By CARLOS SAPIR
As another Northern Hemisphere summer draws to a close, cataclysmic headlines about climate patterns have become routine. Whether it’s the weekly breaking of heat records, catastrophic storms and floods, or the irreversible death of coral reefs and other ecosystems, the planet’s climate has already sped headlong into uncharted territory. These events become so routine that even bemoaning the fact that these events have become routine has itself become routine. In the face of this massive existential threat to humanity, where is the mass movement to save the planet?
People know that climate change is real
Whereas a decade or two ago a reluctance to address climate change could have been attributed to ignorance or outright denial of the situation, this is no longer a compelling explanation. UN surveys suggest that over 80% of the world’s population not only recognizes that climate change is a real threat, but consciously supports greater government intervention to stop it. Large majorities similarly recognize that climate change is affecting people already, will affect them personally, and that not enough is being done to stop it.
While a few propaganda outlets continue to repeat the mantra that none of this is happening, most of the biggest contributors to climate change—for example, fossil fuel capitalists—have now pivoted to pretending that they’re part of the solution to climate change and positioning themselves to set the terms and pace of renewable energy production. International summits for climate policy are now dominated by oil company lobbyists. World leaders (such as the Biden administration) promise investment for green-adjacent technologies at the same time that they expand fossil fuel production to historic heights.
It’s the economy, stupid
Thus far, governments and international institutions have tried to deploy capitalist methods to address climate change. Tipping points were identified, emissions targets were set, treaties were signed, carbon footprints were monetized, “green” technologies were incentivized and the market was told to get to work. But markets are flexible; the moment that production conditions change, a previously prohibitive cost can become a lucrative investment. The track record of capitalism shows that even when costs are imposed and much of the market has fled an unpopular, taboo commodity, there will always be someone to swoop in and provide funding for what has now become an “undervalued” (and therefore, profitable) investment. The end result is that despite countless supposed commitments to transition to alternative sources of energy, more oil is being produced today than ever before.
Fundamentally, capitalism is predicated on constant expansion of economic activity; the only way for investors to receive returns on their investments on average is if the economy is growing. It is for this reason that economic growth (typically measured in GDP) is the primary economic statistic reported and discussed in capitalist political discourse. This constant expansion is in direct conflict with the fact that the Earth has finite resources, and that we are rapidly approaching the limits of said resources.
The obvious, necessary response to climate change is the reorganization and reduction of emissions-producing economic activity to levels that halt environmental collapse, and to begin to work towards reversing its impacts. The time that we had to avoid catastrophic changes outright has been squandered, and climate policy must now become a question of weathering the storm without enlarging it. This requires the immediate transition to less-polluting energy sources; but more importantly, it necessitates a reorientation of the economy as a whole to focus on strictly meeting human needs without producing excess commodities that will end up unused.
The elimination of planned obsolescence or the reduction of military production alone would represent a major reduction in emissions and pollution. Factories currently devoted to these wasteful endeavors can be quickly retooled to produce durable goods that are oriented to meeting urgent needs. Accompanying these changes in production, workweeks could be made shorter without a loss of pay, as production that is focused on meeting people’s needs rather than endless capitalist appetites for profit means less work is needed to maintain the same standard of living.
Unfortunately, this sort of transition is heretical to capitalism, and it is easy to see why: pivoting away from a policy of endless economic growth means that capitalists on average will lose money on investments. Interpreted through the lens of capitalist economic dogma, this would lead to cycles of economic collapse as capitalists pull out from losing investments, and it would correspond to further austerity and collapse of living standards for all social strata.
While it is essential that communities and activists redouble their efforts to fight climate-altering and environmentally destructive projects such as oil pipelines, forest clearing, fracking, etc., it must be recognized that attempts to regulate capitalism to any serious degree will prove fruitless.
Likewise, an ecological movement that concentrates on funneling its resources toward lobbying politicians for changes will ultimately fail to stem an increase in fossil fuel production. This tactic has had a disorienting effect on the climate movement, taking the focus away from the need for an immediate transition away from carbon-and methane-emitting fuels. To win a survivable future, we need a climate movement that is able to break with this logic and to articulate the clearly-necessary economic changes needed to avoid the further deterioration of the environment.
