To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
October 17, 2019
RE: This year's historic youth climate strikes
By Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice
Since November last year there have been repeated demonstrations around the world demanding action to deal with global warming. This has included three waves of youth and school climate strikes this year, in March, May, and September. Monster demonstrations of several hundred thousand people took place in several cities. Some countries had over a million people take part in a proliferation of demonstrations in many cities. A number of countries saw substantial demonstrations of tens of thousands of people, while modest demonstrations took place around the world. Some type of action is said to have taken place in over 150 countries, with several millions of people involved on a world basis.
New organizations have sprung up to carry out these actions. Groups such as Extinction Rebellion expressed the sense of urgency which is being felt around the world as climate change already is causing damage in one area after another. Tens of thousands of scientists and scholars have signed statements testifying to the reality of climate change and supporting the strikes, forming coalitions with names like "March for Science".
The demonstrations condemned the do-nothing policy of the various governments. Even when the politicians claim to be doing something and sign various environmental accords, it is not sufficient and the problem gets worse. The demonstrators stressed that the past generation had left it to the children to do something.
No doubt different groups that participated in the event had their own standpoint and demands. But on the whole, the movement avoided political differences by avoiding politics. It was based on condemning the lack of environmental action and demanding that the science be taken seriously, rather than mobilizing for a particular program of action. This allowed broad unity, but it also left open the question of what should be done aside from these protests. The non-politicism was also manifested in that, while the demonstrators no doubt hated the policy of Trump and other notable environment pirates, there was a limit to what appeared on placards. In Detroit, it was slogans like "Fight for our Future", "Unite Behind the Science", "There is no Planet B", and "Climate Emergency" that expressed the overall spirit, although some placards like "System Change, not Climate Change" were present. Despite some radical slogans, the overall impression was an attempt to prod the powers that be, not carry out radical change.
These protests brought many new protesters into the streets. The actions have encouraged people; they have not yet run their course; and the extent of these actions will not be forgotten. At the same time, there was a limited outlook in the protests. This expressed a certain stage of the overall movement, in which the activists are welcomed even by many of the politicians and businesspeople who are their target. This will change over time, as the radical nature of the steps needed to protect the environment becomes clearer, and serious environmentalists come into greater and greater conflict with the liberal bourgeoisie as well as the climate denialists.
For now, while it is the masses who came out in huge numbers, they were welcomed by a section of the bourgeoisie. Part of the bourgeoisie is climate denialist and is letting the earth burn while it counts its profits, but there's also a section of the bourgeoisie who are corporate or establishment environmentalists, whose half-hearted steps are also leading to disaster. The UN has its yearly climate conferences and its scientific body on climate change, the IPCC; first the Kyoto Protocol and then the Paris Agreement expressed a certain international agreement; various cities are taking environmental measures, etc.; the IMF and the World Bank favor the carbon tax, albeit at the same time as they finance new fossil fuel plants; Al Gore writes books about the dangers of climate disaster, while at the same time backing market measures that are bound to fail; etc.
Speaking for the youth climate strikers, Greta Thunberg denounced the various governments and bureaucrats for the failure of what they have done; yet she was repeatedly invited to various government bodies to repeat this denunciation. She spoke, not just at demonstrations, but "at UN climate conferences, at the European Union, at TEDxStockholm, at the Vatican, at the British Parliament. She was even invited to go up that famous mountain in Switzerland to address the rich and mighty at the annual World Economic Summit in Davos." (1)
At these meetings, Thunberg steadfastly denounced the politicians and bureaucrats. She would say things like: "If everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame, and someone is to blame...Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular know exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here to day belong to that group of people." (2)
Thus one after another of the complacent bourgeois and politicians were denounced, whether it was presidents or the leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York or the ultra-rich assembly at Davos. Thunberg didn't flinch in the face of the hatred and threats that climate denialists began to pour on her, nor was she taken in by being lionized by the bourgeois press and invited to official meetings. Moreover, politicians showed up at various of the protest events, although apparently they weren't allow to speak at some events; I don't know how widespread this was.
So this was the peculiar feature of the climate strike movement at this time: it arose because of the bankruptcy of, not just the climate denialists but the establishment environmentalists, and yet, for now, the bourgeois environmentalists seek to coopt it. This is one of the reasons the movement has spread so rapidly all over the world. We have even seen various school systems give their student excuses absences when they went to the demonstrations, or schedule field trips there. And "Big Green", as the establishment environmental groups have been called, may not have done much for the demonstrations, but it did praise them.
