We publish below the introduction to the latest publication from Student Socialist Alternative – “Climate Change and Socialist Struggle”. To order your copy today, click here!
36 pages, £2/£3 solidarity price + postage.
Student Socialist Alternative has produced this pamphlet to coincide with the mass mobilisations around November’s COP26 UN Climate Change Summit. From 31 Oct – 12 Nov, Glasgow’s luxury hotels will be booked out to make way for thousands of government representatives eager to whitewash capitalism’s role in driving the world towards climate catastrophe.
The city will become home to a crowd of NGOs, capitalist politicians and ‘green’ businesspeople looking to appear like they are taking action on climate change. As of now, capitalist governments across Europe and elsewhere have used this year post-Covid to sell their ‘green’ credentials to prevent the increased threat of direct action from below by a new generation of young people and workers who are ready to do whatever it takes to ensure we can have a sustainable future on this planet.
Whatever promises the Tories and their counterparts make will be far from enough. While they maintain their fraudulent pledge to ‘build back greener’ in the aftermath of the pandemic, a widespread network of connections continues to exist between this government and fossil fuel industry interests that brazenly choose to prioritise their profits over human and animal lives. After all, the ruling class can always fly by private jet to the safer corners of the world while the poorest and most oppressed of the world face the consequences of their actions.
This finds its worst and deadliest expression in the ranks of the Tory Party. Ruling class ignorance and disregard for the lives of ordinary people were seen on full display just the other week when Viscount Ridley, a multi-millionaire high ranking Tory member of the House of Lords penned an article in The Times arguing that climate change would be beneficial by making the world warmer and thus nicer to live in.
Less blatantly ignorant but just as murderous is the argument from a collection of right-wing Tory MPs who have taken to dismissing net zero carbon emissions as a “fantasy”. Although these deadly forms of climate denial must be exposed, even the ‘mainstream’ Tory position is steeped in climate denialism. The misnamed Conservative Environmentalist Network itself, for instance, argues in favour of paying off giant corporations to achieve ‘net zero by 2050’ – long after we will have passed many catastrophic tipping points.
But nor does the approach of the likes of Starmer’s Labour and the SNP provide anything in the way of an alternative. While capitalism drives the most defining crisis for humanity and animal species in history, Starmer remains concerned solely with eliminating any last traces he can of socialists from the party, including by walking back on even the modest climate pledges of the Corbyn era.
Meanwhile, the SNP, headed by Sturgeon, while talking morally on Twitter about how “all that matters is that COP26 delivers an outcome to meet the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees’ (the window for which will soon be gone and will not prevent a huge amount of already “baked in” climate destruction!), has often acted in much of the same way as any other corrupt big business party.
The SNP in government in Scotland has instead repeatedly refused to implement programmes of public ownership and nationalisation of the energy sector to provide alternative green and high quality employment for workers in North Sea oil and gas, instead promising it will do all it can to prop up polluting industries. The Scottish Greens have recently entered into government with the SNP, but their programme, which refuses to tackle capitalist interests head-on, means the underlying system responsible for this crisis will remain untouched. The Greens’ involvement will unfortunately not mark a serious departure from the SNP’s current course.
All of this highlights more urgently than ever that we need an alternative – one based in struggle against big business interests, one that roots itself in the fight for a society based on meeting the needs of people and the planet, not profit.
This is why the International Socialist Alternative – a revolutionary organisation based in over 30 countries on all continents is making COP26 its chance to raise the need for a bold programme for socialist change.
If you read this and agree with what we have to say, join us in the struggle today, for a socialist world, free of oppression, poverty and environmental destruction! Join Student Socialist Alternative!
We are living through a decisive period in the fight against climate change. A recently leaked report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that at current rates, we are heading for 3C of warming — well above the 2C limit set by the Paris Agreement to avert a climate disaster.
But this disaster is already unfolding, with tragic consequences. In Zhengzhou, China, 12 people have died after being trapped in flooded subway carriages following extreme rains. In Germany and Belgium, dozens have died in unprecedented flooding. In the US and Canada, severe heatwaves have taken hundreds of lives. It is clearer than ever that we need to act now — not just in 10 or 20 years.
