Liga ng Agham para sa Bayan (LAB-NDFP)
March 2024
The global environmental crisis encompasses the devastation of ecosystems and the escalation of global warming. Carbon emissions, primarily from fossil fuel consumption and environmental destruction, have surged since the late 1800s. By 2023, temperatures surpassed pre-industrial levels by 1.45°C, nearing the critical 1.5°C threshold set in the Paris Agreement. Extreme weather events, like wildfires and floods, have become more frequent and severe.
The interconnectedness of ecosystems means that damage to one component can trigger cascading negative effects. Positive feedback loops, such as polar ice melting, exacerbate climate change. Monopoly capitalism exacerbates environmental degradation by prioritizing short-term profits over long-term sustainability. Exploitation of labor and nature fuels pollution, resource depletion, and inequality. Neoliberal globalization, particularly since the 1980s, has intensified resource extraction, leading to ecological devastation.
Imperialist powers perpetuate environmental destruction through militarization and wars for resource control. The US, the world’s largest polluter, has initiated numerous armed conflicts since World War II. Military expenditure reached $2240 billion in 2022, with the US, China, and Russia accounting for 56% of global spending. Proxy conflicts, like those in Ukraine and the South China Sea, risk escalating into major confrontations between imperialist powers.
The climate crisis disproportionately impacts marginalized communities, exacerbating poverty and inequality. Workers in agriculture, textiles, and other industries face heat stress, while urban poor endure extreme heat and flooding in poorly ventilated housing. Monopoly capital exploits the crisis to tighten control over vital industries, exacerbating social and environmental injustices.
International efforts to address the crisis, such as UN climate conferences, have been marred by false solutions promoted by imperialist countries and corporations. Market-based mechanisms like carbon trading benefit polluters while displacing indigenous peoples and worsening biodiversity loss. The UN, manipulated by wealthy nations, serves imperialist interests rather than addressing the root causes of the crisis.
In conclusion, the environmental crisis stems from capitalist exploitation and imperialist aggression. Genuine solutions require challenging the profit-driven motives of monopoly capital and prioritizing the well-being of people and the planet.
Struggle for Social Justice, Defeat Imperialism, and Strengthen International Solidarity to Achieve Climate Justice!
The global climate justice movement right now is facing so many challenges. As the imperialists try to cover up their criminal acts against the environment and the people, they simultaneously deceive, derail, and misdirect the climate justice movement. They tried to make the issue of climate crisis as supra-class issue, meaning that it emanates from a society that is not divided among classes, with the absence of contradictions between exploiters and the exploited, and denies the acute class struggle between the few billionaires wallowing in obscene level of wealth and the billions of working people suffering in extreme poverty and misery. Monopoly capital and their lackeys promote ideas that the climate crisis can be solved just by mending the ways of individuals, big corporations to be mindful of the environment, use of modern technologies, and reforms in government institutions both at the national and international level.
Imperialists try to drive a wedge between the working-people by selling schemes that the climate justice and environmental movement are exclusive to other democratic rights and demands of the people such as the right to job security, higher wages, land reform. They argue that the fight for national and social liberation are unrelated to the environmental and climate justice movement.
Imperialists use paid civil society groups, NGOs, and sometimes anarchists to obfuscate the climate justice movement and to come up with false struggles. Sometimes in the extreme, they put up a fatalist concept that if the global movement fails to solve the climate crisis in the near future, humankind will meet its catastrophic end and society will be lost. They also promote ideas that the movement for climate justice is primary and it subsumes other people’s struggle or national movements. Some propose further that for the climate movement to enable achieve ‘victory’ is to have a centralized global justice movement. They are dreaming or waiting for a big global spontaneous movement (revolution) that they hope will change the balance of forces in favor of the people.
Given that monopoly capitalism brought about and further worsened the climate and environmental crisis, the real solution to the crisis is to overthrow imperialism. Jose Maria Sison, who is also the founding chairperson of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has clearly pointed to the relation and the interconnections of the struggle for climate justice and the fight against imperialism. He aptly said that “the climate crisis is not just some transient problem but has become almost as wired into the imperialist system as its other fundamental self-contradictions such as financial crises, wars, fascism and national oppression. It may well be an important arena in the forthcoming people’s battles against imperialism…The global struggle for climate justice is interconnected with the global struggle for social justice, with a common enemy in monopoly capitalism and the imperialist powers as the ultimate causes of climate and social injustice. The real solutions to the climate crisis, and the economic, financial, political and social crises that are intertwined with it, lie in the hands of the people and movements that are struggling to resist imperialist control and plunder of the world, and which are seeking alternatives to the rotten system of global capitalism.”