The present character of the movement was reflected in one of the key themes of the climate actions, which was that the politicians should listen to the scientists. As Greta Thunberg put it,
"Please save your praise [of the climate strike]. We don’t want it. Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything.
“If you want advice for what you should do, invite scientists, ask scientists for their expertise. We don’t want to be heard. We want the science to be heard.” (3)
This appeal was simultaneously a major strength and a major weakness of the climate strike movement. It is a strength of the movement that it relies on basic scientific facts about what is happening to our world. This science is represented in such things as the alarming reports of the UN's official body devoted to climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These reports have documented beyond any doubt the tremendous danger that human-caused climate change poses for our planet. They are some of the things that Thunberg and others are referring to when they say, "listen to the scientists". The activist journalist Naomi Klein, for example, calls the IPCC "the world's leading authority on climate change" and endorses its call for " 'rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.' " (4)
But there's a difference between the IPCC's climate science and the IPCC's plans for how to prevent global warming. The IPCC is scientific in describing the physical world, but it has no special knowledge about economics, and it simply follows bourgeois economics, which it regards as social science. It has to, because, while the climate scientists aren't capitalists, their reports have to be acceptable to the bourgeois governments that comprise the UN; nor do most scientists have a revolutionary social outlook. As a result, the IPCC's proposals over the years have ranged from the insufficient to the disastrous. Despite the talk about "unprecedented changes", when it comes to the details, the IPCC still insists that the present financial and economic system stay unchanged. (5)
The times call for more than what the IPCC can conceive. The crisis facing us requires discarding market fundamentalism and instead extending environmental planning throughout the entire economy. The drive of the market fundamentalists to replace compulsory environmental protections with market incentives, pricing schemes, and privatization has led to disaster. At best, the environmental market measures have slowed down environmental progress, and at at worse, they have led to fiascos which have increased the environmental carnage. If these measures had worked, there wouldn't be any need for the climate strikes. But after years and years of market measures, cap and trade, carbon offsets, carbon taxes, industrial self-regulation, etc., overall carbon emissions continue to climb.
For now, the climate strikes can throw the IPCC reports in the face of the governments, because part of the issue is still recognizing the extent of the crisis. That is a matter of physical science, and the scientific work is thoroughly convincing and conclusive.
But when the issue being debated is what measures should be taken, then one must do more than listen to the scientists. Even now, the issue fought over in a multitude of confrontations around the world is what to do, and Thunberg herself has her views on what measures should be used. But as a whole, the movement's demand is to "do something". As to what to do, the scientists themselves are divided, and in the future they may divide further, with some coming to revolutionary conclusions. As for now, it doesn't suffice to say, "take unprecedented steps", one has to say what are these unprecedented steps. And if something serious was really going to be done, it would involve junking market fundamentalism, introducing strict control over how industrial production and farming is carried out, enlisting the eyes and ears of the entire working population in checking to make sure that companies are obeying environmental rules, etc. Moreover, to have mass support for such change and to have a force that can confront the fossil fuel companies and other polluters, there must be an end to austerity and growing inequality. All this means that fighting climate change involves social change as well as climate science. And as this becomes clearer and clearer, the liberal bourgeoisie will no longer be lionizing the protesters, and the environmental movement will more and more come to take on the form of a class struggle.
Should the radical left have been indifferent or half-hearted to the movement because of its connections with the liberal bourgeoisie? Not at all! Global warming and environmental devastation are crises that aren't going away, and in which the bourgeois prescriptions are going bankrupt one after another. The more protests draw people into action with respect to the environment, the more favorable the situation, both to push better environmental measures and to lay the groundwork for the growth of a working-class section of the movement.
Nor is the mixed class nature of the present demonstrations the result of betrayal by this or that leader of the movement. Instead it reflects the present state of much of the environmental movement.
In this situation, the radical left has a dual task. It should welcome the giant mass protests, and help spread them further. But it also needs to support the current actions which the liberal bourgeoisie does not support even now, as well as prepare the movement for the time when the liberal bourgeoisie wants to put a blanket on the overall movement.
