“This is just horrific,” said veteran meteorologist John Morales as he openly wept on air about Hurricane Milton and the prospect of a second ferocious hurricane less than two weeks after Helene had wreaked havoc on the southern United States, killing over two hundred people. Images from mountain towns like Chimney Rock, North Carolina, which few would have imagined being under threat from hurricanes, showed mud-slicked devastation where communities once stood.
This rising tide of hurricanes and other superstorms is not just the new normal: it’s a prelude to the climate catastrophe that capitalism is hurtling humanity towards at full speed.
The period of June 2022 to August 2023 marked a 14-month streak of the hottest months on record.
The heat alone is deadly. The year 2023 saw the highest number of heat-related deaths in 45 years of records in the US — and public health experts say the 2,300 recorded deaths are only a fraction of the real death toll.
Heat from global warming drives a series of feedback loops.
Milton and Helene were both pushed into hyperdrive by historically high ocean surface temperatures, now 2.8 degrees F. above average globally. The mechanism is simple: rising ocean temperatures heat the air above them, fueling increased occurrence and intensity of storms.
Record heat is also leading to a growing epidemic of wildfires. This included the unprecedented Canadian wildfires of 2023 that hit every single one of the country’s 13 provinces and territories, as well as the horrific arctic fires that burned an area the size of Denmark that same year.
Increased flooding is another part of the climate crisis, driven by higher concentrations of water vapour in the atmosphere. This year saw some of the worst flooding in history, impacting regions across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, West Africa, and Central Europe.
The human costs of all of this are accumulating rapidly. The number of climate-linked deaths has been estimated at 4 million people since the year 2000, with an approximately 400,000 more dying annually.
The climate crisis spirals further out of control every year, yet every purported effort by capitalist political leaders to address it falls flat on its face.
Failed Climate “Multilateralism” and Capitalism
This year’s annual COP global climate conference (COP29) in November in Baku, Azerbaijan, was yet another unmitigated failure. Of the estimated $1.3 trillion in financial climate support needed by poor countries by 2035, only a small fraction of that was committed to, at $300 billion. Even that smaller amount may never fully materialize, as noted by The Guardian, due to “loose wording” in the agreement. Meanwhile, the very existence of language committing to end fossil fuel was fought against throughout the conference, and was ultimately removed from the final agreement before it passed.
The problem is a systemic one. Capitalist interests in every country are ferociously competing for advantage over each other and against footing the bill for climate change. Fossil fuel corporations go to war against any and all serious efforts to curb emissions, which directly undermine their ability to make their dirty profits. Instead, they work relentlessly to undo even the limited existing regulations. All major capitalist parties and even so-called “progressive” politicians go along with this agenda — afraid to get on the wrong side of the oil lobby and well aware of how much of the capitalist economy is fueled by oil and gas.
Under capitalism, all international climate conferences and agreements amount to little more than theater. Now, heading into the tenth year since the 2015 COP climate conference where the Paris Agreement was negotiated, it is widely anticipated that 2024 will not only become the planet’s new hottest year, but the first to exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold established by the Paris conference.
The science is unambiguous: for humans to keep living on this planet, carbon emissions need to be going down. However, year after year, the numbers go up. It’s been known for many decades that clean energy production must urgently replace oil and coal, yet more than two thirds of energy production still comes from fossil fuels.
The fundamental problem is the capitalist system itself. Capitalism is an anarchic, myopic system that isn’t capable of developing and carrying out any sort of rational plan, nationally or internationally, even when its very existence is under threat, as it is today, along with human civilization as a whole.
Inter-imperialist Conflict Adds Fuel to the Fire
The new era of inter-imperialist conflict has already come at a massive cost in both human lives and damage to the environment.
The US military has the largest carbon footprint of any institution on earth. The war in Ukraine, which the US and the EU are backing against China-backed Russia, is already responsible for nearly 200 tons of carbon dioxide, over half of 2022’s CO2 increase. And the Israeli state’s genocidal war on Palestine has produced more emissions than 16 coal power plants! War is pouring jet fuel on the climate crisis, both literally and figuratively.
In terms of the rising inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China, which includes both the proxy war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, US and EU imperialism are on the same page: curtail China at any cost.
In addition to open warfare, tariffs and other forms of economic nationalism are another expression of the conflict. Last year, Biden teamed up with European world leaders to make direct diplomatic visits to pressure Costa Rica, Kenya, the Philippines, and Jamaica to ban Chinese telecom giant Huawei not just from public projects, but from any private companies in those countries as well. This is because Huawei ranks alongside Lenovo and Alibaba as the one of the top three Chinese exporters, and is “China’s crown jewel at the center of a race between Washington and Beijing over who will control key technologies like future telecom networks, microchips, artificial intelligence and quantum.”