In light of this ongoing catastrophe, November’s COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland itself will pose important questions about how to seriously tackle climate change.
Since the last summit, notable only for delaying any action until this year’s conference, we have seen that capitalist leaders like Joe Biden are prepared to make big promises under the pressure of the crisis we are living through. Biden himself has failed to deliver on many such promises, including on the climate. On one hand, he has vowed to “advance environmental justice” whilst on the other, refusing to act against new oil pipelines such as Line 3 and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).
Meanwhile, a growing list of big business affiliates to the COP26 highlights that any kind of “system change” is off the table for these discussions. Clearly, this year’s conference will not provide any serious solutions for workers and young people facing the worst of this crisis. But it will be an important opportunity to get organised and build a fight for real action.
The Earth Strike of September 2019, which represented the peak of the climate movement, saw over 7 million mostly young people around the world take to the streets in 150 countries. Since then though, the movement has been through something of an ebb.
In this vacuum of organising, many young people have looked at other routes to continue the movement.
This includes the rise of Green Parties, especially in Europe. In other cases, people have looked to individual actions, “beyond politics”, through organisations such as Extinction Rebellion (XR). But this kind of action, without a clear idea of system change or the forces that can bring it out, will not be able to deliver the kind of decisive change we need.
The initial waves of school strikes pointed toward an approach based on mass mobilisations of young people, linking up with the organised working class, particularly in the Trade Unions. When workers take strike action, they can grind society to a halt. Although smaller-scale actions can be effective, a movement with the backing of the workers’ movement will be essential in winning action on climate change.
This could include coordinated strike action between unions between different countries to bring the globalised capitalist system to its knees, as part of a genuinely international movement against climate change.
A mass climate movement would need to link up with other struggles of workers and young people, such as the struggles against attacks on our right to protest internationally, against sexist and racist oppression, and of workers fighting against mass job losses as a result of the pandemic — all of which have an interest in ending climate change. It would also highlight the systemic nature of climate change, and how it ties into the wider capitalist system responsible for the multi-faceted crisis facing ordinary people right now. This would be an important step not just in fighting for climate change, but for making the popular idea of “climate justice” a reality as well.
This would have to be linked to a clear programme for fundamental system change. That means challenging capitalism and fighting for a socialist society where decisions about what is produced and how are decided democratically. Under capitalism, where production is based on the endless drive for greater profits, environmental effects are treated as an “externality”. This focus on short term profit is an inbuilt feature of capitalism. As a result, we see that it is the big corporations themselves that contribute vastly toward the destruction of our planet, with over 70% of CO2 emissions coming from just the top 100 companies worldwide.
Additionally, the food industry accounts for up to 26% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Food is massively overproduced even as millions go hungry worldwide. It is totally unsustainable, but as long as it continues to make a profit, these companies will continue their destructive course.
The technology exists to rapidly replace fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources such as water, wind and solar power, and to produce food along more sustainable lines. But none of these companies will sacrifice their profits to make such a transition willingly.
A socialist programme on climate change would involve bringing the big polluters that contribute the overwhelming majority of emissions into democratic public ownership — we can’t control what we don’t own, after all. On that basis, we could plan production in a way that takes into account the environment and the lives of working people. We could immediately begin to address mass greenhouse gas emissions, and the general wastefulness of the current system — including plastic waste and deforestation. Crucially, at the same time, we could protect all jobs, repurposing them and opening up new ones for a mass programme of green jobs.
The climate crisis has not waited for us to deal with COVID-19, but it has shown that under capitalism, the international cooperation needed to deal with a large-scale crisis is not possible. Instead, the coronavirus was allowed to become a worldwide catastrophe through problems such as vaccine nationalism, where capitalist states and big business put competition and profit ahead of doing what is needed to fight the virus. More broadly, the approach of the ruling class has been marked by a reactive approach to the virus, with none of the foresight or planning needed to tackle it effectively.
The last COP summit was met with mass protests of over half a million people. We need to start organising now to build for massive counter protests at COP26 itself in November, as well as local protests in countries around the world.