The radical left needs to support the environmental actions that take place, but also work patiently within them to bring out the need for radical economic change, for overall economic planning, and for the mass influence on this planning. This means, ultimately, developing a distinctly working-class trend within the movement. This doesn't mean a trend led by the pathetic, class-collaborationist trade union bureaucrats, but a trend that bases itself on a new movement for change among the workers themselves. Such a trend would take every opportunity to bring out the class struggle that goes on with respect to the environment.
In order to help the movement see what environmental measures will really be effective, the radical left should show where the false solutions come from, and also explain the dual role played by the IPCC, the international environmental agreements, and the establishment environmental groups. The liberal bourgeoisie talks about environmentalism but advocates bankrupt market measures. The demonstrations, in denouncing the inaction of the governments, were implicitly denouncing the liberals as well as the conservatives, but that's not the same thing as explicitly opposing the market measures and neo-liberalism of the establishment environmentalists.
The radical left should also seek to bring the environmental movement to workplaces, unions, and movements of the oppressed. The establishment environmentalists, on the contrary, won't deal with movements against austerity such as the Yellow Vests in France, which carried out actions for month after month. They erroneously regarded the Yellow Vests as backlash against environmentalism. The establishment "Big Green" groups seek to find common ground with the bourgeoisie through the carbon tax and other market measures, while turning its back on what's happening to the mass of people.
But the radical left is itself in crisis. As I shall discuss in a further article, much of the radical left took a rather passive stand with respect to the gigantic climate strikes. Building a stronger environmental movement is going to require rebuilding the radical left as well.
(1) Naomi Klein, On the (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, 2019, p. 11.
(2) Klein, p. 12.
(3) https://www.newsweek.com/greta-thunberg-tells-congress-science-applause-1459858
(4) Klein, pp.72, 24.
(5) See, for example, "Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize and the fiascos of corporate environmentalism", Feb. 2008, http://www.communistvoice.org/41cAlGore.html <>
Below is one of the many statements of scientists in support of the global climate strike. It shows both the fervent desire of scientists to see effective action to save the planet, and their present non-critical attachment to the role of the UN's IPCC. Also see https://marchforscience.org/scientists-join-the-global-climate-strike/ for further information about the support for the climate strike from many other groups of scientists.
The text of the letter follows:
The scientific community has done its best to outline the growing climate crisis and to show ways that society can move to meet the challenge. But beyond our work in the natural and social sciences we are also, like everyone else, people — of our cities and towns, our universities, our countries, and our planet.
As such, we will be joining with others on September 20 and 27 for the first all-ages climate strike and the week of action that follows.
For the last three decades, thousands of scientists from over 80 countries have participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) This scientific body was created to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and its potential future risks. Since its inception, IPCC has produced robustly researched, multiple peer-reviewed studies that have demonstrated that global heating is happening and that human activity is the primary cause.
Our research also shows that climate breakdown has serious implications for our health, environment, and economy. Dangerous heat waves are increasing in severity and frequency. Sea level rise is accelerating. Extreme rainfall are becoming more common in some areas. More severe droughts are occurring in others. Collectively, these effects pose a threat to the entire planet — including us, our communities, and our families.
The idea of climate striking began with Greta Thunberg in Sweden a year ago and has quickly spread across the world — in March 2019, 1.4 million children stayed away from school for a day to ask for climate action. We’re grateful for their leadership, but the burden of solving this problem should not rest solely on the shoulders of the youth.
And so inspired by the young people leading these strikes, we pledge to take part on September 20 or in the week that follows.
Those of us who teach may cancel our classes — or move them outside and turn them into teach-ins for the whole community. Those of us engaged in research will leave the lab bench or the computer screen for an afternoon and join other citizens in calling attention to the crisis.
We don’t have much time. It’s up to us to self-organize and contribute to the broader movement. For information and resources on how to join in, go to globalclimatestrike.net and marchforscience.org/events/scientists-join-the-global-climate-strike.
This won’t be the last time we have to do such things. Climate change won’t be addressed in a day. But this will be a start.
Students have led and we must follow — in defense of the scientific truths our colleagues have discovered over the decades, and of the planet we love.
From https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfxNQ_jhnuHXyySnX7kv9Cw27AxDyIGFb5fS9HpxrXILx6piA/viewform
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Posted on October 17,
2019
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