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| Mass demos outside COP30 in Belem, Brazil |
This year’s United Nations COP30 conference on climate
change is meeting in Belem, a city in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest –
the world’s most important ‘carbon sink’, which absorbs some of the CO2
emissions that pollute the air we breathe and overheats the planet.
The same rainforest has recently suffered record levels of
drought, wildfires and deforestation; destruction by loggers, big
agri-businesses, and world capitalists’ hunt for minerals.
Over 50,000 delegates, lobbyists, media (and Prince William)
have arrived from 194 countries – mostly by plane! – to expound their concerns
at global warming.
A new 8-mile, 4-lane highway has been carved through thousands
of acres of the protected rainforest to facilitate these self-styled protectors
of Planet Earth, wrecking habitats for many species, devastating the natural
sources of a minimal income for many Indigenous people.
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| Indigenous peoples excluded; Big Oil included at COP30 |
COP30 flooded by polluters
Analysis reveals that 54% of COP30 delegates have concealed
their links to vested capitalist interests, including the Big Polluters. At
COP26 in Glasgow, 2021, delegates linked to Big Fossil outnumbered those from every
single nation state! 7,000 of them have swamped the last five COP conferences.
Aside from concealed delegations, over 1,600 lobbyists from
oil and gas companies have full access to COP30 – 1 in every 25 attendees -
outnumbering delegations from every single country, apart from the hosts,
Brazil.
Fossil fuel lobbyists were given 60% more entry passes than
the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined – including 50 times as many as
the Philippines, recently devastated by two typhoons.
The polluters capturing the annual climate conference
includes Brazil’s Petrobas, busy with a new bout of drilling at the mouth of
the Amazon, authorised by the allegedly ‘left’ President Lula, eager to follow
the mantra of Trump: “drill baby, drill”.
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| Armed security against the people demanding climate justice |
In stark contrast, troops, national guards and police were
sent in to attack peaceful demonstrations by Brazil’s Indigenous people,
including the Mundurukus, who gathered to demand access to the conference and
the right to control their own territories, with their reputation for
protecting nature.
This follows the pattern of every annual COP conference. The
last four have been lobbied by representatives of 90 oil and gas corporations,
which between them accounted for 60% of global oil and gas production last
year.
The biggest polluters are polluting the event that is
supposedly designed to combat pollution!
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| People power against capitalist pollution |
From greenwashing to increased pollution
There has been a recent, orchestrated drive against even
acknowledging the climate catastrophe, spearheaded by people like Donald Trump,
who brands it “the green scam” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated”. And
by big businesses, who went from being climate change deniers to greenwashing
themselves, now reverting to vastly increased investment in fossil fuels again.
The petrostate, Saudi Arabia, has wielded a wrecking ball at
successive COP conferences against any suggestion of phasing out fossil fuels;
it wasn’t until COP28, in 2023, that conference declarations even mentioned
fossil fuels!
Saudi’s royal dictators literally spend more on state
subsidies to their colossal oil and gas industry – Aramco is the world’s
largest producer - than on their health budget, as they seek to monopolise
world fossil fuel markets. They are currently turning to a massive expansion of
gas output, to supplement profits on oil that sells at $60-$80 a barrel, but
only costs $2 a barrel to produce, according to Aramco’s CEO.
Anyone nursing illusions in a capitalist road to safety for
our planet should ponder the illustrative example of BP. For every £1 they
invested in renewables in 2023, they invested £11 in fossil fuels and handed
out £9 in dividends to their profit-hungry shareholders, announcing further
savage cuts to investments in renewables up to 2030.
Profit rules over people and the planet we live on,
regardless of the alarming scientific evidence.
It’s necessary to highlight some of that evidence, to
counter the propaganda onslaught by capitalist vested interests and their tame
governments.
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| Profiteers poison the air we breathe |
Overheated Planet Earth
The planet is on fire. 2024 was the hottest year on record,
ever; the first year when global temperatures each month breached 1.5° Celsius
above pre-industrial levels – accepted by virtually every scientist as the
tipping point into irreversible global catastrophe.
Documents for COP30 warn that, based on current trends, we
are on course to 2.6°C overheating by the end of the century. They predict
current greenhouse gas emissions will more than double by 2035, as governments
dump promises and targets, including the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut emissions
to keep below 1.5°C by 2030.
The planet is hurtling downhill towards climate disaster,
with those in power taking the brakes off.
Climate refugees
We've seen accelerating extreme weather incidents: drought,
floods, firestorms, mudslides, etc. Over 2 million people have died because of
extreme weather in the past 50 years, 90% of them in the ex-colonial
‘developing’ countries.
The UN Refugee Agency reports 250 million people were
displaced by climate-related disasters in the past 10 years – 70,000 each day.