This economic side of the US-China conflict is also driving climate change, leading to regionalization and fracturing of supply chains and greater inefficiency. It also impedes the transition away from fossil fuels. For example, China has developed massive capacity to produce solar panels and large storage capacity batteries that could radically reduce the need for burning fossil fuels globally, but sanctions are forcing those facilities to produce way below capacity or sit idle.
Economic nationalism is set to expand under Trump’s second term, but it is in reality a bi-partisan project and global trend. Many of the tariffs created by Trump in his first term were carried forward by the Biden/Harris administration. In the election, both major party candidates, Harris and Trump, fought continuously over who would be toughest on China
The Climate Movement and Capitalist Politicians
The environmental crisis has led millions of people globally to protest and demand action. Staring down the barrel of climate catastrophe has driven young people especially to get active. But the climate movement has run up against the same wall everywhere: capitalist politicians and their political parties.
In 2018, the youth-driven Sunrise Movement led sit-ins alongside progressive Democrat and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) against both Democratic and Republican politicians.
Unfortunately, that combative energy disappeared almost overnight after Biden was elected in 2020 and went on to oversee record fossil fuel production and oil profits. Instead of challenging Biden, the Sunrise Movement, AOC, and other “Squad” members gave full-throated endorsements to Biden and fell in line behind the Democratic Party.
In the 2024 elections, both Harris and Trump were a total disaster in terms of the climate and the interests of working people. Kamala Harris proudly adopted a pro-fracking position, ran to the right of Biden’s 2020 campaign on issue after issue, and in no way distanced herself from Biden’s horrific record on fossil fuels. Harris and the Democrats differ from Trump in saying emissions need to be reduced and calling climate “an existential threat.” Unfortunately, their record says the opposite.
If we are going to build the kind of powerful environmental movement that’s needed to avoid climate catastrophe, we will need it to be completely independent of the Democratic and Republican parties, which are both owned by the capitalist class and deep in the pockets of Big Oil.
Billionaires Profit Off Climate Destruction
We’ve lost decades to political obstructionism and the active opposition of fossil fuel corporations to curbing emissions. Now as the human impacts of climate change are mounting, the billionaires are taking home record fossil fuel profits.
Last year, while working people were suffering and even dying from extreme heat and superstorms, fossil fuel companies raked in $172 billion in profits. And while big energy corporations are taking some steps forward with green technology, they continue to relentlessly escalate fossil fuel extraction, fight ferociously against regulation, and extort billions in public funds to develop new oil and gas wells!
These companies won’t ever be held accountable for their crimes against humanity, because according to the logic of the bankrupt system of capitalism, they’re just following their directive to maximize profits for their shareholders. Under capitalism, the profit motive comes before human life and the planet itself, and the ruling class has billions invested in fossil fuels that they’ll never willingly part with. They will fight to drill every last drop of oil from the ground.
Billionaires like Elon Musk pretend to offer a for-profit solution to the climate crisis with electric vehicles, but more Teslas won’t save us. Electrical vehicles are a small step forward, and depending on the source of electricity they can lessen the overall emissions associated with their manufacturing and use. However, the capitalists are an obstacle to what’s most urgently needed with transportation: a huge expansion of public mass transit.
The famous Koch brothers are among the many billionaires heavily invested in fossil fuels. They have alone thrown billions into (often successful) attempts to block or crush public transit in cities across the country. Musk’s own much touted Hyperloop has siphoned up money urgently needed for public transit and is a complete fantasy project that scientists believe would crumple like a tin can, with people inside it, if it ever came to fruition. OSHA has already fined his company for dangerous working conditions in the Las Vegas Hyperloop test site. Billionaire “innovation” like this is just an attempt to rebrand dangerous conditions and grift.
The billionaires are driven by maximization of profit, and have no interest in the needs of working people, the environment, or democracy. Musk openly bragged about attempting to overthrow a democratically elected government in Bolivia to keep the cost of lithium batteries down and profits high.
The latest stock market bubble is over artificial intelligence (AI). While working people globally are suffering from water scarcity and high fuel prices, the ruling class is investing enormous resources in highly water and energy-intensive AI data centers. In the fight to maintain the upper-hand in the inter imperialist-conflict with China, the US has built over 5,000 of these data centers – 10 times as many of these resource sinkholes as the next closest country!
Just like capitalism ruthlessly exploits workers, it also sucks the natural environment dry until it collapses. Forcing others to pay the costs while capitalists make profits (called “externalization”) is the path to profits under this system. Whether through exploiting workers today or making future generations pay for environmental damage, this is a structural part of capitalism. It is a completely parasitic system — and it’s one we won’t survive for much longer.
Sometimes the reaction to this realization is resignation or what is sometimes called “doomerism.” But human life is too precious to give up on that easily.
