Scientists and climate movements highlighted the urgent need to take real climate action. Opposed are fossil fuel industries and their nation-states, who dominated COP28 and guaranteed its emptiness. The path forward can be built on the movements from below, posing liberation from capitalist exploitation and the release of full human development.
El presidente de la Conferencia Climática Internacional (COP28) es el sultán al-Jaber de Emiratos Árabes Unidos, quien también encabeza la compañía petrolera estatal de dicho país. Las empresas de combustibles fósiles son el enemigo de la humanidad. Lo que se necesita es derrotarlas: no rogarles que hagan lo correcto, sino quitarlas del poder (Traducción del artículo: “The perfect COP head is the oil honcho al-Jaber”).
The president of the international climate conference COP28, is president, Sultan al-Jaber of the UAE, who also heads UAE’s state-owned oil company. Fossil fuel companies are the enemy of humanity. What is needed is to defeat them, not to beg them to do the right thing, but to remove their power.
The climate crisis is already disrupting billions of lives. Yet the economic and political powers are more concerned with eliminating safeguards for workers and pushing more fossil fuels. It is no time to despair. It is a time of crisis that opens the door to a revolutionary transformation of society.
Hundreds of youth participated in the Oakland event of the international climate strike on Sept. 23, 2022.
In the face of climate justice movements from below, the rulers are determined to keep control in their hands. With creative new actions and thinking raising the possibility of alternative, anti-capitalist paths of development, the powers that be are working hard to reduce that to a mere “energy transition.”
Participant report of the Fridays for Future climate strike in Chicago on September 24, 2021.
While climate justice movements are increasingly radical, COP26 is run by capitalist states and private capital, greenwashing to block any kind of real self-determination from below to take the reins.
Participant report of the Fridays for Future climate strike in Chicago on September 24, 2021.
Excerpted from a draft report for the Convention of News and Letters Committees, the piece takes on different movements and actions form below fighting for climate justice, as well as the actions from governments and companies blocking them.
Excerpts from the Introduction to the new pamphlet on ‘What Is Socialism?’
News & Letters interviews some of the Global Climate Strike participants.
Participant report of the Dec. 6, 2019, climate strike in Chicago, part of global climate strike.
A review of the book “No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference” by Greta Thunberg. .
Youth in Action column on protests by Papuan students in Jakarta; an appeal by youth to “Save DACA in the Supreme Court now!” during the Sept. 12 presidential debate in Houston, and the national student strike for the climate on Sept. 20 in Miami Beach, Florida.
On the first day of the third Global Climate Strike, Sept. 20, 2019, millions of people, mostly teenagers, marched across the world—the biggest climate action ever. Hear the voices of youth and adults in Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco.
News & Letters interviews some of the Global Climate Strike participants.
Participant report on the Sept. 20, 2019, Global Climate Strike event in Chicago.
Susan Van Gelder reports on a rally of youth, workers, and native people in Detroit demanding ”Make Detroit the Engine of a Green New Deal.”
Report on a panel discussion in Oakland, Calif., with Idle No More featuring Kanahus Manuel, organizer of “tiny house warriors” to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline.
School students in Oakland, Calif. support striking teachers; Belgian environment minister resigns after attacking Strike 4 Climate Action; high school students walk out in Vancouver, Canada, protesting tar sands; medical students’ direct action at Gandaki Medical College in Pokhara, Nepal, against tuition theft.
Peking University Marxist Society students protest to support their detained club president; student workers at Grinnell College vote to be represented by a union; and a movement against climate change started by three Australian high school girls has spread to students in Japan, the UK, U.S. and Belgium.
With disastrous consequences of climate change making themselves felt, both scientists and movements are pointing to the need for a radically different direction, but capitalism has blocked the way and even put a cult of climate denial in the White House.
On Sept. 8 over 30,000 came out in San Francisco for the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice, which had counterparts worldwide.
Climate change, capitalism, and Trump
Presentation to the Chicago Local of News and Letters Committees
By Franklin Dmitryev, August 27, 2018
“…the spirit of the time, growing slowly and quietly ripe for the new form it is to assume, disintegrates one fragment after another of the structure of its previous world. That it is tottering to [=>]
We look at the world economic situation that must be changed: the role of state-capitalism, labor, climate change, the law of value, exploitation, alienation, and revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.
The Paris Agreement on climate change reveals limits of what capitalism will do even in the face of catastrophe. The question is what kind of development can people in all kinds of countries achieve?
Paris Accord reveals limits of what capitalism will do even in the face of catastrophe. The question is what kind of development can people in all kinds of countries achieve? So long as the vision of an alternative, liberatory path of development is not made concrete as the energizing principle of a movement, a vacuum is left for false alternatives.
Many voices spoke at Chicago’s People’s Climate March.
Black lives as Subject; Russia in crisis; Nothing about us without us; Homelessness in L.A.; Central Canada Alliance; Perspectives and philosophy; Elderly to the streets?; Women and Yemen half-peace; Labor and climate justice; Dialectic and women’s liberation; Voices from behind the bars
In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.
The March for Climate Leadership demanded justice for people of color, as they are disproportionately harmed by toxic waste and sea level rise.
The first national oil refinery strike since 1980 manifested safety-related demands by the workers and garnered much labor, community, and environmentalist support.
Central Park in New York City was filled with hundreds of thousands at the People’s Climate March on Sept. 21.
Occupations of planned fracking sites in Canada and Romania showed the intensification of struggles against the damage fossil fuel exploitation is inflicting. The urgency of stopping the headlong rush to extract and burn fossil fuel was underscored by the latest comprehensive report from the International Panel on Climate Change.
AT THE CROSSROADS OF HISTORY
When the Green Movement started in Iran over the 2009 election, the so-called leaders were part of the government who were against Ahmadinejad. The growth of the movement of women and youth got so big it became “out of control” by the so-called leaders. The government leaders got scared because [=>]
“2020 is too late to wait!” rang out the words of Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old college student/activist from Vermont. She was interrupting U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern’s speech at the latest yearly UN climate summit, held this time in Durban, South Africa, Nov. 28 to Dec. 11. Her passionate intervention, drawing applause from many delegates, [=>]
As yet another UN conference on climate change dissolves into meaninglessness (no surprise there), a barrage of news underscores the urgency of the problems that are being given little more than lip service. Examples:
New perils seen to even modest warming
Hotter, drier, meaner: Trends point to a planet increasingly hostile to agriculture
Carbon dioxide emissions show record [=>]
