It’s understandable to feel enraged watching the news about our climate: record-breaking summer temperatures across Europe, the disappearing Arctic ice sheet, deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon.
It’s depressing stuff.
I am enraged on a daily basis listening to the business-as-usual, head-in-the-sand responses to climate change from pro-capitalist governments and mining company spin doctors.
Or hearing that US President Donald Trump has allowed the use of bee-killing pesticides and that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has green-lighted illegal land clearing in the Amazon.
Or reading that the Australian government is seriously contemplating nuclear power as a “clean, green” energy solution.
Or realising that the plastic recyclables I have been dutifully putting in our yellow bins each week have been on-sold to developing countries, sent to landfill and dumped in oceans.
But we will not fix things unless we turn that anger into action.
At the heart of the climate emergency is corporate greed and capitalism’s dynamic of endless growth at any cost. Powerful interests are pitted against humanity’s right to a safe climate future and against the survival of all species we share the planet with.
Scientists say we only have ten years to turn things around. That is not very long to mount a struggle powerful enough to ensure our common survival.
But there is no avoiding this.
The good news is it can be done and we can win.
Organised people have made powerful changes — even in the past decade.
Powerful movements have brought down dictators and corrupt governments and won civil and democratic rights.
Green Left Weekly was launched the year before the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. At the time, we wrote: “Any progress towards a secure future for humanity will have to be won against the opposition of the most powerful political and economic forces in the world today.”
Nearly three decades later this is still the case.
The fight for our climate future requires a fight to change the system. As Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg says, “We need everyone” if we are to succeed.
GLW is helping to build that fight.
During the first two weeks of August, GLW is running a campaign to sign up supporters. We want to encourage everyone who values the role that this “people-powered media” project plays to contribute to it by becoming a Green Left Supporter for as little as $5 a month.
If you like our work — become a supporter today.