Chris Hayes Totally Compares Climate Change to Slavery

On Tuesday night’s All In with Chris Hayes, host and passionate climate change activist Chris Hayes compared the burning of fossil fuel with the institution of slavery, and  in mid-comparison, insisted to his audience that “I am not comparing slavery to the burning of fossil fuel.” The denial seemed to be a preemptive strike against the sort of fake outrage that led conservative guests to accuse Hayes of endorsing a Cow Holocaust and/or of silencing women. Whatever you think of the comparison, though, he definitely made it.

Discussing the $20 trillion dollars worth of known fossil fuel reserves, $16 trillion of which will have to be left in the ground in order to avoid civilization-crushing warming, Hayes pointed out that “In all of history, there’s really only one time anything even remotely like that has ever happened,” which was “the end of the Civil War and the liberation of the slaves.”

“Now, before we go any further, I am not comparing slavery to the burning of fossil fuel,” Hayes said, adding “The evil of slavery is distinct and incomparable. The only thing comparable to slavery is slavery.”

He then went on to continue the comparison, noting that when slavery ended, the economic value of the freed slaves was “about $10 trillion” in today’s dollars, and that it took our bloodiest war to end it. (Full segment here)

Clearly, Hayes wasn’t trying to equate slavery with fossil fuel, but identifying similarities and differences between two things is, in fact, comparing them. You can even find the details behind that $10 trillion figure in Hayes’ article for The Nation, entitled “The New Abolitionism,” and if you missed last night’s All In, you can catch Hayes explaining the whole thing to Ronan Farrow in a segment headlined “How abolition of slavery informs the fossil fuel fight,” in which he flat-out agrees that he is making a comparison, just not a moral one. It’s a comparison that he’s been making for several years now.

It’s also a very good comparison, although maybe not for the reasons Hayes enumerates…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.