Editorial: Canada wildfires - Capitalism the firestarter behind climate disaster

Toxic air plagued much of the U.S. in early June as wildfires raged throughout Canada. On June 6, New York City experienced the worst pollution on record, beyond the “emergency” level set by the Environmental Protection Agency and nearly four times the level considered “unhealthy.”. Hypocritical calls by liberal misleaders like New York Mayor Eric Adams, to “stay home if you can'' were too little too late, as smoke darkened orange-hued skies. Most workers couldn’t heed Adams’ call, since no work means no pay–and the capitalist bosses weren’t about to lose profits to protect workers. Black and Latin workers in the poorest neighborhoods suffered the most as the choking air caused emergency room visits to soar, especially for those with asthma and other respiratory illnesses (Gothamist, 6/12). The dirty air crisis piled on the already poisonous effects of living under capitalism.

While wildfire smoke is unusual for New York, breathing toxic air is the everyday norm for much of the world’s working class. South Asia has nine of the world’s ten cities with the worst air and “persistently hazardous” pollution that causes an estimated two million premature deaths a year” (New York Times,, 6/15). Capitalism wreaks devastation on the working class every day. From non-stop deforestation in the Amazon rainforest to the proposed bulldozing of a forest in Atlanta to build a $90 million facility to train more killer kkkops,  the rulers keep spreading the horrors of their toxic system. We cannot rely on a ruling class that kills us daily. We can’t trust our children’s future to the profit-mad monsters who caused  climate change in the first place. Only communism, a system run to serve workers’’ needs, not the profit of a few, can change the conditions that lead to so much death and disease for the international working class!

Capitalist drive for profits = wildfires
“Wildfires” aren’t  the natural disasters that the term might imply. Although lightning was the primary cause of the recent Canadian conflagrations, many of the burning trees were not in natural forests. Much of the devastated acreage was in industrial tree farms. Timber companies cut down forests that had been there for hundreds of years to “make space for commercial tree varieties and eliminate competition”(Earth Island Journal, 4/8/19). As usual, the drive for maximum profits led to the planting of profitable but “less fire-tolerant tree species, [making] it easier for fires to spread” (BBC, 6/12). Rising temperatures worldwide due to the burning of fossil fuels lead to drier conditions, making wildfires more frequent and intense...which in turn release more carbon into the atmosphere and cause even more global warming.

Protecting the health of the environment and humanity will never be society’s goal until capitalism is destroyed. Under communism, there would be no need to put workers’ lives in such danger. Without money and the drive for profit, all decisions–including environmental decisions–made would be based on the needs of the international working class.

Environmental racism is part of life under capitalism
The smoke that blanketed New York didn't spare wealthy neighborhoods. But like most environmental disasters, the most exploited workers in already neglected neighborhoods are hurt the most. The harm from smoke comes from  tiny solid and liquid particles that are inhaled and trigger respiratory illnesses or worsen existing conditions. With already higher-than-average asthma rates, Black and Latin workers are among the most vulnerable to the hazardous impacts of the smoke. This, too, is not a natural occurrence.

Racist segregation, a criminal abomination created by the capitalist ruling class,  has forced Black and Latin workers to live in neighborhoods cut through by highways and packed with industrial plants. “[B]lack and Hispanic communities in the U.S. are exposed to far more air pollution” and “neighborhoods once shaped by discriminatory housing policies…have more pavement, fewer trees and higher average temperatures — a combination that can lead to deadly heat illness” (Washington Post, June 2020).

During the wildfire crisis, the highest rates of emergency room visits related to asthma were in these areas (Gizmodo, 6/16). Historically Black and Latin neighborhoods–such as New York’s South Bronx, nicknamed “Asthma Alley”– have the highest rates of death and disease from asthma in the country. In New York, 80 percent of the people hospitalized with asthma are Black and Latin workers (Columbia University). Capitalism was already killing these workers! This smoke only made things worse.

Capitalism won’t solve climate change
Liberal misleaders like Adams and President Joe Biden would have us think that climate change denial is a new phenomenon pushed by a conservative fringe. But it was oil giant ExxonMobil, a bulwark of mainstream finance capital, that hired the scientists in the 1970s who found that fossil fuels were dangerous, and then paid them to hide their findings and misinform the public. They “were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks” (Scientific American, 10/26/15).

With Canada in the spotlight, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hypocrisy stands out. In June 2019, Canada declared a national climate emergency. “The next day, it approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion… to move almost 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to the port of Burnaby” (mronline.org, 6/23). The bosses’ promises at United Nations climate conferences to cut carbon dioxide emissions mean next to nothing.

As oil profits soar, in large part due to the war in Ukraine, trillions of dollars are being invested worldwide in fossil fuel infrastructure (NYT, 4/6). These plans are making a mockery of the UN’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, never mind their members’  “commitment” at the Paris Agreement in 2015. “Temperature rises over 2 degrees could bring catastrophic and potentially irreversible impacts, including pushing three billion people into chronic water scarcity” (CNN, 1/30). As the world’s imperialist superpowers ramp up to the next world war, they will keep doing whatever it takes to protect their profits and power.

Under Biden, laughably called the “first climate president,” oil production has increased to record levels. In March,  “the Biden administration approved a massive drilling project in Alaska that could generate the same carbon emissions each year as adding two million gas-powered cars to the roads” (Smithsonian Magazine, 3/22). This Willow Project praised by oil execs is supposed to “secure energy independence” from Russia–the capitalists’ code for sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry.  

The liberal bosses calling for the Green New Deal, the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, or other UN climate goals continue to pose them as solutions to the capitalist-created climate crisis. But global bosses have no real plan to “save the planet.””. Their master plan is to prepare for world war. As of 2019, the U.S. military was “the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world” (The Guardian, 11/21). Capitalism can never combat climate change.

Burn down capitalism with communist revolution
Communism is the only system that can! In a system run by and for the working class, the profit-driven causes of climate change will wither away. Unfortunately, the damage caused by capitalism won’t be undone overnight. But we will reorganize the way we work and the way we power our world. We will organize to protect the working class by moving workers away from vulnerable coastlines, increasing green spaces, and converting to clean energy sources. When “natural” disasters strike, our priority will be to save and protect lives. Join Progressive Labor Party and organize for communist revolution to build that world!