Last month, Minister Darragh O’Brien declared that Ireland would miss its 2030 climate targets by half. The news that Ireland would have to pay billions in fines for this complete failure was totally unsurprising – it was clear that Ireland had been on course to miss these targets by a mile from the time they were set by the previous coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party back in 2020. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil can carry on without the Greens now, without having to pretend to care about missed targets and planetary destruction. Meanwhile in the North, the poisoning of Loch Neagh continues unabated, indicative of a government a significant portion of which are out and out climate change deniers. This is reflective of an overall global trend among the capitalist ruling classes – away from lip service to climate action in favour of brazenly letting it all burn.
Climate change often incites a great sense of panic, and rightly. Global temperatures and sea levels are rising year after year, one million species could be facing extinction, and natural disasters are becoming commonplace. People act like it’s the end of the world because it feels like it’s the end of the world. We must note that ‘Doomsday-ism’ is a double edged sword; it can both motivate and demoralise us. The first step to avoiding the latter is to recognise that climate change is not some enigmatic force that cannot be explained nor mitigated, that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
An ecosocialist lens, which considers the relationship between capitalism and nature, allows us to understand what is causing the systematic degradation of our environment – and more importantly, how to challenge it.
Capitalism: competition, exploitation, and destruction
Under capitalism, the capitalist class owns the land, the factories, the tools, the raw materials, the software, and so on. They therefore hold the greatest amount of social, political and economic power, whilst in contrast, the proletariat is forced to sell their labour power for whatever meagre wage their boss chooses to offer.
But there is competition between capitalists. And just like every competition, there are winners and there are losers. Capitalists can’t afford to lose, however – that would mean going out of business or being bought over by a more successful company. Yet it’s impossible for capitalists to know how well their competitors are going to perform, so the only rational strategy is to try to generate as much profit as possible. Hence, profit is the driving force of capitalism.
The capitalist class will strive to create such profit by any means necessary: exploiting its workers, stoking up wars, and having absolutely no qualms about ruining the planet.
In fact, capitalism depends on both the exploitation of workers and the plundering of the earth to hydrate its unquenchable thirst for profit; the two are interlinked. For example, capitalism’s reliance on fossil fuels dates back to the introduction of steam power. Its use increased exponentially due to the fact that coal could travel and thus production was no longer limited to rural areas that had access to wind and water power. Capitalism’s competitive nature accelerated the rate of coal usage, which in turn contributed greatly to the destruction of our environment. This of course mirrors the problems we face with capitalism’s excessive use of fossil fuels today, particularly oil. Our system of production relies on nature’s finite resources to achieve infinite financial growth; this is but one example from capitalism’s catalogue of contradictions.
With fossil fuels an integral part of the economy, any attempts to introduce ‘green’ reforms face enormous pushback from the capitalist class and the fossil fuel industry in particular. It would be a challenge to their wealth and power, increasing their costs and reducing their profits, which they can’t stomach. It should go without saying, then, that those who are responsible for climate change cannot be trusted to solve the crisis. They will only seek to address global warming once their own industries are at risk, and even then only by way of mitigation. And by this stage it will likely be too late, with further irreversible damage done.
It is also not simply a case of electing the right type of government. When left leaning political parties win elections, their victories will only achieve so much lest they are willing to mount a mass challenge to the power of capital. Capitalism will never roll-over and allow policies to be introduced which could threaten their profit margins.
Thus the gradualist approach to climate change will never prove to be effective. It hasn’t up to now, and given the extent of climate breakdown before us, it isn’t up to the job today. Indeed, as we witness an increased authoritarianism from the establishment around the world, we should expect all arms of the state will be used in the name of self-preservation. The examples of police and armed forces being used to push through extractive projects across the globe is testament to this fact.
Climate change and class
The fossil fuel industry has made a concerted effort to deflect blame onto the individual consumer, but we cannot ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ our way out of this mess. The reality is that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions. It is nonsensical to point an accusatory finger towards working class people who consume and emit far less than large corporations. For example, it would be absurd to tell ordinary people to stop flying and worry only about their individual carbon footprint, rather than criticising airlines and the billionaires who own them. Indeed, the idea of a personal “carbon footprint” was itself promoted by big oil companies to shift the focus away from them and onto individuals.
