In Part One of this five-part series, we looked at impacts of climate change over the past year. CHALLENGE considered the September 17 climate march and analyzed its weaknesses. Part Two considers how the continued use of fossil fuels under capitalism puts the survival of humanity at risk.
The amount of carbon dioxide (the main gas generated by the burning of fossil fuels or wood) has been rising since the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. Over the past 70 years, the Earth’s temperature has risen steadily each decade (see graph). Small changes in the average global temperature can have major impacts.
Despite pledges by the world’s capitalists to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the summer of 2023 was the hottest on record. In 2015, capitalist bosses from nearly two hundred countries signed the Paris Agreement, which targeted a limit for global warming by 2100 of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The planet has already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius, and the latest climate models project that we’ll pass 1.5 degrees by the mid-2030s (new.stanford.edu, 1/30). Even if all the big-emitting nations (led by China and the U.S.) fulfilled their short-term emissions cut commitments, temperatures will rise by 2.4 degrees Celsius (climateactiontracker.org). The consequences? A “new normal” of devastating weather events, from mega-hurricanes and killer floods to raging wildfires and drought. As United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutterres said, “We are in the fight of our lives and we are losing” (theguardian.com, 11/7/22). More recently he added, “Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope with, with extreme weather events hitting every corner of the planet”(theguardian.com, 9/7).
Workers protest, bosses burn more oil
A wave of mass demonstrations is demanding an end to the expansion of fossil fuel and a phase-out of existing gas, oil, and coal installations. At present, however, financing of fossil fuel exploration, development, and use continues to rise. In the United States, consumption of energy derived from fossil fuels increased by more than 2 percent in 2022. Britain has reopened coal mines in the name of “energy security” after the war in Ukraine disrupted energy markets. On September 27, it approved an enormous oil and gas project in the North Sea, “ignoring warnings from scientists and the United Nations that countries must stop developing new fossil fuel resources if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change” (Associated Press, 9/27). After U.S. President Joe Biden promised to block further oil exploration in Alaska during his 2020 campaign, his administration approved the massive Willow oil project.
Left to the capitalists, the odds of shutting down the carbon economy in time–and sustaining a liveable planet–are slim and none. In the U.S., Biden and the liberal Democrats–representing the Big Fascists of finance capital–are controlled by the “supermajor” energy companies and the multinational banks that finance them and reap huge profits in return. Meanwhile, the Small Fascists fronting the Republican Party are bought and paid for by domestic energy companies, notably Koch Industries and coal-mining giant Peabody Energy. In schools, children are taught the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide but are assured that we can stop it by recycling or buying electric vehicles or installing solar panels and heat pumps for our homes. The underlying message is to blame individual workers for climate change and to hide the truth: that global warming is the product of the anarchy of capitalism and its drive for maximum short-term profit. Only a communist society run by and for the international working class can balance workers’ need for energy with the need to preserve a healthy and habitable world.
Workers want change, bosses want profits
One recent example of the capitalist bosses’ bad faith is their decision to hold the next United Nations climate summit this December in Dubai, in the oil-soaked United Arab Emirates. The conference president will be Sultan al-Jaber, the CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, which is committed to exploit fossil fuels through the year 2100 and most likely beyond.
The October 4 CHALLENGE noted that the Climate Week demonstration drew more than 75,000 marchers, including significant numbers of Black and Latin workers and youth and members of labor unions. Some welcomed the demand of “System Change, Not Climate Change.” The march was bracketed by sit-ins at banks and museums that take money from fossil fuel companies, as courageous workers put their bodies in entryways to draw attention to the catastrophe now unfolding before our eyes. This year alone, devastating wildfires have consumed forests from Canada and the U.S. to Spain and Brazil. The fires poison the air hundreds, even thousands of miles away. As forests dry out and rain patterns shift, climate change has increased the likelihood of these fires by 50 percent.
Millions of workers and students are fighting back against climate change and Big Oil. Fridays for Future is a youth-led international organization in 7,500 cities across the globe, from Sweden and Belgium to Peru, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Sierra Leone. Extinction Rebellion, based in Britain, calls for civil disobedience to push governments to act. While many participants in these liberal-led reform groups sincerely want to see ”system change,” most do not yet approach the crisis from a class perspective.
The only climate solution is communist revolution
We must win workers to the understanding that the only climate solution is communist revolution, and that only a revolutionary communist party–Progressive Labor Party–can smash capitalism and its rotten, climate-poisoning ideas. It’s not enough to appeal to governments for stricter environmental regulations or to pressure banks to stop financing fossil fuel companies. Communists challenge the basic premises of capitalism: the need for money, the exploitation of labor, the extraction of commodities in the interests of inter-imperialist rivalry.
Many of the participants at the September 17 march would be receptive to this message if given a chance. It’s up to us to share it with them, to develop personal ties and build a base within these mass organizations.
PLP aims to lead the international working class to smash capitalism and replace it with a worker-run society. In future articles in this series, we will challenge the notion that solar and wind power alone can replace fossil fuels and consider the possibilities to advance the clean energy transition with nuclear energy while also limiting growth.