https://socialistaction.org/2019/10/09/millions-say-change-the-system-not-the-climate/
Millions say: Change the system, not the climate!
/ 12 hours ago
Oct. 2019 Climate Johannesburg (CNN)
Demonstrators in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sept. 20. (CNN)
By JEFF MACKLER
The week of unprecedented massive and worldwide climate mobilizations
that began on Friday, Sept. 20, represented an historic breakthrough in
the consciousness of the world???s people. An estimated 7.6 million people
in 185 countries from every continent on earth except Antarctica
mobilized in unprecedented numbers to condemn the governments and
politicians of the world for ignoring the impending climate catastrophe
that threatens the future of humanity and, indeed all forms of life on
the planet.
The week-long Global Climate Strike included some 6100 separate events,
largely organized by young people, who struck their schools and took to
the streets supported by the broadest array of climate and social
justice organizations, community groups, native peoples??? coalitions,
trade unions, and left socialist parties ever.
In great part, responding to 16-year-old Swedish student Greta
Thunberg???s call for a worldwide student strike, a new generation of
politically conscious youth rose to fight for their right to a safe and
secure future.
The placards and banners held by hundreds of thousands of youth marching
up San Francisco???s Market Street on Sept. 20 were matched in political
intensity, clarity and passion by those displayed by youth everywhere
They declared: ???The earth is not dying. She???s been killed by
capitalism.??? ???You know it???s time for change when children act like
leaders and leaders act like children.??? ???I am striking for every living
thing.??? ???I want to be a T-Rex. But I don???t want to go out like one! Act
Now to Save Our Planet!??? ???My education means nothing without a future.???
???I???ve seen smarter cabinets at IKEA.??? ???I just took a DNA test. Turns out
I am 100% terrified for the future.??? ???Capitalism Sucks our Resources!???
???You???ll die of old age. I???ll die of climate change!???
July 2019 was the hottest July ever recorded. Hundreds of thousands of
hectares of irreplaceable forest have gone up in smoke in the Amazon,
and unprecedented forest fires have ravaged Greenland, Siberia and
Alaska. Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, typhoon Faxa?? in Japan,
torrential rains in southern Spain???the list is long, showing the
dramatic effect of a 1.1??C increase in the earth???s average temperature
over the past century and a half.
The so-called 2??C limit projected to be a ???safe??? increase in the earth???s
temperature is far from being so. Leading climate scientists around the
world today agree that it is imperative to stay significantly below the
1.5??C level formally set by the 2015 UN Paris Climate accords, but
without any enforceable mechanisms.
Since 2015, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, leading
directly to oncoming disaster, with forecasts of up to 7??C or more
expected by the end of the century that will render vast coastal areas
uninhabitable, threaten fundamental food supplies, expose billions to
deadly temperatures, obliterate basic clean water supplies across the
globe, accelerate the already massive ocean pollution and related
species die offs, and too many associated horrors to contemplate.
The UN Climate Action Summit was held last week in New York City.
Although few, if any, of the196 countries that were expected to attend
have met their already inadequate commitments made four years ago in
Paris, the UN Secretary-General called for ???plans to achieve carbon
neutrality by 2050??? and ???ways to fight fossil fuel subsidies??? as well as
???carbon taxation and stopping the commissioning of new coal-fired power
plants after 2020.??? Few believe that any enforceable goals will emerge
from this umpteenth summit if capitalism???s profit first and foremost
prerogatives and its endless fossil fuel wars are allowed to continue
unchallenged.
???In order not to change the climate, we must change the system,??? read a
Sept. 19 statement of the Fourth International, a worldwide party of
eco-socialist advocates operating in some 70 countries. ???Our hope is in
what has changed. The global mobilizations led by young people have
stirred the conscience of the world???s working people and thus opened the
door wider than ever for the construction of new and independent mass
action, united front type mobilizations that are capable of posing and
implementing socialist solutions that can only be contemplated with the
abolition of capitalism itself.???
Millions mobilized in the U.S., with entire school systems shut down, as
in New York City, where the school board itself was compelled to bend to
student and parent pressure to facilitate student participation in the
Manhattan mobilization that drew over 250,000 people. Some 800,000
mobilized across Canada, with half a million joining the protests in
Montreal.
In cities across South Africa, and indeed, across the African continent,
mobilizations of youth and working people challenged the polluting
fossil fuel corporations largely dominated by foreign conglomerates. In
Cape Town, more than 1000 grade-school and university students marched
to Parliament to demand that President Cyril Ramaphosa order an end to
all new coal, ga,s and oil mining projects, 100% renewable energy by
2030, and mandatory climate change education as part of school curricula.
In Johannesburg, young people shouted, ???Act now or there will be hell
and high water.??? Other placards read: ???F**k carbon capitalism??? and
???Corrupt greed = climate crisis,??? as well as ???Eco-socialism now??? and
???Climate justice is social justice.???
Protesters demanded the government declare a ???climate emergency and
ensure a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy that
protects workers and communities.??? South Africa is the continent???s
largest producer of greenhouse gases, ranking 14th in the world, thanks
to its heavy dependence on coal power. The country ???produces more carbon
dioxide than Britain, despite having 10 million fewer people and an
economy one-eighth the size,??? according to The Economist magazine.
Strikes take place across Africa
Strikes were planned for at least seven Nigerian cities, such as Lagos,
which is clogged by mountains of toxic waste, including thousands of
tons of e-waste from the EU, particularly the UK and Germany. Protests
were organized in Port Harcourt, capital of the country???s oil-producing
region, whose residents and their possessions have been covered in soot
for the past few years, believed to be the result of destroying illegal
oil refineries.