For the first time, there are more climate refugees than the
numbers driven out of their homes or countries by wars and civil wars. Both
face escalating hostility from governments – whose actions and inactions have
worsened climate chaos – and racist, far-right forces, themselves climate
change deniers.
Floods, droughts, starvation
40% of glaciers are irreparably damaged, endangering coastal
communities with rising sea levels, particularly in the global South. Many have
been drowned or displaced – including 8 million driven out of their homes in
Pakistan’s 2022 floods.
Melting glaciers cause chaos in food production, disrupting
the regulation of water supplies, adding to starvation levels. Simultaneously,
droughts in the Middle East, Horn of Africa and Eastern Mediterranean destroy
crops, and are massively increasing in frequency: 10 out of the 12 driest
winters in those regions since 1902 all occurred in the past 20 years.
The rich can afford scarce food; the poor can starve.
And a million species are on the threshold of extinction,
wiping out much of the planet’s biodiversity – including through destructive
insecticides and deforestation by big business and intensive farming.
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| Fossil fuels the primary cause of global warming |
Greenhouse gas emissions
Global warming is the prime root of this ecological crisis,
caused by greenhouse gases emitted in the production and consumption system;
mostly carbon dioxide (CO2), plus methane gas, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons
- forming a blanket round the Earth’s surface, overheating it.
During 1995, the first year of the Conference of the Parties
(COP1), there were 23.52 billion metric tonnes of global emissions. By last
year (COP29) this had rocketed to 37.55 billion metric tonnes. A 60% increase,
despite claims that 30 years of annual COP gatherings of imperial powers,
governments, NGOs, and big businesses are designed to plan reduction in
Earth-warming emissions and pollution.
CO2 emissions poison the air we breathe
Measuring the Earth’s history not over decades, nor
centuries, but in millions of years, there have been two fundamental, steady
states of the planet: Ice Ages, and warm or temperate periods. During Ice Ages,
the average concentration of CO2 was 180 parts per million. For temperate
periods, it’s been 280ppm. In 2013 this had rocketed to 391ppm, with a further
escalation to 412ppm by COP26 in Glasgow.
Incredibly, the increase in CO2 concentration in the air over the 250 years since the capitalist Industrial Revolution has been greater than the rise in CO2 between the Ice Ages and temperate periods of the planet's existence, spanning millions of years! Half of that increase has been in the last 35 years!
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| Donald agrees with the SSP! |
Capitalism is to blame
Why? Burning coal, oil and gas accounts for 80% of the UK’s
CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution. The culprits are a very
concentrated, shrinking clutch of capitalist profiteers. Just 100 companies
have vomited out two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions since the mid-19th-centrury.
But has there been recent progress? No! The 100 biggest
corporations are responsible for 71% of all global CO2 emissions since 1988,
and a mere 50 global companies account for 50% of today’s industrial emissions
– despite recent attempts by some to greenwash their images.
Capitalism, by its very nature, is trashing the planet –
with the recent phenomenon of globalisation exacerbating the pollution and
desecration.
Governments in the likes of the UK and Scotland lay claim to
achieving big reductions in CO2 output. Superficially, this appears true. But
only if we ignore globalisation, where these countries suffer
de-industrialisation and attendant devastation to communities, thereby slashing
domestic CO2 emissions from coal mines and factories, but then import goods
from faraway places with cheaper labour, plentiful raw materials, and often
appalling workplace conditions.
Factoring in the pollution many western states have thus exported, embodied in the commodities they import, there has been virtually no reduction in CO2 emissions in the UK/Scotland.
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| OXFAM shows it's a class issue |
In 2023, Oxfam calculated that the world’s richest 10% of
people produced 48% of consumption-based CO2 emissions – whereas the poorest
50% only produced 8% of it. Yet it’s the working class and poor peasantry,
especially concentrated in the global South, who suffer the consequences.
Climate chaos is class-based, both in its origins and its
consequences: pollution by untrammelled capitalist production for profit; crop
failures, rising food prices, hunger, and climate-related diseases and deaths;
destruction of the poorest people’s flimsy homes from extreme weather,
exacerbated by capitalist governments’ cuts to public expenditure; enforced
migration and subsequent hostilities and victimisation.
It's capitalist activity, not ‘human activity’
The UN in recent years belatedly acknowledged that climate chaos is linked to
global warming. They’ve coined the phrase that both are the result of ‘human
activity’.
We should reject that phrase. The climate catastrophe is not
caused by ‘human activity’ but by capitalist activity.
It’s not human-induced, it’s profit-induced. Nor is it the
fault of older or middle-aged people, as some more middle-class young
environmentalists have claimed; it’s not a generational issue, it’s a class
issue.
Massive retreats by governments and business
Capitalist production takes no care of planet or people if it interferes with
profit margins.