And frankly the lives of other species are as well. Much of the current food system is run in a completely unsustainable way, in which more than half of the total resources go toward meat and dairy production carried out in a grotesquely inhumane manner. The current impact of capitalism’s climate meltdown has also already led to one of the greatest mass extinction events in the planet’s history.
Don’t Despair, ORGANIZE
But history shows that winning against the billionaires is possible, and that victories tend to build on themselves.
We saw it in Seattle with the socialist city council office of Kshama Sawant where our movements racked up 10 years of major victories. One of the biggest was the Amazon Tax, which raises over $200 million a year to build green, affordable housing.
In terms of the environment, taxing Amazon and other wealthy businesses to fund building green, affordable housing should be a no brainer. But under capitalism it is anything but. It took an all-out battle against Amazon and the Democratic Party to win. Our first Amazon Tax was overturned by the Democrats under pressure from Jeff Bezos in 2018, before we won the one that stuck in 2020 (which was satisfyingly four times larger). Forcing big business and their political representatives to cough up the cash meant organizing thousands of people independently, and defeating Amazon’s efforts to buy the city council and drive out Kshama Sawant in 2019.
Winning major victories on the environment will require this kind of organizing independent of the two corporate parties on an ever broader scale. It will also require tactics that hit the bosses’ profits directly: organized strikes and walkouts from unionized and non-unionized workers.
There has been a longstanding divide between the labor movement and the environmental movement, with capitalists and their political representatives actively driving a wedge between the two saying that climate action is bad for jobs.
We need to fight back effectively against this, including tying climate demands to major green jobs programs. In the fight to end fossil fuel use, we need to fight for a just transition and free retraining for ALL fossil fuel workers.
Trump and his administration are prepared to slash all environmental regulations that maintain clean air and water while throwing climate catastrophe drivers like war into hyperdrive. The Democrats are not an ally in fighting this, because they’re just as deeply in the pockets of climate profiteers. Working people, unions, and community organizations need a clear break from both parties who have proven their inability to take action.
What Will It Take to Solve the Climate Crisis?
The current strategy of fighting for regulations to mitigate rising temperatures is necessary but it’s also defensive. We also need a real offensive struggle, including taking the major energy corporations into democratic public ownership. We also need democratic public ownership and stewardship of vital resources like water, farmland, and the big banks. Because we can’t control what we don’t own.
But the capitalists will never allow all of this, and even winning small parts of it would take titanic struggles. No matter how you slice it, capitalism is simply incompatible with a sustainable world.
We need an economic and social system that can be rationally planned in the interests of all people, not driven by the blind greed of the billionaires and violent competition between different corporate and national interests. Capitalism will never be that.
We need a system that can carry out a rapid and comprehensive shift to clean energy, and a rapid end to all fossil fuel use. A system that can end the bloody and destructive wars, and replace the threat of nuclear annihilation with international cooperation based on the interest of workers and the poor. A system that can rapidly develop new clean technologies and make those advances, and the resources to employ them, available not only to the wealthy few in the advanced capitalist economies but to the masses everywhere. Capitalism will never do these things.
In fact, rather than advancing the interests of the masses, the capitalists continually fight to undo the past victories of the working class.
Around the world, public transit and public education systems are being undermined by constant attacks. Democrats in Seattle just voted to reduce the amount of money from the Amazon Tax that goes to building green, affordable housing, and instead reroute that money to cover other budget holes caused by their unwillingness to tax the rich. This process has played out hundreds of times, and now Medicare and Social Security are facing attacks from Trump that will likely have some measure of bipartisan support, if the past is any guide.
We need to tear out the capitalist system by root and branch. It must be replaced with a socialist society in which the commanding heights of the economy are owned and run democratically and rationally in the interests of human needs and sustainability.
Socialism is not an idea that should happen some day in the distant future. It’s an urgent matter, because every day that passes, climate tipping points and their deadly impacts are getting harder and harder to reverse.
The billionaires will always choose to amass greater and greater sums of wealth regardless of the cost. It is working people who have the interest and collective power to fight for a different world — but we need to get far better organized.
Workers Strike Back is an independent movement building in our workplaces and communities against the billionaires and their political servants. Right now our members are organizing in their unions to pass resolutions opposing the genocide in Gaza, which is a total humanitarian disaster and also the cause significant climate impacts. Reach out for support in passing it in your union local.
Workers Strike Back is also hosting an Organizing conference on Saturday February 22nd alongside Jill Stein, Chris Hedges, Revolutionary Blackout Network and others to discuss building movements independent of the two corporate parties and a new party that will actually fight for things working people need–like a major green jobs program. Register now at WorkersStrikeBack.Org/Events.
Revolutionary Workers is an explicitly revolutionary socialist organization that organizes closely with Workers Strike Back. Capitalism won’t stop the climate crisis as long as it remains profitable to drive up carbon emissions. Join the fight against the rich who are profiting off climate catastrophe and for a socialist world today .