Working class people did not create the environmental crisis, but they will face its consequences. Climate disasters will disrupt every aspect of our lives: jobs, food production, and infrastructure networks. Those in the global south will likely suffer the most. Global warming will render much of it uninhabitable, and due to historic exploitation it will have limited ability to combat the effects of climate change.
Climate change will of course impact all of us in the end, and as extreme weather events become more frequent, the working class will pay the price. Hurricane Katrina is a haunting example of this. The US government failed to fully evacuate the population of New Orleans, not taking into consideration how many people didn’t have access to transportation and couldn’t afford to leave, so they were left to fend for themselves. Almost 2,000 people died. The US Government then used the crisis as the opportunity to create the ground for private companies to swoop in and profit from the disaster.
Similarly, pandemics like COVID-19 will become more prevalent as the climate crisis worsens. Global warming has caused the migration of animals that we have not had much contact with, and as we forge deeper into biodiverse environments to extract their resources, our exposure to unfamiliar pathogens will increase. All of this risks the transmission of new diseases. Ultimately the working class and global poor will be worst affected on this front too, with essential workers jeopardising their health to keep society running, and others losing their jobs entirely. That is, if we don’t change things first.
Ecosocialism, a strategy
Marx’s great collaborator, Friedrich Engels, made the point that humans do not exist as a separate entity “standing outside nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst.” For example, private interests dictate that the Sperrins are an area ripe for mining, rather than an area of natural beauty. Or that green spaces are sites for ‘development’ and profit-making, rather than potential public parks. Ecosocialists roundly reject the idea that the earth’s resources are simply a means to make profit. We have a different vision for our planet. We seek to build a society wherein our resources are protected, used, and enjoyed to meet the needs of society, not plundered in the name of bottom lines, one which prioritises conservation, not extraction.
While it is not too late for system change, the need for it is becoming ever more urgent. It is not impossible to reduce emissions to such an extent that we can return global temperatures to 1.5°. It will, however, require a complete reimagining of our societal structure. Planting trees and using paper straws won’t cut it – the entire capitalist system must be uprooted and replaced with ecosocialism.
An important first step would be public ownership of our natural resources with a mandate for need, not profit – rather than continuing to allow private companies to sacrifice our environment at the altar of shareholders. We must introduce efficient, affordable, and widely accessible public transport, and invest in city planning which tackles car dependency. A host of other measures taking in food production and recognising the Rights of Nature, would also shift the balance.
But ultimately, ecosocialism means an end to capitalism; an end to the profit-motive and the pillage it leaves in its wake. It means ‘the toiling masses’ taking over society’s resources, running them democratically, with both people and planet in mind.
The question is, how do we achieve this?
While the work of smaller groups like Extinction Rebellion is commendable, there is undeniable power in numbers. It is the greatest strength of the broader working class; they have the power to shut down the economy by withdrawing their labour entirely. Hal Draper explained that “the proletariat is the only class that has the social weight and power to carry through the abolition of the old order and to build a new society”. What is needed is a principled, ecosocialist mass movement. If we can embolden the working class to fight for climate justice, we can embolden them to fight for a fairer, better society overall. Rosa Luxembourg said that “revolution is something that grows out of the struggle for concrete demands”. Revolutionary struggle is not only the most effective method of achieving change, but is in fact necessary for the survival of humanity.
Pádraig Mac Niocaill explained that victories for Ecuadorian ecosocialists in recent years have been a result of mass mobilisations and general strikes. The people-powered movement there was what ultimately slammed the brakes on the extractivist ambitions of a viciously neoliberal government in Ecuador. Despite violent crackdowns on protesters and striking workers which led to multiple deaths and casualties, they won. The collective strength of indigenous communities and wider working class made itself felt.
Marx predicted the profit motive would expand to a global scale, and subsequently so would the destruction of our environment. As hindsight continues to work in his favour, it is absolutely necessary to build a climate justice movement based on Marx’s critiques of capitalism and wealth accumulation. It is not too late for system change, but day by day the need for change becomes more pressing. In the words of James Connolly, “our demands, most moderate, are, we only want the earth.”
Read on: Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin on solutions to the climate crisis, from 2023, from the Irish Marxist Review.
