By Ella McGill

Over 500 new millionaires emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to BBC News. 500 new people became billionaires, 40 of which – Moderna CEO, Stéphane Bancel; BioNTech cofounder Uğur Şahin – did so by helping to fight the pandemic itself. We are all familiar with the ways poor people get poorer during catastrophes. In the case of Covid-19, many small businesses faced prolonged closures and restrictions to business. But how do people become millionaires in trying times? What does it look like to profit off of chaos?

Journalist Naomi Klein calls opportunistic responses by governments and free markets to disastrous events ‘disaster capitalism’. As the climate crisis worsens, this term gains relevancy. The Atlantic writes that unliveable climate conditions will likely displace one billion people in the next year, and disaster capitalism ensures that protection is available only for those who can afford it.

Free markets respond to crises by producing. In the wake of any new disaster, products emerge to quell people’s worries – or to create more of them. Madrigal writes that climate change products range from useful items such as air purifiers and inflatable life-jackets, to personal thermostats for menopausal women, and placebo-effect paper masks for bushfires. As climate conditions deteriorate, he writes, people can ‘reinterpret the problem as a personal, consumer one: “What do I need to survive the biosphere today?” Taking a collective problem and solving it personally will not solve anything, he believes: ‘you can’t buy your way out of a warming planet’.

Not only does individualising one’s approach to climate change not solve it, Madrigal believes that there are important moral dimensions to such decisions. Criticising Kim Kardashian and Kanye West for hiring private firefighters to defend their mansion against the Woolsey fire in California in 2019, Madrigal says that, particularly when governments are overwhelmed or public resources lacking, ‘richer people are going to get better service than poor people, across the board’.

Shifting our focus to societal elites, things take a more sinister turn. Klein believes many political elites are deeply enmeshed within the disaster-capitalism complex, such as how former Vice President of the US, Dick Cheney, was in the business of privatising the US military before coming into office, or how Rudy Giuliani and Paul Brenmer launched home security companies off the back of 9-11. Similar dynamics played out during the Covid-19 pandemic. Concerns were raised about insider trading when senators sold stocks after a White House briefing that forecast the market crash. Others feared governments were using the pandemic to enact their personal agendas, such as the announcement of relaxed environmental protocols in China during this time. Klein says, ‘We need political leaders who think disasters are bad. That, to me is a good starting premise’.

With regards to climate change, the crisis has been mobilised by corporate elites to push through corporate agendas. Newsweek report that fossil fuel giant, Enbridge, operating the controversial Line 5 pipeline under the Great Lakes of North America, has cited the climate crisis, to which it, itself, contributes, as reason to up its prices to consumers. By ascertaining that its pipeline network has approximately 19 years of life left due to global warming, Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, says that Enbridge are ‘conceding that they can see the writing on the wall’. It’s ironic, he says: ‘They’re not going to be [needed] less than 20 years from today, and as a result they have to raise prices’. The pipeline is backed by Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who by 2021 had received almost $400,000 from fossil fuel sector donations.

But how can we fight disaster capitalism? The answer, according to Madrigal, is to understand our individual place in the collectivity of catastrophe. Chapman says disasters can become ‘critical moments of radicalisation and collective action’. He says that, when disaster occurs, solidarity and mutual aid can step in to unite against capitalist beneficiaries.

Examples of this come from Miller and Liu’s study on the impacts of online learning on the existing social inequalities between white and POC students in North America. Miller and Liu found that, in true disaster capitalist fashion, private firms responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by encouraging public investment in online learning platforms which systemically disadvantaged students of colour. The authors also discovered, however, that the concept of teacher-family-community solidarity could be used to oppose this. Teachers, families and communities could work together, to co-create inclusive curricula and assessments. In addition, they could lobby of private sector support organisations to ensure equitable distribution of online-learning technology to all students.

Miller and Liu list successful attempts of community organisation against disaster capitalism, such as the California Dignity in Schools Campaign for racial justice in online education, and the successful co-construction of Tucson Unified School District curricula by drawing on community funds of knowledge, as opposed to sourcing supports privately. Such collective actions are needed to disrupt the present default: the disaster capitalist processes of consumer panic and elite manipulation.

Liu and Miller write that while educators and policy makers stress ‘getting back to normal’ in times of disaster, ‘going back is the wrong thing… normal is where the problems reside’. ‘Every disaster’, Chapman says, ‘brings us one step closer to saying enough is enough, we’re trying something different’. Coming together repeatedly in collective action, is the only way we can disrupt the current tyranny of the disaster capitalist market.