Climate change

Letter: Stop the acceleration of matter

Zack Muddle ( Solidarity 653 ) is of course right that the problem is capitalist work, rather than work per se, is driving the ecological crises. But capitalist work is what three billion wage workers do at the moment, and it needs to stop. The capitalist mode of production involves a constant pressure to do more work in less time. We sense this at work through our boss’s efforts to squeeze more work out of our working day. It also manifests as the replacement of human workers with ever more powerful machines. Work is always a physical movement of matter, the creation and distribution of use...

COP27: no pause in capitalist ecocide

Protesters during Joe Biden's speech at COP27. The activists, two of them from indigenous peoples, held up a banner saying "People vs Fossil Fuels". They were thrown out of and banned from the conference Set against the backdrop of the Pakistan floods and famine in the Horn of Africa, COP27 was supposed to be the “implementation COP”. But this was a meeting that could not even agree to a non-binding statement that we should “phase down” (not even “phase out”!) fossil fuels. They implemented nothing: acceleration on the highway to climate hell continues. There was so much to discuss that the...

To make good damage, seize capitalist wealth!

“We became a victim of something with which we had nothing to do, and of course it was a man-made disaster. Imagine, on one hand we have to cater for food security for the common man by spending billions of dollars and on the other we have to spend billions of dollars to protect flood-affected people from further miseries and difficulties. “How on earth can one expect from us that we will undertake this gigantic task on our own?” With these words Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, appealed to the assembled world leaders at COP27 in a key intervention in the loss and damages debate. The...

Winning the cooperation we need

Download a PDF of a bulletin based on this article here “We’re on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator”. These measured words from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened COP27. He called on humanity to "cooperate or perish." But moral appeals to world leaders will not work. Cooperation is antithetical to the capitalist world order. Businesses and nation states are locked in competitive rivalry. So where could this cooperation come from? Where is the brake and reverse gear? Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre explains that we now "very, very...

COP27 won’t stop the ecocidal spiral

Get ready for more “Blah, Blah, Blah” : from 6-18 November the world’s capitalist class meets in Egypt for their 27th attempt to slow the acceleration of the climate crisis. In the 27 years since they first started meeting, human activity has added over 811 Gt of CO2 to the atmosphere or about as much as has been emitted by all of human activity in the previous 250 years. Given this record there is little hope that COP27 will organise effective change, but still Rishi Sunak’s decision to stay away is denialist swagger from a man who just handed Big Oil a multi-billion pound tax break to expand...

Where next for environment activism?

An oak sapling was planted in Parliament Square. Orange paint was daubed on a luxury car show room. Tomato soup was chucked at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting (not damaging it, nor likely to). Two people closed the Dartford Crossing. A fossil fuel company got its windows smashed. Milk was spilt over the cheese counter at Fortnum and Mason. Those were some of the stunts that peppered Extinction Rebellion’s weekend of action (14 October). The weekend attracted fewer people than previous mobilisations. Since April, the Just Stop Oil splinter group has been blockading fossil fuel...

Workers’ Assemblies for aviation

Finlay Asher from Safe Landing spoke to Sacha Ismail from Solidarity . Part one of this interview is here . I think the “Citizens’ Assemblies” that have happened already haven't been perfect, but it’s very good they’ve happened already . They’ve produced useful suggestions , many of which have been ignored by politicians because of a lack of organised pressure. Something that comes up time and time again is pitching the environment vs. the economy. Citizens’ Assemblies recommend that we need to eat less meat, drive less, and fly less… But the government’s response is that air traffic growth...

Aviation: already approaching disaster point

Finlay Asher of Safe Landing , a climate-oriented group of aviation workers campaigning for long-term employment by challenging industry leaders to conform with climate science, spoke to Sacha Ismail. This is part one; part two, mainly about Safe Landing's idea of "workers' assemblies", is here . As well as running Safe Landing, I’m also involved in Extinction Rebellion [XR] Trade Unionists . Building the links between the trade union movement and the climate movement, and between struggles against the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis, is for me the most relevant thing going on at...

Pakistan: a disaster made by capitalism

Pakistani socialists are supporting a disaster relief appeal by the small farmers’ organisation Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee: see here . One third of Pakistan is under water. At the time of writing more than 1,500 people, including over 400 children, have been killed by the flooding; over 12,000 injured; and well over 30 million – the equivalent of ten million in the UK – affected. Over 700,000 livestock are dead. In the province of Sindh, which produces half of Pakistan’s food, 90% of crops are ruined, threatening tens of millions more. The rains that have deluged the country are still...

Coming up at TUC Congress: Climate change

Over the next week we’ll publish notes on some of the motions going to TUC Congress (11-14 September, Brighton), the annual conference of delegates from the vast majority of trade unions in the UK. You can read all the motions submitted here . There may be compositing of motions between now and the conference, and some of the text eliminated. As in much of the labour movement, there is a chronic problem of TUC Congress passing policies and nothing being done about them. Still, the motions are important – both because they should be carried out (particularly the good ones!) and for what they...

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