by Sophie Stern
Atlanta, GA
Globally, this summer has been the hottest on record. In the U.S., heat is the number one weather-related cause of death, not storms or hurricanes—but storms are on the rise too as warmer temperatures provide peak conditions for extreme, disastrous weather. It’s becoming obvious to most people that the climate crisis is harming communities now and is not just a future problem.
As hotter air sucks more moisture from the land, fire risks increase. On August 8th, drought conditions and hurricanes caused widespread wildfires which killed at least 115 people across the island of Maui in Hawaii. In June, four firefighters died battling Canada’s worst-ever fire season. East Coast residents from New York City and Washington D.C., to as far west as Minnesota, breathed the heavy smoke of the Canadian fires polluting the air. The Canadian fires released 300+ metric tons of carbon emissions, “three times what has been generated during the course of an entire fire season in recent decades,” according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Scientists warn that the Gulf Stream system of ocean currents could collapse as early as 2025, which could mean disruptions to rain patterns that billions of people depend on for agriculture. It is clear that, despite corporate and government “greenwashing,” the climate crisis rages on, destroying lives and livelihoods.
Corporate media “solutions” to the climate crisis focus on individual behavior: “just take shorter showers,” “use less plastic,” “drive an EV.” The capitalist class attempts to shift blame for the climate crisis from corporate and government profiteering, pollution, and fossil fuel production to the personal consumption of working-class people. A 2015 Carbon Majors report found that just 100 companies were responsible for 71% of global fossil fuel emissions. In order to make record profits, the capitalists are poisoning the water and ravaging the land. CEOs and politicians alike see the Earth as an economic tool to grow their already-skyrocketing profits.
In the U.S., many working-class communities have lived with environmental injustice, including environmental racism, for decades. A 2012 study notes that compared to white people, Black, indigenous, and people of color experience higher exposure rates to air pollution, higher rates of childhood lead exposure and poisoning, and are housed closer to toxic waste facilities such as Superfund sites. Additionally, city planners tend to relegate people of color and poorer people to denser neighborhoods with fewer trees and parks but more asphalt. This creates dangerous “heat islands” and increases illness rates.
On top of directly polluting communities, capitalists are underfunding and cutting the few social programs we do have—then blaming people struggling to stay above water for their poverty. Capitalism will continue to put profits over the Earth and its people, and to exacerbate environmental racism. Facing the climate crisis requires well-funded social programs and a democratically-planned economy. Unions must treat battling climate change as critical to the fight of the working class movement. Work stoppages and strikes are in order, and unions should form worker-run committees to address the issue of global warming. Instead of the corporate parties’ massive spending on the military and tax cuts for the rich, a workers’ party could fight for government investment in social programs and provide a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Climate change is here, and it will only continue to get worse under capitalism. But it’s not inevitable for “natural disasters” to take the lives and homes of so many. A real response to climate change can happen, but it won’t be through disaster capitalism. Workers should fight for a socialist approach in order to ensure that in the coming years of increased climate crises, lives are put first before profits.
Independent Socialist Group 