Science tells us that climate change threatens the world with catastrophe unless greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are curtailed and stopped soon. But the burning of fossils fuels — above all by the rich industrialised countries — continues apace.
United States President Joe Biden promised to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 and to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050. The latter promise means that GHG emissions will continue, but will be offset by carbon capture and storage (CCS). However, no CCS technology exists to do that on the scale required.
Biden claims that recent laws have set in motion policies to achieve these goals. But he is hell bent on going in the opposite direction.
An investigation by the Guardian’s environment team revealed in July that the US and other wealthy countries are leading a global surge in new oil and gas exploration, in spite of commitments to lead the transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.
Journalists Oliver Milman and Nina Lakhani reported that “No country in history has extracted as much oil and gas as the U.S. has in the past six years. U.S. gas production also tops the global charts, having surged 50% in the past decade.”
Their report shows a spike in US oil and gas drilling licenses under Donald Trump and Biden.
Less than 200 gas-drilling licenses were issued most years between 1969 and 2016. However, during the Trump years (2016‒20), about 400 licenses were granted in two out of four years. In the first year of the Biden administration (2021), about 250 licenses were issued. That jumped to about 400 in 2022 and 758 in 2023.
Climate crisis accelerating
International climate conferences have set the goal of preventing the rise of average global temperatures to 1.5⁰C above the pre-industrial average (based on measurements from 1850 to 1900). Scientists warn that once temperatures exceed 1.5⁰C, there will be severe irreversible impacts on global weather — which we are already seeing. Scientists warn that temperatures 2⁰C and higher will be catastrophic for humans.
According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the average global temperatures rose by 1.45⁰C in 2023. This was a big jump from 1.24⁰C in 2022.
According to climate.copernicus.eu, Earth’s global-average temperature rise reached or exceeded 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era every month between July 2023 and June 2024.
“Right now, every moment of every day humans are reconfiguring Earth’s climate bit by bit. Hotter summers and winter storms, higher seas and fiercer wildfires,” said the New York Times. However, as temperatures rise the effects will not be gradual, or “bit by bit”.
For example, there is a loop of seawater that sweeps across the Atlantic Ocean, from Africa, through the Caribbean and up towards Europe and down again, moving heat around Earth and controlling temperatures and rainfall.
Saltier, denser water sinks to the ocean depths while fresher, lighter water rises, keeping this conveyer belt turning.
Melting Greenland ice is upsetting this balance by pouring freshwater into the North Atlantic and scientists say there are already signs that the ocean’s conveyor belt is slowing. New research suggests the ocean conveyor belt could shut down within the next few decades.
Melting land ice also adds to ocean rise, which is already threatening low-lying areas and island nations.
Polar ice reflects sunlight. But as the ice caps melt due to global warming, their surface area is diminished, reducing their total reflection of sunlight, increasing global warming in a vicious cycle.
Antarctic ice is also melting, pouring glacial water into the ocean.
Permafrost, the ground beneath the world’s cold places that remain frozen year round, contains the remains of long-dead plants and animals that contain a lot of carbon, roughly twice what is already in the atmosphere.
Global warming is beginning to thaw the permafrost, and microbes are converting this carbon into carbon dioxide and methane, greenhouse gases which are released into the atmosphere, increasing global warming, which increases the thawing.
There is the danger of the death of coral reefs that sustain vibrant ecosystems of sea life, with far-reaching effects. Scientists estimate that even with immediate action to reign in global warming, 70‒90% of the corals that build our reefs could die in the coming decades. Without any action, 99% or more corals could die.
Ecosocialism is the solution
Capitalism now dominates the world, with few exceptions. But it has no global policy to address climate change by eliminating fossil fuel burning, and none is being seriously discussed.
Slowing down and rapidly eliminating the production of GHG requires cooperative planning on a world scale.
Capitalism cannot achieve the economic, political and scientific planning and cooperation needed on the scale required to address the climate crisis. Capitalists are driven to accumulate profit and compete. “Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets” said Marx.
Capitalist competition has already led to two world wars and militaries are major sources of GHG.
Can there be cooperative planning among the rich nations to phase out fossil fuels? So far there is no such planning. Most of the cooperation between capitalist nations we have seen recently is for wars against poor countries and peoples, such as the Palestinians.
Even within the rich countries there is no comprehensive planning to address the issue, and despite “promises” from leaders such as Biden, they continue fossil fuel expansion.
Planning to eliminate fossil fuels requires ending capitalism, and replacing it with a planned economy. It is the working class that can achieve such a revolution at the head of all the oppressed and exploited.
In the early part of the 20th century, when capitalism revealed it was in decay with the First World War, revolutionary Marxists posed that either capitalism would be overthrown, or civilisation would be thrown back to barbarism. It is becoming clear that either we will achieve ecosocialism or the annihilation of humanity through climate disaster (and possibly nuclear annihilation before that).
We are far from assembling the forces to win ecosocialism. But we can expect that as global warming’s disasters, such as droughts, downturns in food production, floods, fires and heatwaves, sharply rise, mass opposition will occur — hopefully soon.
Of course the overthrow of capitalism cannot be done all at once. While the solution requires the international replacement of capitalism, mass struggles can make inroads into fossil fuel burning, which can give us more time.
Transitional and immediate demands can be raised around concrete issues fitted to the situation in each country, with the understanding that the main struggles will have to be fought in the rich imperialist countries.
For example, government policies such as increasing production of fossil fuels — such as is occurring in the US — can be exposed and mass struggles against them organised. Demands for the nationalisation of all energy companies can point in an anticapitalist direction and toward economic planning.
A necessary aspect has to be the reconstruction of revolutionary socialist parties that can explain and help lead mass struggles, necessarily combined with fighting against all the evils of decaying capitalism.