"Liberty Mutual" insurance company (an ironic name) has a new CEO. A
campaign presses for him to stop the corporation insuring and
investing in fossil fuel projects.
This is a clear example of a pernicious development in progressive
thinking: advocating an explicitly privileged higher status of
citizenship for indigenous people.
The campaign makes four demands. I support the first three,
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- . Immediately stop insuring new and expanded coal, oil, and gas projects.
- . Commit to phase out insurance for coal, oil and gas companies in line with 1.5ºC.
- . Divest all assets from coal, oil, and gas companies that are not aligned with a 1.5ºC pathway.
- -. adopt a policy to ensure the projects and clients you insure respect the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of impacted Indigenous Peoples.
but I criticize the fourth demand (which I have relabeled "4-") for
the unfairness of demanding new rights but limiting them to indigenous
people, thus denying those rights to all other people impacted locally
by a large fossil fuel project. That omission is racist in spirit.
Item 4- should be replaced by this one:
4+. Adopt a policy to ensure the projects and clients you insure respect the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the people of impacted areas.
Why would a group of progressives think of proposing 4- instead of 4+?
Why advocate rights that are clearly required by justice, then
spontaneously and arbitrarily limit them to a small subset of humanity?
In today's progressive thinking, there is a current which, not
satisfied with the goal of eliminating the racism against indigenous
people and compensating the injustices that have been practiced
against them, seeks to elevate them to a status above ordinary human
beings. According to that line of thought, they are inherently
superior by birth to the rest of humanity -- born high-minded and
loyal to preserving nature. Therefore we (the rest) should have faith
in them, consider them born to be our leaders, and grant them the
privileges and power to make decisions for all of us. They would be,
in effect, a new noble class.
I would support demand 4+, which advocates additional rights for
everyone, indigenous people included. I will not support 4-, which
denies those rights arbitrarily to the rest of us.