A movement paralyzed by misleadership
For anyone under 40, virtually their entire life has been spent in the shadow of a species-ending climate catastrophe, and we seem no closer today to resolving any of it than in the late 20th century, when this was first entering the public consciousness. A simple Google Scholar search shows that millions of peer-reviewed studies have been published identifying and analyzing the phenomenon of “climate anxiety” alone, and a recurring theme across these studies is that while climate anxiety can be identified as a mass psychological phenomenon, any resolution must actually address the climate crisis head on; this issue cannot be fixed by pathologizing it on an individual level.
Despite this mass awareness of climate change, the risks it presents, and the absence of effective responses from international political leaderships, it is astonishing to see a relative lack of protests and activity to force a change. In many respects, there seems to be less of a popular response to climate change today than there was to nuclear power in the 1980s, when hundred-thousand-strong mobilizations were regular occurrences and governments were generally forced to scrap their adoption or plans for expansion of the volatile, dangerous technology.
It is important to emphasize that the widespread anxiety is not itself the cause of inactivity around climate action. Rather, it is a response to the increasingly transparent failure of hegemonic liberal institutions to combat climate change, and an NGO-dominated movement that continues to simply continue appealing to these same institutions in the hopes that eventually they will “understand” the urgency of the situation. Whether through scientists’ polite appeals at climate summits or Just Stop Oil’s symbolic destruction of artworks in museums, the most visible activities of climate activism remain entirely focused on changing the minds of the same institutions that have already failed to act in the face of imminent catastrophe.
The climate movement we need
There are already examples of the necessary, working-class fightback needed to stop climate change. From Panama to the U.S. and around the world, Indigenous and other racialized working-class communities have been leading the charge to protect the environment where they live from the incursions of the fossil fuel industry, mining industry, and other polluters. This demonstrates the eagerness of people to fight when they understand that the health and livelihood of their families are on the line, and the extremely favorable possibilities of constructing mass-action coalitions that can extend deep roots into working-class communities. These movements can achieve real growth when they avoid reliance on corporate and political lobbying; to be most effective, protests must stay in the streets, maximizing the opportunities for all activists to have a voice.
The mobilizations have been most successful when they have won the support of local unions, which can freeze environmentally damaging developments in their tracks by refusing to build or supply them.
People are won to credible political alternatives, not empty promises and pretty rhetoric. The basis for building a movement against capitalism is strong labor unions that can fight for and win improvements to working conditions, which also include addressing the very real and often deadly impacts of climate change on the job. The task at hand is to rebuild the union movement into an organized, confident, independent political force and to have it throw its weight behind those who are already on the frontlines of fighting environmental disasters: Indigenous and grassroots community groups fighting against environmentally harmful development where they live. A strong movement for the political interests of the working class will be our best defense as every crisis of climate change pushes capitalist governments to impose more and more draconian policies.
The task of rebuilding and revitalizing the atrophied engines of working-class power is a daunting one. But it is no more daunting than the 19th-century struggle to build labor unions in the first place, a struggle that has been successfully fought again and again since then to win freedoms and material security for workers in shops all over the world. The fight to stop climate change has already begun, but only by providing an alternative to capitalism can we hope to decisively stop the capitalist death march towards extinction.
Socialism is not a new idea. It articulates a basic, democratic vision: a society where economic activity is planned according to the needs of society, rather than through an arbitrary market process that gives disproportionate privileges to the wealthy and unscrupulous. Today, the historical parties of socialism are scattered and disorganized; the majority of groups that call themselves socialist today have no real program for abandoning capitalism, the result of decades of cooperating with the status quo of international capitalism, and organized union density has waned in response.
But while the historical organizations of Marxism have withered, separated from the material roots that would give them power, the economic pressures underpinning the Marxist formula for political power have only grown stronger. The international working class is larger and more geographically concentrated than ever before, with greater ability to communicate among itself than ever before. With imminent climate catastrophe on the horizon, the working class also has more of a reason to unite than ever before.
Photo: Climate activists protest outside the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 15, 2021. (Jacqueline Martin / AP)