A COP26 coalition, involving dozens of different campaigning groups, has already begun preparing for protests. This should include mobilising workers and students on a mass scale — trade unions will need to organise their members to turn up in force and student unions at colleges and universities should arrange for transport to maximise turnout. This should be seen as the start of a new, stronger climate movement with a clear programme of action.
ISA will be building for protests at the conference over the coming months, and we will also be organising an international contingent to put forward the need for socialist change, not climate change. We are an international organisation because climate change, like all aspects of capitalism, is an international issue — we have to organise internationally to fight back, and there is no time to lose!
We Say
1: Fossil energy use is responsible for about 85% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions produced annually. We need to end the burning of fossil fuel for energy and plastic production in the next few years and make a drastic turn to technologies that use renewable energy sources (wind, sun, waves etc) and hydrogen*. The technology to do that is available. What the system lacks is the political will to make the transition. (*Hydrogen, in order to be environmentally friendly, should be produced through water electrolysis, powered by renewable energy sources technologies and not from or with the use of natural gas and other fossil fuel)
2: The fossil fuel industry and its products account for 91% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions and about 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity. Just 100 companies globally account for roughly 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions and a half of emissions on the planet linked to human activity! (See: The Carbon Majors Database report, p. 7&8). None of them will give up willingly the foundation upon which their profits thrive. We need therefore to bring these companies under the ownership and control of society, use their wealth to convert them, without job losses, to companies that will produce energy and fuel using renewable energy sources and hydrogen technology and plan energy production based on social needs and not capitalist profits.
3: A very small number of corporations control the vast majority of the world’s food production and trade. They are responsible for 75% of deforestation worldwide, accounting for 15–20% of CO2 emissions, the destruction of other valuable ecosystems and the mass use of agrochemicals which affect both nature and our health. Food and agribusiness are also the second largest contributors to other greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane, (56%). They are responsible for 19–29% of the total greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity. We need to take these corporations from the hands of the capitalists, stop deforestation, organise a mass worldwide reforestation programme and plan food production in a sustainable and eco-friendly way, which includes growing more of our food locally, using traditional varieties of seeds and livestock and also (re)educate the population on the issue of excessive meat consumption and its negative effects both on the environment and on personal health.
4: We must implement a mass public investment plan in high quality and efficient, free, public transit, eco -friendly construction and house upgrading, recycling and repairing facilities, instead of incinerating waste and/or shipping it abroad. All of these measures are more than affordable if the wealth we all produce is not appropriated by a small elite who control the economy and the political establishment.
5: All these actions as well as those needed to repair the environmental damage of ecosystems could provide millions of decent new jobs. Workers in the industries and sectors hit by the necessary transition must be guaranteed jobs and retraining with no loss of pay. Investing in renewable energy provides far more jobs: for every one job provided by fossil fuel investment, the same money produces 5–7 “green” jobs.
6: We need a big increase in public funding for democratic and independent scientific research to better understand and combat climate change, to further develop technologies for the production and storage of green energy, to further develop environmental friendly materials (for ex. materials that will replace plastic, environmental friendly concrete and building materials) etc. Government money that now is spent on subsidies, tax breaks and incentives for fossil fuel corporations should be directed to research. There is no need to stress that the results of this research should belong to the whole of society and be used for common welfare. They should not be allowed to be bought, patented and used for profit by big business.
7: This is OUR planet, so we should democratically plan and run the economy on the basis of the right of everyone for a life free of poverty, oppression and destruction; on the basis of sustainability to ensure that we all have a future on this planet. Fight capitalism to replace it with a society based on meeting people’s needs, not corporate profits, on environmental respect not destruction, on true democracy not corporate control of the economy and political life: a democratic socialist society!
Starmer’s electoral wipeout on May 6 has dominated headlines. But another noteworthy trend can be clearly seen in the boost in votes for the Green Party in England, winning a 140% increase in council seats from 63 to 151. The Scottish Greens managed to boost their numbers in Holyrood from 5 to 8 MSP seats, putting the question of a new potential ‘Green surge’ on the agenda.
