossil fuels. These numbers are only likely to increase as we continue to escalate tensions around the globe — further reporting in The Guardian notes that NATO, itself a force largely designed to protect American hegemony, will soon add some 200 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere per year through its efforts at rearmament.
Similar to Greta, I’ve reached a point in my activism where I feel I can no longer make a distinction between our struggle for the planet and the fight against U.S. imperialism. As the slain Brazilian activist Chico Mendes once put it, “Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.”
There’s this concept in environmentalism of “sacrifice zones,” areas where poor populations are subject to increased health and environmental risks in order to facilitate the enrichment of others. While we’ve deliberately been conditioned not to view it in this way, America’s foreign policy and how it relates to the rest of the world is entirely contingent on sacrifice zones of a mind-boggling scale, a global underclass of the exploited who exist solely for the benefit of the wealthy few.
The West refuses to acknowledge the humanity of Palestinians for one simple reason — they happen to be inconveniently located in a prized sacrifice zone. Our strategic influence in the Middle East and the access to resources (including, yes, fossil fuels) that might be gained through the ethnic cleansing of Gaza are of far greater importance to us than the commitment to human rights which we otherwise love to champion, usually as a pretense to bomb and invade other countries who aren’t doing what we want them to do.
There is a terrible interconnectedness to all these seemingly disparate tragedies. The same laws penalizing anti-Zionist speech will be used to crack down on environmental organizations. The same AI companies helping the IDF target and murder civilians are being enlisted to help Trump build a database to target undesirable Americans. The same experimental weapons and techniques being used to rip Palestinian children to pieces will be used in future wars driven by climate disasters, and in future genocides, as well as, inevitably, against our fellow U.S. citizens.
We need to realize that this is all one struggle. Every crime against humanity affects every one of us, and it is unacceptable for us to turn a blind eye to one while claiming to care about another.
It’s early Wednesday morning as I submit this for publication. Greta Thunberg and the crew of the Madleen have set sail anew for Gaza, and have already faced multiple encounters with drones flying overhead. It’s impossible to tell what developments might occur in the days to come — whether the fearless members of the Freedom Flotilla will be successful in their mission to deliver aid to 2 million starving Palestinians, or whether we’ll allow a genocidal rogue state to drown the world’s most famous climate activist in the Mediterranean Sea. One thing I can say for certain is that, like the crew of the Madleen, our commitment to humanity must be greater than the inhumanity of those hell-bent on achieving the conquest and annihilation of our world.
***
Aaron Dunbar is a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
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