Climate activists call for an end to fossil fuels

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The New York Times recently reported that even if all nations were to achieve their current greenhouse gas reduction pledges (it is doubtful they actually have the will to do so.), a disastrous level of planetary warming of 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit would still take place by the century’s end—which is to say that the goals are com­ pletely inadequate. This is according to Climate In­ teractive, a group whose calculations are used by U.S. negotiators and others.

World leaders are reaching way too low, with only a 30% reduction at most when 80% or more is needed immediately. They are content to just scrape by and hope that the world can burn hydrocarbons indefi­ nitely and still avoid catastrophic consequences when they know better. That is because none of them have the guts to break with their capitalist masters, and re­ duce all greenhouse gas emissions to zero as soon as possible.

They know it would take a crash program that leaves all fossil fuels in the ground while converting to clean energy and transport. But they are not prepared to take such drastic measures to protect Earth’s climate system because they are more interested in protect­ ing the capitalist system.

In response to this sorry state of affairs, the activist group, 350.org has laid out an ambitious campaign to lead the climate crisis movement down “the road to power through Paris” preceding and following the UN summit to take place there at the end of the year. Their executive director, May Boeve, recently outlined a se­ ries of events and actions that began with 350’s “Off & On” event on Sept. 10, at which author/activists Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein called for turning off the fossil-fuel industry and turning on 100% renewables.

McKibben and Klein spoke of defusing the world’s biggest carbon bombs in the form of extreme energy such as filthy tar sands, fracked oil and gas, deepwa­ ter drilling, and their delivery systems—explosive oil trains, tankers, and leaking pipelines.

To build up to Paris and beyond, other actions have been held, such as an “Under One Sky” multi-faith ral­ ly and prayer service on UN Plaza to force the Vatican to divest from fossil fuels and get Pope Francis, how­ 12 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 2015 ever progressive he is on climate change and social and economic inequalty, to put his money where his mouth is.

Also, a series of planning and strategizing work­ shops in New York City took place on Sept. 26 at God­ dard Riverside Community Center. In addition, the Hip Hop Caucus just completed a 16-city, nationwide Act On Climate Tour that began at the 10-Year Katrina Anniversary in New Orleans.

To put pressure on negotiators in Paris and make them accountable to the principles of justice and sci­ ence, a massive march is planned there, in which or­ ganizers hope to get hundreds of thousands into the streets in a global day of action. But 350.org and oth­ ers do not intend to stop there. They are projecting an escalating wave of activity involving national and continental mobilizations targeting dirty fossil fuel projects around the world in April 2016.

Speakers at the Sept. 10 program also envisioned a world that takes seriously justice for the poor and op­ pressed, who suffer the most from industrial pollution and the natural disasters caused by climate change— unlike the rich, who profit handsomely from a system that equally brutalizes workers and the planet. Con­ sequently, the program had a strong environmental justice focus with speakers such as Eddie Bautista of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance; Cynthia Ong of the Land, Empowerment, Animals, People project in Borneo; and Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus.

The speakers also drew upon the legacy of past movements for social change such as the struggles to abolish slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and Apartheid with the understanding that we must absorb those lessens in order to build a powerful and successful movement to avert climate chaos.

Many environmental groups are now recognizing the intersection between social oppression, ecologi­ cal devastation, and economic injustice and the need to confront all three simultaneously, which is an im­ portant step forward for the movement. This new understanding will enable us to confront not only the power of the industry but the state as well and the role it plays in the extraction, refining, and distribu­ tion of fossil fuels and the exploitation of the work­ ersrequired to bring them to market.

The issues of class and climate justice must be linked by raising the demand for a just transition for all workers in order to make the shift from dirty jobs to green ones without being left languishing on the unemployment line. A just transition must include free training with union wages, full benefits, and safe conditions guaranteed so that workers can continue to sustain themselves and their families through the training process and afterward.

While environmentalists are beginning to under­ stand this, union leaderships are not—at least in the United States. For instance, because of the increased conversion from coal to natural gas for electrical gen­ eration, coal mines in Colorado and elsewhere are closing. This has meant the loss of as many as 500 jobs in a single community and a lot of hardship; yet, the leaders of the United Mine Workers are failing to raise the demand for a just transition for coal miners.

They foolishly blame environmentalists—who right­ fully want to shut down coal-fired power plants—for the job losses instead of blaming the bosses, who are the owners of a dangerously outmoded energy system and who stubbornly resist change to satisfy their own greed. Failing to recognize this, the UMW bureaucracy continues to hitch their star to the employers’ wagon.

That is not where the future lies for any worker. On the contrary, trade unions that organize dirty in­ dustries need to link up with the climate crisis and broader environmental movements and demand the conversion to green, sustainable production powered by clean wind and solar energy.

With the union movement representing only sev­ en percent of workers in this country, building that sort of powerful alliance is one of the best ways to strengthen workers’ organizations.

Likewise, grasping the larger picture of how com­ munities of workers and oppressed are the victims of capitalist industry’s “externalities” of polluted air, wa­ ter, soil, ill health, and ecosystem degradation will give the climate crisis movement a stronger emphasis and draw more people into the struggle to save Mother Earth for human habitation.

That is why special emphasis must be placed on re­ (continued on page 11, in “The real story on immigration in Canada”)