For a few years, the eruption of climate protests, school
student strikes, growing convergence between trade unionists and younger
climate activists, forced some of the worst offenders such as Big Oil to
greenwash their image and partially turn towards production of renewables.
However, there's been a recent reversion to increased fossil
fuel production, encouraged by governments worldwide. This ranges from Lula’s
government in Brazil joining the oil cartel, OPEC, and demanding an end to a
carbon tax on shipping, to John Swinney's recent refusal to oppose development
of the huge Rosebank oilfield, which Norwegian giant, Equinor, admits – in its
latest bid for the development - would spew out 250 million metric tonnes of
CO2.
Trade wars over green industries
Growing trade wars are also partially driven by competition
over which corporation and which nation state can make the biggest profits out
of green technology.
That helps explain the trade wars between the US and China.
The latter is outstripping the rest of the world combined in production of
electric vehicles, solar cells and other green technology, whilst at the same
time China's construction of coal-burning power plants last year reached a
10-year high.
China is conquering world markets in the green sector, which
triggered Trump’s tariffs on EVs and solar cells, and indeed other forms of
trade barriers erected by Biden and Obama before him.
No capitalist road to saving the planet
Pollution does not respect national state boundaries.
Solutions to climate chaos require international cooperation, but the inherent
nature of capitalism means savage competition, trade wars and wars over market
shares, raw materials, cheap labour, and the power to amass profit, between
capitalist nation states - with each multinational corporation tending to have
their main base in one country.
There is no capitalist road to reversing the catastrophic
ecological damage already inflicted by a system which rampages round the planet
for raw materials and the cheapest labour power, driven by profit maximisation.
Production for profit contradicts the needs of both the
planet and the mass of its people.
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| On Scotland's Climate March, 15 Nov 2025 |
Think global, act local for socialist change
But what are some of the socialist solutions to this
existential crisis on Planet Earth?
Whilst solutions need to be applied internationally,
socialists can best contribute by fighting for socialist change in whatever
country they live.
In Scotland, the Scottish Socialist Party has for over a
quarter-of-a-century advocated a body of policies which would tackle pollution
and poverty simultaneously. Concrete measures, which could gain mass support
from the overwhelmingly working-class population, rather than alienating them
with punitive measures in the name of reaching ‘net zero’ CO2 emissions.
Free public transport for all
Transport is the single biggest cause of greenhouse gas
emissions in Scotland – 31% of it. Cars, lorries, buses and motorbikes spew out
73% of all such air pollution – which causes or worsens asthma, respiratory
diseases, heart conditions and cancers.
A lot of guff is spoken about electric vehicles (EVs) being
the panacea. Whilst apparently worthy and cleaner, EVs are way beyond the reach
of most working-class people, costing roughly the full annual salary of a
skilled worker.
Building them still creates vast amounts of CO2, and EV
batteries involve cobalt mining with the most primitive tools and slave-labour
conditions for 100,000s of workers in Congo. EV tyres still produce tyre wear
particles; microplastics that are a major form of health-damaging air
pollution.
And even if everyone could suddenly afford to switch to an
EV, it would still leave traffic jams, road accidents, and the fact that cars
take up over 30% of all urban land – which could otherwise be used to build
life-enhancing parks, allotments and living spaces.
This is a glaring example of the false reliance on
individualist ‘solutions’ to pollution, on offer from big businesses with a
vested interest in profiteering from greenwashed options, and from political
parties that adhere to the straitjacket of the capitalist production model.
Workplace parking fees: anti-working-class
Another is the brutally anti-working-class policy of
workplace parking fees, pioneered by the Scottish Green Party and accepted by
their partners in government at the time, the SNP.
Charges to workers of about £500-a-year for parking at work
would do nothing to cut pollution but would hammer workers who drive cars
usually because there’s no reliable public transport available – sometimes
literally none, for instance for nightshift work.
The SSP rejects individualist ‘alternatives’ - usually
punitive towards the poorest - in favour of collective solutions.
Instead of over-reliance on cars, we advocate construction
of a publicly owned, expanded People’s Transport Service, free at the point of
use; free travel on buses, trains, subways, trams and foot-passenger ferries –
powered by electric or green hydrogen.
Such a scheme would combat poverty – putting at least
£1,500-a-year in the pocket of a worker in saved bus fares – social isolation,
and pollution.
Collective solutions the only road
Furthermore, investment in publicly-owned railways should
include a massive switch of freight away from roads, redeploying workers
without loss of wages or conditions, slashing the air pollution, road damage
and traffic accidents caused by the road haulage industry – a powerful lobby
group that drives pro-market politicians into state investment in motorways and
roads rather than rail electrification.
Democratic public ownership of transport services – and of
factories and workshops to build and maintain the rolling stock and fleets –
would create at least 60,000 skilled, sustainable jobs in Scotland. On top of
which thousands of jobs in FE colleges and universities could be secured in
training apprentices, upskilling workers, and researching new green fuels and
construction materials.
