"Growing numbers of people are beginning to realize that capitalism is the uncontrollable force driving our ecological crisis," wrote Joel Kovel in The Enemy of Nature (2002). 

Today, people's confidence in the world's rulers is melting like the Western Antarctica ice shelf.  Their fear of global warming is rising like the ocean. 

Those people, Kovel continued, "become frozen in their tracks by the awesome implications."  We need to get them moving again by making real the awesome potential of communism.

Under capitalism, the working class always pays.

 "Drought-plagued California… hopes to prove that capitalism can work in the fight against global warming," reported the New York Times last month.  And capitalism's main strategy, "cap and trade" (see box) hasn't worked so well in Europe over the last decade. 

Fluctuating prices for "carbon credits" (permits to pollute) make it difficult for companies to make long-term plans.  That's a basic fact of capitalism:  fierce competition for short-term profits creates long-term disaster.  That's what caused the ecological crisis to begin with.

In the US, a move away from dirty coal-fueled energy to "clean" natural gas became possible because massive fracking increased the supply and lowered the cost of natural gas.  But fracking is dirty and dangerous.  Trains explode, tanks of toxic chemicals leak into water supplies, and the death rate among US oil and gas workers is almost eight times higher than the average for US industrial workers.  Fracking may also cause earthquakes.

Capitalists pass along increased costs of generating electricity, raising prices while continuing to drive down wages.  Politicians use revenue from sales of carbon credits for corporation-friendly projects like the "bullet train" that California governor Jerry Brown wants to build. 

No, capitalism can't work in the fight against global warming.

A National Research Council report (December 2013) warned that "the planet could suffer serious and abrupt climate threats in the next few years or decades."  But carbon isn't even the most urgent threat created by capitalism.  That would be world war.

International capitalist competition drives inevitably toward imperialist world war.  We estimate that the same time frame applies:  "in the next few years or decades."   And since August 1945, world war has meant nuclear war. 

The stakes couldn't be higher.  The urgency couldn't be greater.  The time to mobilize the masses for communism is now.

Yes, communism can work!

Communism means ending production for profit and all its consequences, including capitalism's unrelenting pressure to expand.   Communist society will instead produce for human needs, which, unlike bosses' profits, have limits.

Communism will liberate us to collectively to reimagine and reconstruct every aspect of life so that we and our descendants can live sustainably on the planet.   Without corporations like Exxon, Gazprom, Total or PetroChina, we will be able to leave most carbon in all its forms safely underground. 

Without the capitalists' nations and borders, imperialist war will become only a terrible memory.  No longer will vast military machines chew up lives and spew carbon, radioactivity, and other poisons into the environment. 

Workers' creativity will be massively unleashed to develop renewable energy sources.  Huge reserves of labor will be freed for constructive work.  There will be no money in communism, no financial "bottom line" to stop us from putting good ideas into action. 

Work for the common good will replace the wage slavery of jobs.  We'll collectively organize that work so that most can live closer to our workplaces and rely mainly on locally-produced food and goods. 

More of us will be active in daylight and asleep when it's dark.  Instead of passive entertainment delivered over energy-eating large-screen TVs, we'll create and share our own arts and participate actively in sports.

The most awesome thing is that we'll all take part in making and carrying out the decisions that affect our lives and the future of life on the planet.  Your part can start right now, by joining the International Communist Workers' Party.

Obama's climate plan requires states to lower carbon emissions from power plants.  It encourages them to adopt more programs like California's "cap and trade."  Here is a short explanation of this complicated system:

Governments set limits ("caps") on carbon emissions from power plants, and sometimes factories. Then they issue free "carbon credits" (permits to pollute) to allow plants to pollute up to those limits.  More of these permits are sold in the capitalist marketplace. 

The caps are gradually lowered, with the goal of slowing the rate at which carbon enters the atmosphere so that global warming also slows.  When caps are lowered, companies must decide whether it's more profitable to invest in energy efficiency (natural gas instead of coal) or to buy more credits.  In California, the company might also "offset" its carbon use by investing in some unrelated energy-efficiency project.  

But finance capitalism, not industry, dominates today's marketplace.  Speculators buy up the "credits" (pollution permits) even though they don't run businesses that pollute.  Their goal is to sell them at a profit, most likely to someone else who doesn't run a factory.  They bet on the fluctuations of the market and create "derivative financial products" to hedge their bets.  This is just like what happened with mortgages a decade ago, which led to the 2007-2008 crash. 

 "Thirty years ago, the financial sector claimed around a tenth of U.S. corporate profits. Today, it's almost 30 percent," wrote Mark Weissmann in The Atlantic (3/5/13). "It's supplanted manufacturing as the biggest profit center in the economy."  

Obama's capitalist "climate plan" is betting the future of life on Earth in the giant casino called "Wall Street."