Climate movement tests ‘Break Free’ strategy

Scan page 12

On May 2, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry posted a news story that was picked up by all the major wire servic­ es and outlets that disseminate popu­ lar scientific news. The article, entitled “Climate-Exodus Expected in the Middle East,” summarized a report written by the Institute scholar Dr. Johannes Lelieveld.

Lelieveld found that even if the rise of atmospheric temperature were held to 2 degrees Celsius, a shift far below what most scientists believe is likely given the failure of the major industrial powers to take action to reduce atmospheric warm­ ing, temperatures in large currently habit­ able parts of the Middle East and North­ ern Africa, a region home to 500 million people, will soon become so inhospitable to human life that populations will be forced to flee.

In this already dry and hot area, temper­ atures are expected to rise more than two times faster than the planet as a whole. By 2050, that would bring more than 80 days a year when the temperature would stay at 114 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and fall not lower than 86 degrees at night. By 2100, assuming that nations began to reduce carbon emissions by the year 2040, the estimated daytime figure for these MENA regions is 122 degrees for around a third of the year, exacerbating conditions where the lack of water and sandstorms would likely end the ability of humans and many animals to live on this land.

Just about two weeks later, on May 21, the wire services reported that tempera­ tures in parts of India had already reached the level where people were warned that to go outside could be fatal. In Rajasthan, where a drought made cooling with water difficult, the temperature reached a re­ cord 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of limited access to scarce cooling water, during the heat wave 1500 died from heatstroke, buffalo quit producing the expected yield of milk, and hundreds of thousands of lives were threatened by the impact on crops.

As we go to press, the on-line Daily Times of Paki­ stan is carrying video of men digging trenches in an­ ticipation of the number of graves they expect to use as a heat wave approaches. On May 1, temperatures in Mohenjudaro reached 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit and, thus, heat-induced deaths in the coming hot month of Ramazan are expected to surpass the tens of hundreds last year.

The impact of the capitalist disruption of the plan­ et’s carbon cycle, as manifested in South Asia and other parts of the global South this spring, is the hor­ rific context in which climate justice activists mobi­ lized around the world from May 7-14 in a campaign called “Break Free From Fossil Fuels.”

Altogether, around 30,000 activists mobilized, of­ ten in acts of civil disobedience and in visually ar­ resting ways, at sites critical to the extreme extrac­ tion of oil, gas, and coal on six continents. There is no doubt that the campaign, strongly identified with the non-profit 350.org., succeeded in making palpa­ ble for millions of on-line viewers both the murder­ ous toll and the growing resistance to the fossil-fuel economy by ordinary people in countries under the thumb of imperialism.

In Batangas City, Philippines, another country re­ cently hit by drought and killing heat waves, 8000 marched to stop the firing up of 28 new coal plants. In Jakarta, Indonesia, 3000 marched on the presiden­ tial palace and the Japanese embassy to protest toxic pollution from coal plants. In Nigeria, activists rec­ ognized the devastation of Oloibiri—the site of the first, now abandoned, oil well in the Niger delta—by pollution and exploitation, and carried forward the historic fight to clean up the toxic waste left behind.

Video posted from Constitutional Hill, South Africa, a country also suffering from drought and agricultur­ al crisis, brought alive a march linking the demands for the right to bread and freedom from hunger, against food profiteering, and for food sovereignty. Concerts, mass meetings, and protests marked the week in Brazil and Ecuador.

One of the larger series of civil disobedience ac­ tions took place in Germany at the Vattenfall coal mine in Lusatia and involved over 4000 activists. In Newcastle, Australia, several thousand activists oc­ cupied a coal port for a day.

The actions in the United States and Canada, at least initially organized as arrestable actions at a limited number of sites, were modest in size but succeeded in strengthening alliances between long-time envi­ ronmentalists and front-line, indigenous, and urban communities. In Albany, N.Y., for example, the activi­ ties were anchored by Black residents and leaders of the community at the Ezra Prentiss Homes, a hous­ ing complex where many have been sickened by the toxic fumes of the oil trains parked around the clock at the site.

In Whiting, Ind., an action highlighted the leader­ ship of indigenous communities. In Los Angeles, the focus on urban oil drilling resulted in a march in which Latino activists made visible the environmen­ tal racism at work and the community resistance to (Above) Break Free climate protest in Johannesburg, South Africa.

neighborhood drilling that is being built. About 250 took part in a May 7 protest outside a refinery in Philadelphia that is responsible for most of the city’s air pollution. In a number of locations, youthful ac­ tivists took leadership for mobilizing and coalition building for the first time.

In light of the rapidly escalating crisis on a global scale, however, the Break Free From Fossil Fuels campaign concept was woefully inadequate. The theory seemed to be that the spectacle of 20 coordi­ nated displays of civil disobedience, or “moral wit­ nessing,” as the website called it, at sites of extreme extraction around the globe could be a trigger action that swelled the confidence of the majority that this fight could be won. There was a lot of confidence among a layer of activists that video and social me­ dia documentation of thousands “stepping it up” to risk arrest would increase the size of the movement.

Instead, the actions were much smaller than what was naturally expected in the wake of the 2014 Peo­ ples Climate March, when 400,000 marched in New York City. In 2015, large mass actions in the Twin Cit­ ies and Toronto, involved 5000 and 10,000 people respectively and focused on linking climate action with jobs and economic equality. At the same time, hundreds of new chapters of 350.org and other cli­ mate networks were formed around North America.

These actions and new groups seemed to herald the growth of a huge mass movement that would transcend the isolation of the current climate move­ ment, often led by a handful of non-profit organiza­ tions, and create an organizing base for thousands of newly radicalized people.

Sadly, the Break Free campaign, which was planned mainly by top leaders after months of indecision and delay, were hardly suited to unleash the creativity and real life connections of the majority of newly organized people or to demonstrate the potential breadth of the movement.

In addition, no sooner was the May week of global action completed, than 350 leaders began advertis­ ing their participation in the leadership bodies of the Democratic National Convention. Bill McKibben was (continued on page 11, in “News and views from SA Canada Socialism 2016 — Sparks and convergences”)

----- pull-quotes -----

12 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2016 In Philadelphia on July 24, anger that has been building due to the inaction of world governments to tackle the climate emergency, will find expression at the March for a Clean Energy Revolution.