The party, while receiving vote increases in areas like Stockport, the Wirral and Tyneside, got its most significant boosts in Bristol, where they more than doubled their numbers on the City Council. In Sheffield, their efforts resulted in them unseating the now-former leader of the council, Bob Johnson.
Why?
Boosts in support for the Greens is not unprecedented. For one, this is a global phenomenon, with the German Greens currently running as the favorite in the upcoming German Parliamentary elections, ahead of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. In Ireland, the party benefited from a significant boost in the polls, which has now resulted in them entering government with the Fine Gael (FG) and Fianna Fail (FF) parties.
But as many will remember, this was also the case in Britain in 2015, when the party’s membership rose significantly and their profile was boosted.
At that time they received up to 8% in some opinion polls. The Greens in Britain present themselves as a progressive, left-wing anti-austerity force. In the pre-Corbyn era, this led many, especially many young people, to look towards them as an alternative to the dire choice between Ed Miliband and David Cameron.
In some ways, these events were a precursor to the later rise of Corbynism – they demonstrated the thirst that existed for an alternative to pro-austerity politicians. But today, with the Labour Party in disarray under Starmer’s counterrevolution, it will come as no surprise that many people have understandably looked back towards the Greens as offering a potentially viable alternative.
The Greens’ reputation as being a middle class party has some reflection in these results – for instance in winning council seats in areas like the Isle of Wight, Suffolk and East Sussex, gaining in formerly-safe Tory wards. But also what is striking about these results is the headway made by the party in areas like Hillsborough (Sheffield), a traditionally working class area in the North of England, where the Greens massively boosted their share of the vote. Contrary to the North having uniformly ‘gone Tory’ like the media presents it, this shows that, while workers (rightly) have no trust in Starmer’s Labour to give them a voice, many either will not vote at all, or look for what could be seen as a left alternative.
We also shouldn’t forget the impact that struggle can have on election results. While the 2019-2020 Youth Strike 4 Climate movement is currently facing something of an ebb, the heroic example set by protesting school students has helped force the issue of climate change onto the agenda as a serious topic of political discussion. The Greens have predictably been main beneficiaries of this among young voters, as reflected in the newly-elected Green councillor Lily Fitzgibbon in Bristol, who has been a leading Youth Strike activist, organising the demonstration around the visit of Greta Thunberg to the city last February, in which members of Socialist Alternative took part.
Greens in practise
These results will make many ask: Are the Greens a real left party?
Certainly, in their current programme, there are a lot of progressive and left-sounding policies, for instance endorsing a Green New Deal with pledges to decarbonise by 2030.
This is twinned with some popular anti-austerity policies, including votes at 16, a £12 an hour minimum wage, along with verbal commitments to “Reversing austerity and funding our public services, tackling discrimination, ending the war on drugs, restoring our natural environment and making wellbeing the focus of our economy.”
So far, so good! Socialist Alternative would welcome the election of anybody who is prepared to fight for policies which stand to benefit working-class people. But, positive though these policies are, the Greens fail to connect them to the need for a fundamental break with the capitalist system. This means that, without being linked to a socialist programme and a strategy to mobilise the working class to fight for it, they are ultimately insufficient to tackle the climate crisis. What is needed is not just incremental reforms ‘around the edges’ of the system, but to target the colossal wealth of the ruling class, along with the major monopolies that dominate the economy. It is well known that 100 companies worldwide are responsible for 71% of CO2 emissions. The reality is you can’t control what you don’t own. If we aren’t going to nationalise these companies and run them under democratic workers’ control – necessary as the first step towards a socialist plan of production to meet the needs of people and the planet – then how can we trust that they will take serious steps, beyond PR stunts, to decarbonise, or that we will have any say in how we they do so?
Mote important than what politicians say, is what they do – especially when in power. It’s therefore instructive to draw on past examples to understand what the real political character of the Greens, in Britain and internationally.
Although the England and Welsh/Scottish Greens have never had the experience of officially entering into national governments (let alone making them) they have done so elsewhere in Europe – most significantly in Germany. And unfortunately in many cases, contrary to the progressive language of these parties, this took the form of getting into bed with outright capitalist parties.