Sison explained that “the people should struggle against imperialism, and for climate justice, social justice and democracy on all fronts: through mass campaigns and mobilizations to defend specific rights and win specific reforms within the system, and through national mass movements that can install new governments and build alternative systems based on the people’s democratic power. As people’s struggles for national liberation and social emancipation advance, draw from each other’s strengths and gain victories, we gain more ground in resolving the ecological and social crises in significant stages.”
Resolve the crisis, Fight for a socialist future
We must work towards a socialist future if we want to genuinely resolve our ecological crisis at its roots. The struggle for the complete overthrow of imperialism has been a protracted and arduous one. In neo-colonies, particularly those most vulnerable to the climate crisis, people have no choice but to struggle to fight imperialist dominance and control over their country. Every territory, economic, and political power that the people can wrestle from the imperialists and their lackeys is a contribution in weakening and a step toward defeating monopoly capitalism.
The proletariat and the people of occupied nations and neo-colonies have the highest stake to fight for environmental and climate justice. The proletariat who are the most exploited and oppressed under capitalism will benefit most in advancing the climate justice and environmental as these will strengthen the link and deepen the understanding that fighting for social liberation such as ending the unbridled exploitation of workers by capitalist comes hand in hand in stopping the wanton exploitation and devastation of the environment. In occupied nations and neo-colonies, the climate justice movement is important in strengthening the fight for self-determination and national liberation. Environmental movement is an important part of the struggle for resource conservation and against imperialist plunder.
In the Philippines, India, Kurdistan, and Columbia, communist parties are leading armed revolutions through protracted people’s war. Communist parties in these countries for decades have successfully organized their peoples to take up arms to fight for their democratic rights and national liberation.
The armed revolution for national liberation and self-determination by the people of Palestine, Myanmar, Peru, and West Papua are also a struggle by the people and nations to wrest control over their territories and natural resources from the foreign invaders and imperialists.
While even imperialists still dominate the world, the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, and Cuba have shown us that imperialist powers like the US are paper tigers that can be defeated as long as the people are united and resolute in their fight against foreign aggression, and for national liberation. These victories significantly weaken the control of US imperialism in their countries and regions.
More importantly, these victories will inspire people and nations both in neo-colonies and imperialist countries to rise up and fight against monopoly capitalism. As the influence and control of imperialist power such as the US and China weakens, it will further corrode their power to control nations and the world.
Jose Sison noted that “the struggle for climate justice and social justice and against imperialism is ultimately for the world’s peoples to establish an alternative social system that is centered on the emancipation of the billions of toiling masses, and national liberation for countries long oppressed by the neocolonial system. Ending monopoly capital’s dominance over the planet and people’s lives ultimately means building a socialist future for all.”
Socialism under the leadership of the proletariat is the alternative to address the global environmental and climate crisis by ensuring public ownership and state control of systems of production for the benefit of the majority of the people and the environment.
Previous socialist countries such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, and China under the leadership of Mao Tse Tung have made strides in environmental protection and optimal use of natural resources.
The early Soviet Union notably placed some importance into environmental preservation. Under Lenin, and interestingly in the context of an ongoing civil war, some key initiatives include the declaration of public ownership of land and water resources, and the establishment of dedicated committees handling environmental concerns. The establishment of zapovednik (nature reserves for research) was another initiative by the Soviet Union in the interest of protecting the environment. Zapovedniki served as reference points when it came to restoring resource extraction areas to their natural state.
In the 1960’s, under Mao’s leadership China has always emphasized the use of mass mobilization campaigns to resolve environmental problems such as flood control, drought, and deforestation. Even in the early years of socialism in China, the country was able to build dams to provide irrigation to drought stricken areas, increase fertility of the soil using indigenous materials, more so in just a few decades and was able to develop China into a progressive and self-reliant economy by 1970’s.
We have the valuable historical experiences and lessons of the past and the modern technologies that can be used in mitigating and addressing the global climate crisis. In addressing climate change impacts, ecological restoration while wisely utilizing natural resources for the benefit of the nation and people, there should be a genuine proletarian party to lead in pursuing socialism to the end; in every national effort, whether in politics or economy, mass mobilization (of the people, by the people, and for the people) is they key to make it successful; and science will be the guidance for all of our actions.
In this way we can aptly apply what Marx said in Capital volume III of our responsibility to the future generations. He noted that, “Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].”