Guest column Hiske Arts: Fight to keep our backs straight
Hiske Arts | Alumnus of the Year 2024
As campaign leader of the civil movement Fossielvrij NL, Alumnus University College Utrecht (BA) and Humanities (MA) Hiske Arts focuses on shutting off the money flow to new fossil projects and the dismantling of fossil deception.
Can we keep our backs straight? In a time in which climate denial is back to new heights again and we experience the return of authoritarian societies live, Timothy Snyder presents an important lesson in his book ‘On Tyranny’:
Don’t hand over the power you have before you have to. (...) By mentally and physically conceding, you’re already giving over your power to the aspiring authoritarian.
In the US, we see how the fossil industry profits as soon as democratic values erode. This is merely one of the reasons why to me - as a climate activist at Fossielvrij - the battle for climate justice runs parallel to a devotion to democratic values.
A connecting thread through the campaigns we have at Fossielvrij this year is to fight for backbone. For the backbones of pension funds who are becoming more and more aware of the fact that extreme weather is a big risk to pension assets. But on the other side of the ocean, it is instead American vulture capitalism that is gaining in strength, in which the focus is on short-term returns at the expense of everyone and everything. Powerful asset managers like BlackRock are following Trump's lead more and more. In order to break through the influence of this trend, European pension funds will have to part ways with BlackRock and consorts. Pension fund PFZW has already done so and it is time for ABP to follow suit.
For Europe as well, the current priority is to keep their backs straight. While this is the right time to build up independence, European political leaders have allowed themselves to be blackmailed into a fossil deal with Trump for the staggering sum of 750 billion dollars. This is a completely wrong signal. Choosing for a longer dependency on methane-leaking gas from the US means the bankruptcy of our climate policy. Only by choosing for an accelerated phasing out of oil and gas and by increasing domestic renewable energy can Europe break through the spiral of energy dependency from authoritarian leaders.
But it is also the backbones of our universities which are at stake. In the US, we see how universities allow themselves to be intimidated by the Trump Administration. To our society, the pillar of independent knowledge is indispensable. If science allows itself to be influenced, intimidated or accommodates in advance to what politics wants to hear or see from them, it sidelines itself.
Don’t obey in advance.
Text: Hiske Arts