The Parasitic Cycle: Colonialism and the Language of Climate Exclusion

It seems we often treat climate change as a new crisis. However, for many, it is just the final stage of centuries of colonial exploitation and abuse. 

We see a pattern over the many instances and tragedies brought by such greed and corruption through out the world and history. Imperial-like powers who see themselves as more "civilized" refuse to account for the fact that they themselves are also animals a part of this world. 

We see time and time again such imbalanced egos swarm the lush and fertile parts of Earth with motives of short term greed and extraction. 

The Industrialization of the "Expendable"

The parasite does not leave when the host is exhausted, but simply imports a new host to continue their traumatic cycle of extraction and exploitation. 

As one example among many, let us review the history of the indigenous Taino people in Jamaica. Jamaica was mainly exploited by, but not limited to, the Spanish and British colonial powers. When the vibrant, culturally rich Taino peoples were decimated by unethical, forced labor and disease, the colonial machinery didn't pause, and the light-skinned and eyed man did not form a conscience. Instead, that system pivoted to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and forged on with its greed. 

It is an industrial "replacement parts" logic applied directly onto human beings and Earth. Multiple Indigenous peoples across the world were viewed as "expendable" and simply replaced with more human beings to maintain their flow of wealth and influence. 

This is the backbone of colonial capitalism: a system that does not care about limits, that assumes there will always be more "expendable" people, more "unowned" land to exploit, and more "uncivilized" tribes to domesticate. 

Today, we see the modern evolution of this apathy. While the world begs for some sort of collective sanity and call to action, the descendants of these colonizers sit in air-conditioned rooms, wearing expensive suits, and signing away the future of our climate for oil profits. These suits remain apathetic to the ecological collapse they inherit and accelerate, proving that for the colonizer, greed is a more sacred tradition than life itself.

The Checkmate painting by Moritz Retzsch.

The Architecture of Enforced Dependency

This logic of "replacement parts" extends beyond human society and into the very soil. Colonial powers re-wrote and domesticated the landscape by focusing on aesthetics or cash crops instead of food-bearing trees and indigenous flora. By doing this, colonial powers severed our natural, rightful access to nourishment and self-sovereignty. This is a deliberate strategy to kill local intuition and self-sufficiency.

When you can no longer pick fruit from a tree in your own surroundings, you are forced into the colonial corporate store. You are forced to "play" without consent just to survive. This shift from sustainable intuitive foraging to capitalistic dependency is not progress but rather should be seen as a siege. 

It replaces the nourishing, diverse Earth with a sterile "product" that you must spend colonial currency to obtain, ensuring that even our physical surroundings and simple rights such as eating, hydrating, etc., remain under the colonial capitalistic thumb. 

The Intersecting Pillars of Shame and Conformity 

The ongoing ecological and spiritual collapse we now face in 2026 is the direct result of a world built on white "supremacy", patriarchy, and religious exceptionalism. This colonial, capitalistic, relentless greed is enabled by a specific narrative of power that has been reinforced for thousands of years. These systems efficiently work together to reinforce the disparities and culture that will allow their extraction to continue without accountability. 

White Man's Religion

"White man's" religion has been used as a tool of domestication, especially for indigenous. By replacing indigenous faiths with the white man's god, colonial powers forced indigenous people to kiss the feet of a deity that mirrored their oppressors. This system weaponizes shame and labels indigenous traditions as sinful, which in turn hijacks their spirit.

The Patriarchy of Nature

There is a significant link between the exploitation of women and the exploitation of the Earth. In colonial language, the Earth is often feminized: a "virgin" land to be "penetrated," "conquered," and "mastered." The very logic used to justify "raping" the land without consent for self-greed and resources. 

The Language of "Better"

Colonial systems enforce a binary, a so called "correct" way of being a "human", as if all animals are not born with intuition which is applicable to the land beneath them without needing to spend colonial currency to obtain. If you do not look "civilized" and if you don't speak the language of the "academic" or the pious colonizer, your intuition and your suffering are discredited.

This linguistic gatekeeping is a tactic used to make the colonizer seem larger than nature itself. By controlling the laws and the very definitions and of "progress", it is ensured that the people, often the descendants of those very same "expendable" hosts, are most affected by climate change and displacement. 

Climate justice is inseparable from racial justice because the same logic that fueled the slave trade now fuels the fossil fuel industry, with paperwork dictating it as "legal".

This physical act of worship—a Black man kissing a white Jesus on a crucifix illustrates the "domestication" of indigenous spirituality through the enforcement of colonial, patriarchal religion.