Capitalist Climate Crisis: No Time to Waste

Climate Crisis Isn’t Coming…. It’s Here! Let’s Destroy Capitalism So Workers Can Build Solutions

April 13— Monsoon floods drowned one third of Pakistan’s land last year. Lake Tulare in California (USA) re-emerged to swamp thousands of agricultural acres. Floods in Peru caused deadly landslides. Record floods inundated Petropolis (Brazil), South Africa, Serbia, Indonesia.

People and animals drowned. Homes washed away. Massive crop destruction and famine. Epidemics of water-borne illnesses. Forced migration. Even more child brides in Pakistan as desperate families marry off young girls.

The flip side is drought.  In China, the critical Yangtze River fell to record lows.  Hydropower reservoirs in Sichuan dropped so low that they threatened the electric supply.  Scorching heat in south Asia melted glaciers, leading to the disastrous floods. Record heat and drought there and in the USA brought devastating wildfires.

All of this from capitalist-caused global climate change.

Scientists recently confirmed that “the frequency and intensity of rainfall and droughts are increasing due to burning fossil fuels and other human activity that releases greenhouse gases…The strong link between these climate extremes and rising global average temperatures means continued global warming will mean more drought and rainstorms that are more frequent, more severe, longer and larger.”

But it’s not “human” activity. Humans lived on Earth for nearly 200 million years before the capitalist industrial revolution began spewing carbon.  Since then, it’s been capitalist activity:  fighting over maximum profits.  In 2022, five major oil and gas corporations raked in profits of almost US$200 billion but couldn’t seem to spare US$16 billion for Pakistani flood damage mitigation.

The problem isn’t just climate change deniers. It’s the capitalist think-tanks, commissions, politicians, and media that declare that “we” must drastically cut carbon emissions– but conceal mountains of evidence that capitalism can’t do that.

Candidate Biden promised to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” But President Biden just opened Willow (Alaska) to oil drilling expected to pump almost 300 million metric tons of carbon into Earth’s air.  Two weeks later, he auctioned oil and gas leases in an Italy-sized stretch of the Gulf of Mexico.

Why? Because carbon-based energy reserves are key to US imperialist power in Europe and beyond. To their effort (increasingly unsuccessful) to compete globally with Chinese imperialism and Russian capitalism to the point of all-out war.  To wringing maximum profits from workers’ labor.

Capitalists say mitigating the damage their system has caused would be too costly and inefficient. It would not be “competitive” especially for industrial powers deeply invested in carbon-based technologies.

Capitalism’s fundamental nature stands in the way of doing what needs to be done.

Does this make you angry enough (or scared enough) to want to do more than composting kitchen waste and giving up plastic straws?  More than begging capitalist rulers to “please change” and then voting for them as the “lesser evil” even when they don’t?

We can’t turn back the clock to a time before ruling classes decided to dominate nature and justify it with religious cant.  Or even back to 150 years ago, when the working class first tried to overthrow capitalism before it got us to this point.

But we can look ahead to the world we, the working masses, can create after we finally win a revolution to overthrow capitalism.  A communist world will end the wage-slavery that produces profits at terrible costs to us individually, to our class, and to the environment.  We will organize production instead to meet our long-term as well as short-term needs.

Throwing off the shackles of the money system will enable us to deploy technologies that are now unattainable ideals.  To reorganize society so we don’t waste time and energy (carbon and our own) producing and transporting stuff we don’t need or fighting wars over it.

To unleash the creativity of the masses, whose ideas and initiative are now squashed and squandered. To mobilize our collective labor to reimagine, repair, restore, and rebuild.  And our collective intelligence to make all decisions that affect our lives and Planet Earth.

The “more” we can do is mobilize ourselves, our friends, and eventually masses to fight for and build a communist world.

To join and build, today, the International Communist Workers’ Party.

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