LOS ANGELES, Sept. 20—California Nurses’ Association joins climate protest. ICWP comrades distributed Red Flag and opened discussions about how capitalist competition for maximum profit drives everything, including the growing climate crisis. We explained that only mobilizing the masses for communism – not “taxing Wall Street” or other reforms – can end the evils of this deadly system.

“There is no Planet B!’  This was the message of the recently-concluded UN Climate Summit and mass mobilizations around the globe.  It’s the truth – but it’s also a lie.

We live on one planet, but a few live obscenely luxurious lives, many of us just get by, and billions are forced into misery by the capitalists who rule every country in the world.  The inner logic of capitalism forces those capitalists into ever-sharpening conflicts and ever-widening wars.  We are not “all in this together.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s upbeat messages can’t change these facts.  The leaders of China, Russia, India, Australia, Germany, and even Canada skipped his “climate summit.”  Chinese vice-premier Zhang Gaoli bashed the US as the world’s largest long-term polluter.  US President Obama bashed China’s coal consumption while sending gas-guzzling bomber jets over Syria. 

No climate treaty is likely to appear anytime soon.  If one does, the US won’t ratify it, as it failed to sign a recent World Bank resolution.

When communist workers’ power rules the world, we (the masses) will tear down borders, abolish nations, and work together globally to implement environmentally sustainable policies to meet the needs of our class.  We will truly be “all in this together.”  Until then, responses to the growing climate crisis will be shaped by the imperialists’ needs to prepare for world war by squeezing the life-blood out of the masses. 

The Pentagon is the world’s single largest energy consumer.  Over ¾ of that energy comes from oil.  A 2007 Pentagon study warned that “the [US] military’s growing consumption of fossil fuels …leaves Pentagon leaders with little choice but to break with the past as soon as possible.”  It urged “immediate steps toward fielding weapons systems and aircraft that run on alternative and renewable fuels” while recognizing that the US military would remain dependent on fossil fuels for decades. 

This dual strategy – securing the oil needed for war while developing alternative energy sources – seems to be the US imperialists’ emerging energy policy.  Their main tactic appears to be “carbon pricing” (a fee or tax on fossil fuels).  This is “the most powerful move that a government can make in the fight against climate change,” said a World Bank vice-president.

“The new carbon pricing push comes as countries and institutions that once fought the idea are now embracing it,” reported the Financial Times.  The forty countries with a carbon tax include India and China.

Zhang mentioned (for the first time) setting a target for “the peaking of total carbon dioxide emissions as early as possible.” We’ll see – if the smog’s not too thick.  Chinese people are wisecracking that Mao’s slogan “Serve the People” has become “Serve the People Smog.” 

Chinese rulers are under pressure to clean up the air, and the growth of coal consumption has slowed down – possibly due to economic downturn.  Meanwhile, massive (sometimes violent) protests have rocked the cities and countryside over toxic contamination of land and water.  If any Red Flag readers can help translate the paper into Mandarin or get it to friends in China, these angry workers could have the chance to grasp a real communist alternative.

In India, Prime Minister Modi talks out of both sides of his mouth.  Sometimes he denies that climate change is an issue; at other times he brags about fighting it.  But the Modi government has doubled the carbon tax from $8/ton to $16/ton and increased the budget for solar power.  The Indian capitalists may see climate negotiations as a way to enhance India’s claim to global-power status (see p. 2). 

India’s CO2 emissions are growing the fastest, a likely indicator of relative economic strength.  But it emits just 1.9 tons per capita, compared with the EU (6.8 tons), China (7.2 tons), and the US (16.4 tons per capita).

By snubbing Ban Ki-Moon and Obama, the capitalist leaders of India and China showed that their national energy policies are driven by their own interests and not by the US or the so-called “international community.”  Neither they nor the US imperialists will hesitate to make “their” workers pay the price of ever-deepening misery and, eventually, catastrophic war. 

There is no “Planet B.”  The only way forward for the international working class is to make this one “Planet C”— for Communism.

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