The climate solution is a revolution

The images of wildfires overwhelming a number of communities in the urban sprawl of LAhas dominated the media at the start of 2025.

 

While many stories have concentrated on the mansions of Hollywood celebrities, many working class, Black and Hispanic communities have been even more severely impacted. A third of those fighting the flames are prisoners who are paid a pittance while the rich pay for private firefighters to protect their investments. The injustice of the climate crisis will be laid bare in the wake of the destruction. 

 

The lack of adequate infrastructure to deal with the crisis shows how ill prepared all cities are to deal with the scale of the catastrophe that capitalists and the government are leading us into. Even if we take significant steps to reduce emissions on a planetary scale, these catastrophes will be a feature of the planet for the foreseeable future – if we continue with business as usual for much longer we threaten the planetary ecosystems on which humanity relies.

 

Global crisis

 

Climate and weather services from Europe, the UK and Japan have confirmed that once again 2024 has broken the record for the hottest year ever – all with temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages – the last ten years are now the hottest on record.

 

Despite the clear warnings, solutions to the global climate and ecological crisis are blocked by the rich, despite the escalating and multi-dimensional impacts globally.

 

2024 witnessed the continuation of a new normal of rapidly strengthening hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that ravaged the Caribbean and southern states of the US. A similar pattern emerged in the west Pacific as typhoons devastated the Philippines, Vietnam and China. Bolivia and Venezuela recorded record wildfire carbon emissions and the west of North America was overwhelmed by fire once again, exemplified by the destruction in Jasper, Alberta. Heat domes created brutal conditions in North and Central America, North Africa and Southern Europe at various times through the year. Drought conditions in the Amazon and Zambezi basins affected agriculture and access to water for millions. Severe rainfall led to floods in Brazil, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kerala and Spain. 

 

This is only a snapshot of disasters that have led to direct deaths and injuries while also undermining the food, water, health and economic infrastructures for many millions of people.

 

Pathetiic response from global leaders

 

The COP 29 meetings held in Baku, Azerbaijan late in the year failed once again to meet the challenge, with no agreement made to phase out fossil fuels. While a target of $1.3 trillion was announced for public and private investments to be made in "climate positive" industries by 2035 in developing countries, it is only slightly more than half the amount their own economists say is necessary - in reality developed countries that are most responsible for the unfolding crisis only pledged $235 billion by 2035. The dominance of the proceedings by oil company executives, lobbyists and representatives from oil producing nations ensured the outcome that dooms current and future generations to continuing catastrophe.

 

The failures of these international meetings has driven local and global protests that have come in waves over the past 30 years, the strongest of which came during 2019 which saw global climate strikes that mobilized millions to confront the crisis. During that same wave Extinction Rebellion (XR) stormed onto the scene in the UK, shutting down the city of London for 11 days to demand solutions to the crisis with popular participation by ordinary people in developing solutions. One of the XR demands raised was "Net Zero by 2025", demonstrating how far actual solutions are from the aspirations of the movements. Unfortunately, the only piece of this demand that has been taken up is net zero - which serves to delay and undermine real action to reduce carbon emissions through the promotion of fraudulent and destructive carbon offsets and false solutions like carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS).

 

While most political forces and even the oil and gas industry pays at least lip service to addressing the climate crisis, the far right continues to push climate denial and assert an anti-science worldview. When Hurricane Helene ravaged Florida and cause widespread destruction in the Carolinas, right wing conspiracy theories circulated claiming that the Democrats caused the storm to target Trump voters in swing states. Trump has blamed the lack of water for firefighters in LA on false claims that water has been diverted to preserve an endangered species of smelt.

 

The far right at the centre of the "Freedom Convoy" that occupied Ottawa in early 2022 has a deep connection to the fossil fuel industry and was a key force re-asserting a proud affirmation of settler colonial ideology in the wake of the 2020 Shut Down Canadamovement in solidarity with Wet'suwet'en land defenders and a 2021 that saw widespread questioning of the "moral authority" of the Canadian state after the confirmation of the thousands of graves of Indigenous children on the sites of former Indian Residential Schools.

