New climate protests: it’s capitalism which is destroying the planet!

In the face of the looming ecological catastrophe, disquiet and indignation are immense, as shown by the “marches for the climate” in 2019, which mobilised millions of young people from many countries. New protests are now taking place in many countries. At the time, we showed that these marches were situated on a totally bourgeois terrain. This is why we invite our readers to read or re-read the international leaflet we distributed at the first marches of 2019, which remains fully valid.

For several months, we have been seeing an increase in climate disasters all over the planet: drought, gigantic fires, devastating rainfalls, mud slides, floods…While the victims of the environmental crisis can be counted in millions every year, even the most powerful states are showing themselves to be more and more powerless to prevent these catastrophes. The latest report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has confirmed that the disturbance of the climate is spiralling out of control.

In our press, we have regularly shown that the roots of global heating are to be sought in the very functioning of capitalism. Not only are climate catastrophes more and more numerous, destructive, and uncontrollable, but states, following years of budget cuts, are less and less able to protect the populations from their effects, as we saw recently in Germany, the US and China. The bourgeoisie can no longer deny the scale of the calamity, but it doesn’t stop explaining, above all via the ecologist parties, that governments can take vigorous measures in favour of the environment. All factions of the ruling class have their pet solutions: “green economy”, degrowth, local production etc. All these so-called solutions have a common point: capitalism can be reformed. But the hunt for profit, the pillage of natural resources, crazy overproduction of commodities are not “options” for capitalism, they are the sine qua non of its existence.

In the face of this looming catastrophe, disquiet and indignation are immense, as shown by the “marches for the climate” in 2019, which mobilised millions of young people from many countries. At the time, we nevertheless showed that these marches were situated on a totally bourgeois terrain: “citizens” were called on to put pressure on the bourgeoisie state, this monstrous machine whose reason for existing is to defend the very capitalist interests which lie at the origins of the unprecedented deterioration of the environment. In reality, the climate problem can only be resolved on a world scale; and capitalism, in which nations confront each other pitilessly on the global market, is incapable of providing a response. The grand environmental conferences in which each state cynically defends its sordid interests under the cover of defending the environment are a crying illustration of this.  The only class which can really show the meaning of internationalism and bring an end to the anarchy of production is the working class. The only solution to the environmental crisis is the society it bears within itself: communism.

After a year which has announced the catastrophes of the future, the ecological parties, Extinction Rebellion and the left wing of capital (Stalinists, Trotskyists, anarchists, social democrats etc) will try to push for all kinds of marches and protests around the question of the climate. This is a new initiative of the bourgeoisie to channel anger into the same political dead-ends: the dilution of the working class into the “people”, illusions about the ability of the “democratic state” to change things. This is why we invite our readers to read or re-read the international leaflet we distributed at the first marches of 2019, which remains fully valid.

Link to leaflet:

Capitalism threatens the planet and the survival of humanity: Only the struggle of the world proletariat can put an end to this threat | International Communist Current (internationalism.org)