Similar actions were organized in Ghana, which losing its rainforests
faster than any other country, with a 60% increase in primary forest
loss from 2017 to 2018. In Senegal, the Friday marches in Rufisque and
Thies were followed by a march in the capital, Dakar, on Sept. 27. Air
pollution in Dakar is causing more and more respiratory problems, in
large part because of dirty sulphur-laden diesel fuel.
As we go to press, reports are pouring in with news of similar mass
mobilizations in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Kenyan protesters carried
placards stating: ???The seas are rising and so must we??? and ???Wind energy
blows me away,??? as well as ???Be part of the solution, not pollution??? and
???There is no planet B.??? Kenya is expected to see more deadly droughts
and floods due to climate change.
Stop the 100 main polluters
Patrick Bond of the South African-based Economic Freedom Fighters
organization summarized a political and social perspective that is
applicable to the emerging climate struggles worldwide. Said Bond: ???Over
70% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions in the past three decades
have been produced by 100 companies. But big business ignores appeals or
legislation and the established parties and politicians are on their
payroll. We can only control what we own. Therefore, the first step is
to take the big energy industries as well as major banks and industries,
building, transport and agro-business from the hands of the capitalists
into public ownership.
???With those resources, a science free from the profit driven limitations
of capitalism is possible. Instead of investing billions in subsidies
for fuel corporations, we can develop ecological technologies and
materials. We stand for everyone???s right to a good jobs and a life free
of poverty, oppression, devastation and destruction. The big companies
and their colossal power must be democratically controlled and managed
by the working class and the society as a whole. This will guarantee
that no jobs are lost but converted in socially useful ones with no loss
of pay.???
Bond continued in his September 27 roundup statement on the African
climate mobilizations: ???It is ordinary people who suffer most from
climate change. And it is those working-class people who have the power
to change history. We need to continue the youth climate strike; broaden
it by reaching out to working class people and trade unions and unite in
a mighty strike: a shutdown of the capitalist economy. This also shows
the potential to take economic power into our hands.???
And finally said Bond, ???Human beings are part of the
ecosystem???capitalism is not. Fight capitalism to replace it with a
society based on needs, not profits???a democratic socialist society! Make
a real difference by joining a fighting, internationalist, socialist
alternative.???
In the U.S., Socialist Action members mobilized across the country to
partake in the planning and building of the World Climate Strike
actions. Thousands of young people took our 2020 presidential election
campaign literature, met our candidates, Jeff Mackler and Heather
Bradford, and signed our contact lists, while scores asked to join our
revolutionary party.
Strengths and weaknesses
While the U.S. Climate Strike mobilized millions in the streets and
focused international attention on an issue of world importance, it was
not without serious limitations. Leading climate and social justice
organization, from 350.org to the Sierra Club and Amnesty International
and a host of other NGO-type formations largely limited their proposals
to achieve climate justice to the electoral process, and especially on
the 2020 presidential elections, where the ???Dump Trump!??? and vote
Democratic Party themes dominate their speeches and literature.
350???s executive director, May Boeve, for example, stated on Sept. 20 at
the New York City mobilization, ???We have been fighting alongside the
student leaders and organizers of the U.S. Climate Strike to push the
climate crisis into the center of the 2020 debate and propel the bold
vision of the Green New Deal in Congress and across the country.??? No
doubt the ???Green New Deal,??? pressed forward by the liberal wing of the
Democratic Party, already dead on arrival in the U.S. Congress, will
nevertheless be pressed forward as a solution posed as attainable in the
context of capitalism???s privately owned fossil fuel monopolies.
Amy Goodman???s ???Democracy Now!??? (democracynow.org), ???The War and Peace
Report??? team was on the scene on Sept. 20, with Goodman stating, ???So,
yes, we are not there yet, but the momentum is building to send the
message that nature does not negotiate. We cannot change the science.
And all that we have in our world to change now is political will. And
to existing political leaders, they need to understand that political
will is a renewable resource. So, if they don???t get their act together,
they will find themselves out of power, if they???re not willing to listen
to the appeals of our children.???
Indeed, even the courageous Greta Thunberg, who demonstrably sailed to
New York on a sustainable craft, repeated the same electoral advocacy.
Inherent in this simplistic mantra that the only realistic solution to
the climate crisis rests in voting for capitalist politicians who pose
themselves as friends of the environment, as opposed to the climate
deniers, is an implicit acceptance of the increasingly discredited
notion that the racist, sexist, exploitative, polluting, war-making
capitalist system can be reformed to meet the needs of the world???s people.
The week of actions during the U.S. Climate Strike thus had its own
contradictions. On the one hand, it mobilized unprecedented millions
around the world to the existential crisis facing all humanity. It
demonstrated the power of mass mobilizations to stir the conscience and
change the minds of the earth???s people. It demonstrated for the world to
see what the repeated poll results have recorded, that is, that the
majority of U.S. youth under the age of 30 prefer socialism to capitalism.
But the mobilizations also demonstrated the still existing power of the
capitalist establishment, its corporate media, and its ???graveyard of
social movements??????the Democratic Party???to significantly retain the
capacity to direct fighting social movements into the safe channels of
capitalist reformism. Breaking with this two-party duopoly via the
formation of independent working-class-based united front coalitions
that aim to challenge capitalism???s march to extinction remains a central
priority, or better a necessity, to save the earth???s people from its
would-be destroyers. Join Socialist Action!
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October 9, 2019 in Environment. Tags: climate change
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