 

The Trudeau liberals exemplify a particular approach to the climate crisis. While claiming to champion action on the climate crisis, funding for their climate programs was dwarfed by continuing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. They bought the TMX pipeline when it was in trouble, outrageously claiming that its revenues would fund further climate action. Their policies deliberately obscure the differences between real climate solutions such as renewable energy production and false solutions such as improved fossil fuel efficiency and carbon capture and storage. At the international level continuing to ramp up oil and gas production and building pipelines for export shows that they are gaming the system to be able to claim reductions in emissions domestically, while actual emissions continue to rise.

 

Late last year, Environment Minister Stephen Guilbeault announced that the carbon emissions for Canada in 2023 had dropped by 1% from the previous year. While admitting that this did not meet the targets for reaching stated medium and long-term goals, he expressed optimism that Canada was moving in the right direction. But to believe this is to live in a multi-dimensional fantasy world. 

 

Firstly, there is no way of tracking actual emissions due to burning fossil fuels given the impracticality of direct sensing on exhaust pipes and smokestacks. Instead, emissions are calculated based on estimating the carbon impacts from different sectors of the economy and adding them all up. This can result in major discrepancies from reality. 

 

Furthermore, this approach does not count other emissions, such as methane released as a result of fracking, gas pipeline leaks and melting permafrost. And most dramatically it fails to account for the immense emissions from wildfires, which in the record 2023 season was estimated to have emitted more than 4 times as much as the official numbers - a number more than emissions from many nations.

 

Crucially, the Liberal climate plan also relies on market forces to drive reductions, through subsidies, tax breaks etc. that purport to create the conditions for a transition of the economy. A centrepiece of these policies is carbon pricing - a tax on the quantity of carbon in various fossil fuels at the source combined with rebates to all families that benefits those that use less fossil fuels. 

 

In the context of the cost of living crisis, Polievre's conservatives have seized on the carbon tax to great political effect through their "Axe the Tax" campaigning. While Polievre's campaign is full of misinformation about the impact of the tax, it has galvanized support amongst some layers of workers.

 

Many in the climate movement see it is a solution, but even with its redistributive aspects kept in mind, it is a regressive tax for many workers. Furthermore, precisely because it redistributes 90% of the money generated to individuals and households, not enough funds are made available to fund the real climate action we need - it leaves the onus for driving the transition we need on individual consumption of "planet friendly" commodities and cannot address the very real infrastructure changes needed for a real transition.

 

The failure of the NDP to differentiate itself from these Liberal climate policies, as well as the similar role that provincial NDP governments have played, means that the only political opposition to the Liberals is coming from the right. While it is good that the NDP finally ended the deal to prop up the hated Trudeau Liberals, they did not use it as an occasion to champion Green New Deal type policies, workers rights or Indigenous Sovereignty. Without a major turn to the left and deeper connections with movements, they will struggle to provide a pole of attraction for people in the election that is coming soon.

 

Though Trudeau has now resigned and prorogued Parliament while the Liberals pick a new leader, their climate proposals are unlikely to change much before a new election that Poilievre is poised to win.

 

The crisis in the Liberal government is part of a global crisis for the status quo worldwide. France, Germany and the US have seen the rise of the far right and populist right that will deny any need to transition away from fossil fuels, attacking immigrants and refugees to drive a wedge between workers who have an interest in confronting the system driving the multiple crises we face.

 

We can see this clearly in Canada, with the Liberal government responding to racist anti-immigrant rhetoric by changing the rules for migrant workers, international students and post-graduate work permit holders in a bid to lift their flagging electoral hopes. 

 

We need a politics of climate justice that sees the struggles of migrant workers and immigrants (whether or not they are fleeing climate crisis back home), Indigenous peoples asserting their inherent rights to the land and workers fighting for wages and working conditions as connected to the fight for a livable future.