This remains the case in Austria, where the Greens have entered into coalition with the right-wing conservative Austrian People’s Party. Although this hasn’t resulted in any serious action on the climate, it has meant the adoption of racist policies inherited from the far-right, including bans on the wearing of the hijab and continued deportations of refugees, all with the complicity and participation of the Greens.
In Ireland, where last year’s general election resulted in a deadlock, neither of the main capitalist parties FG and FF could govern on their own, resulting in a coalition of two, with the Greens’ participation! This decision to enter into government with the two main political representatives of big business and the Catholic Church in Ireland marked a real betrayal of the mass movements that have propelled them to where they are today in many countries.
While the Greens will present this as a matter of them entering to ‘put pressure from the inside’, as well as placing the climate above ‘ideological purity’, this does say something about their real priorities. Entering into government with forces that preside over the housing crisis, over low pay, or over rotting healthcare systems does nothing to protect the environment and is the opposite of how you build the kind of united working-class movement that’s necessary to fight for action on climate change.
Are the England and Wales/Scottish Greens different?
While the Greens’ current leader Jonathan Bartley dismisses claims he would support an electoral pact with the Lib Dems, the record of his party suggests otherwise. In the midst of the Brexit crisis in 2019, when the overwhelming task facing workers and young people was bringing down the Tories while opposing the capitalist EU, Caroline Lucas – the Brighton MP with a popular record of campaigning herself, came forward with a blatant policy of class collaboration. Her proposal was for an “emergency cabinet of women” to “stop the dangerous pursuit of a crash-out Brexit”. Quite tellingly, this cabinet proposal included Tories, Lib Dems and Blairite Labour MPs. It doesn’t require much to figure out how such a formation would be unable to provide an answer to the questions facing workers and young people in terms of jobs, pay and living conditions – let alone in tackling big fossil fuel interests which enjoy extensive links with the Tories!
This practise of claiming left and progressive credentials while dropping these commitments in practise has an even deeper history though. In 2017, when the Corbyn movement was going on the advance, a marginalised Green Party’s line of attack came clearly from the right, in attacking Corbyn for failing to form a ‘progressive alliance’ with the Lib Dems, in the form of an electoral pact leading presumably to a coalition government to stop a Tory Brexit. All this despite the fact that only 2 years earlier, the Lib Dems had been themselves propping up the Tories! By approaching this issue from the right, the Greens revealed their true colours.
This approach of class collaboration and striking deals with establishment forces for a seat at the table will not advance the climate movement one step. As such in Scotland, their increase in Seats could ultimately be undone if they are to enter into government with a minority SNP administration, particularly after their years-long record of backing SNP austerity budgets in Holyrood. This was also the case in Brighton, where in control of the City Council, they oversaw years of cuts to services such as adult social care, children’s services and housing, meanwhile weaponising the anti-trade union laws against the bin workers’ strike of 2013.
Way forward
We are entering into a period of unprecedented capitalist crisis. While the ruling class relies on governments pumping unprecedented amounts of public money into the economy to keep the system afloat, workers will ultimately be forced to pay the cost of the Covid-19 pandemic. And given that there are clear links between the Covid-19 pandemic and capitalist food production which is also harmful to the environment, it is clear that the various social crises and climate crises we face have their root in this system.
So it comes as no surprise that many in this election have cast their vote for the Greens and will most likely continue to do so. Many of these voters will also be instrumental in building the resistance in the coming years. With demonstrations outside the UN COP26 Climate Talks in Glasgow in November in the woodwork, it is clear that we and our movement will need a political voice of our own, which clearly will not be provided by Starmer’s Blairite ‘opposition’.
But also, for their promising words, the Green Party’s politics lacks the struggle-based approach that will be needed to force radical climate action and confront the big business interests driving environmental destruction.
We will ultimately need a new and radically different sort of party – one firmly on the left and based around mass, working-class struggle rather than restraining itself to electoral politics. Only through this could we fight for many of the policies that we need – such as public ownership of energy companies, banks and key industries to rapidly decarbonise, mass insulation of homes and public house building, electrification of all railways and the provision of free and widely available public transport.
Tackling the climate crisis means confronting it as a capitalist crisis and fighting for a socialist alternative. If you agree, join us today!
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