** To donate to the flood relief effort in Pakistan, please visit the
Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund 2022How do we unpack a problem like this year’s floods in Pakistan? Where do we place the blame? Steve invited our friend Aqdas Afzal back on the podcast to discuss his recent article, “Collapse of Civilizations.”
The article’s title is a cheeky play on Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” which predicted massive conflict between the world’s non-white, non-Christian peoples and the global North. Coincidentally, the countries of the global North have profited quite well from their destruction of the environment, whereas those in the global South bear the brunt – like floods of biblical proportions.
Pakistan’s contribution to carbon emissions is less than 1% yet, when hit by climate catastrophe, the devastation is not only physical, it is economic, it is political. With an economy choked by foreign debt obligations, Pakistan, in the best of times, struggles to meet basic needs.