Capitalism’s Climate Crisis and Energy Wars here ♦ Farmers Displaced by Climate Change here ♦
Capitalism’s Climate Crisis and Energy Wars Create Urgent Need for Communist Revolution
October 5 – Continuous overnight rain has flooded North Bengal (India). At least twenty-eight people died in Darjeeling landslides. Dozens more in Nepal. The latest victims of capitalism’s climate change.
Flooding. Drought. Record high temperatures. Stronger hurricanes. Rising seas. Wildfires. Crops and marine life disrupted, threatening food supplies. More hunger. More disease. More inequality. All consequences of late-stage capitalism.
“Capitalism’s priority is financial gain, over everything else,” declared an activist who reads Red Flag. “Human life, environmental sustainability, and long-term quality of life will always come second. Whether it’s a close or distant one is irrelevant. Capitalism would rather implode than disperse wealth. The ones with their hands on the wheel do not care for human damage caused, as long as the system keeps benefiting their pockets.”
Ten years ago, 195 parties signed the “legally binding” UN-sponsored Paris Agreement. It aspired to hold the global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That would require greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO2) to peak by 2025.
Carbon emissions have not peaked. Global temperature has already hit the 1.5°C mark.
The Paris Agreement is dead. So are hundreds of thousands more of our working-class siblings every year due to climate change.
“Paris has given way to an age of competition, renewed rivalry and the increasingly naked logic of national self-interest, on energy and warming as with everything else,” concluded a New York Times columnist.
The main rivalry is between declining US imperialism and rising Chinese imperialism.
Energy can’t be separated from AI, the fastest-growing consumer of electricity.
The current US system has bet heavily on AI. But the current administration opposes renewable energy sources, the fastest-growing energy sector globally. The US is close to denying even that greenhouse gases are dangerous.
Instead, the US is leading production growth in oil and liquefied natural gas. But global oil demand growth is slowing. This is mainly due to the slowing Chinese economy.
China’s rulers, in contrast, have emerged as a green-energy superpower. While overbuilding new cities and towns, it has vastly expanded its electricity network. Unlike the US, it’s positioned for the AI boom. Three-quarters of all solar and wind power projects globally are in China or built by Chinese companies.
An example: The war in Ukraine diverted fossil fuels from Pakistan to Europe. Pakistanis started importing cheap solar panels from China. Pakistan is now the world’s sixth-largest solar market. Imports of Chinese solar panels have grown tenfold and even a hundredfold in countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Ironically, coal is used to produce solar panels.
As US imperialism withdraws from international projects, the Chinese government is jumping in. It recently announced 101 new low-carbon demonstration projects. These include iron and steel, long-duration energy storage, and polysilicon (used in solar panels and semiconductors).
China has a near monopoly on mining and refining strategic minerals. That threatens US imperialism. The US can’t compete in green technology – or in AI. In the US – as in Europe and China – nuclear-generated electricity may be making a comeback.
The US ruling class, in short, is increasingly limited technologically as well as politically. Partly, this is Trump’s choice. Other US imperialists object to it. But US capitalists are also constrained by large investments in outdated technologies that can’t maximize their profits.
So Trump and Hegseth push “warrior” culture. They hope vainly that a fanatical US military could defeat China and its allies in armed combat. Not at all a sure thing!
Our only hope – and our plan – is to turn the imperialists’ World War III into revolution for communism. “Gen Z” protests in Nepal, Mozambique, Morocco, and India show that workers cannot live in the old way. So do the outpourings against the US-Israeli sponsored genocide in Gaza.
Communism can’t immediately reverse the terrible destruction of climate change and world war. But we can quickly mitigate its effects by ending money and the profit motive. By organizing ourselves, instead, to contribute our labor to meet our urgent needs. By welcoming war and climate refugees to safer places. Today’s best small initiatives can be instituted globally.
“Disruptions of the global food system owing to climate change threaten human well-being and social stability,” scientists say. “However, the degree to which humans around the world will effectively adapt their agricultural practices in reaction to these changes remains unknown.”
The future is in our hands. Let’s end capitalism and all its practices. Let’s adapt agriculture – and all production – to the communist principles we need to survive.
Displaced farmers must join industrial workers, soldiers, and youth to mobilize masses for communism
NEW DELHI (India), October 4—Massive, unrelenting monsoon rains flooded Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. The rivers flowing from the Himalayas have been the source of food and civilization for thousands of years. Never in recorded history has such a monsoon occurred.
Scientists believe that dramatic changes in the Himalayas are the root cause of unprecedented rains. Climate change and the rivalry between Indian and Chinese rulers have led to building roads, bridges, and dams in the most fragile areas. The Himalayas are the world’s youngest mountain range. Their soil structure is not sufficiently compact to support these infrastructure projects.
Cloudbursts, with increasing frequency, drop over twelve inches of water (30.5 cm) in less than an hour. These cause massive flooding, destroying cities and villages, and damaging dams and bridges. Both India and China are building military infrastructure in these areas.
Fertile land south of the Himalayas feeds much of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Small farmers struggle to cope with the flood destruction. For millions of them, losing one year’s crop means going deeper into debt. Corporate farms take advantage of this as impoverished farmers must sell their land for peanuts.
These farmers must join industrial workers, soldiers, and youth to mobilize masses for communism to end capitalism’s destruction of our lives and communities.