A transitional program for class and climate justice
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12 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2014 This article is based on a report that the author gave to the Socialist Action (U.S.) National Convention on Oct. 18, 2014.
We live in unlikely times. Clearly, none of the classical Marxist thinkers we rely on for our theoretical groundings fore saw, or could have foreseen, the climate disaster that we now find imminent.
When Rosa Luxemburg declared that the world faced a choice between “social ism and barbarism,” she was referring to the horrors of a world war that would reduce much of Europe to rubble, not the global ecosystem collapse that could, if left in its current trajectory, wipe out humanity entirely. Today, “socialism or barbarism” has become “socialism or ex tinction,” lending new urgency to debates and decisions over what is to be done.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now bumping up against 400 parts per mil lion, a level never before seen by humani ty. Rome is beginning to burn, while Nero is not so much fiddling as pouring gas on the fire. Every U.S. government initiative to curtail carbon emissions to date ut terly pales in comparison to the Obama administration’s sabotage of internation al climate accords, its hypocritical use of “climate adaptation” funding to promote a new round of colonialism, and its policy to push fracking and fossil fuel develop ment everywhere in the world.
Climate change is not an environmental problem. Nor is it a technology problem. We have the technology to meet 100% of the world’s current energy needs with re