Working-class people and our planet would be the winners,
profiteering capitalist polluters in the motor and fossil fuel industries the
only losers.
Public ownership of energy and construction
Less widely known is the fact buildings are the
second-biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Scotland; 21% of the
total.
Costly domestic heating leaks out through the windows,
doors, walls and roofs of houses, adding to both fuel poverty and global
warming.
The majority of Scotland’s houses were built over a century
ago; those constructed pre-1945 do not have cavity walls to insulate; and about
75% of homes today have no loft insulation.
The socialist solution would start with Scottish government
investment in systematic retrofitting of every home - free of charge - funding
big teams of tradespeople employed by councils, to draughtproof, insulate and
replace old boilers with new eco-friendly ones, district by district, street by
street.
Instead of reliance on piecemeal grants to some individual
homeowners, this would be a public investment to slash energy consumption by up
to 40% (according to scientific studies), combating fuel poverty, and creating
tens of thousands of skilled jobs and apprenticeships.
Build 100,000 council eco-houses
Democratic public ownership of the construction industry - a
combination of a national state company and what used to be called council
Direct Labour Organisations - should also be deployed to construct 100,000 new,
eco-friendly, quality council houses for affordable rent.
Society screams out for that, with 250,000 people on
Scotland’s social housing waiting lists. More sustainable materials than
cement, steel and masonry could cut up to 60% of the embodied carbon, according
to a 2020 study by the STUC.
As a key component of a Socialist Green New Deal, this
publicly controlled retrofit and construction plan could also rapidly replace
fossil fuel heating supplies and create further tens of thousands of jobs
through installation of cost-saving, sustainable District Heating Schemes.
Such a decarbonization plan, built on the foundations of
democratic public ownership of construction, energy and the banking system, is
the only route to putting an end to fuel poverty, slum housing, and a major
portion of global warming emissions.
Take the profit out of heating
The behemoths of the oil and gas industry amass
mind-boggling profits at the expense of a million Scottish households shivering
through the winter, suffering fuel poverty – with thousands of pensioners
literally dying of hypothermia every winter in energy-rich Scotland.
In just the last 3 years, 20 UK energy companies grabbed
£483billion in profit, whilst household bills went through the roof, and
thousands of Grangemouth and North Sea workers were chucked on the scrapheap by
the same polluting profiteers.
A worker-led, rapid green transition
The SSP’s persistent demand for democratic public ownership
of all forms of energy – fossil fuels and renewables alike – would abolish
private profit and thereby slash household bills. The aforesaid £483billion
profit over 3 years is equivalent to £17,000 from every UK household!
It would also harness the know-how of existing energy
workers to implement an emergency plan of green energy production; a worker-led
transition away from fossil fuels that extensive bodies of research (including by Platform, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Scotland) show could create at least
three new green jobs for every one lost from the carbon-intensive sector. At
least 70,000 new jobs, according to studies commissioned by the STUC.
The collective power of the working class needs to be
mobilised in pursuit of this socialist solution, after socialists and the
authority of the trade union movement is applied to convincing workers of the
viability of a People’s Energy Service. And recent surveys show that 90% of
North Sea workers are keen to switch to jobs in renewables… if such jobs
existed!
Betrayal of Grangemouth workers by both the Labour and SNP
governments is the obstacle to a genuinely ‘just transition’ to green
production – rather than any objections by fossil fuel workers, who could
become the biggest force for green re-industrialisation, given government
investment under a system of public ownership with workers’ control.
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| BUY THE BOOK: see link below |
Be Red to be Green!
You need to be Red to be Green! Radical, root-and-branch
socialist change is the only means to protect the environment. We cannot put
any faith in the capitalist system reversing the economic and ecological damage
it’s already done; it’s a system which plunders nature and human labour power
for the maximisation of profit for the capitalist handful.
It’s not a question of whether individual capitalists have a
conscience; theirs is a battle for survival in the competitive jungle of
private capitalist production for profit and market shares.
Socialist change, not climate change
Nobody of sound mind would trust an arsonist to douse the
fires after he’d set your home alight. We cannot trust the capitalist overlords
- including those gathered at COP30 – to reverse the desecration of Planet
Earth, and the devastation of billions of people, imposed by the rapacious
system they are part of.
Only a revolution in ownership of the production of goods
and services can begin to halt and repair the climate crisis, particularly
worsened in the 250 years since the Industrial Revolution, and more especially
in the past few decades of mindboggling, globalised capitalism.
The solutions we advocate as socialists are quite
straightforward, and easily understood, if popularised by the mass
organisations of the working class – at home and internationally.
These socialist solutions, matching the needs of people and
planet, need to involve global socialist change, but we can and must contribute
to that transformation where we live. That means fighting for a clean, green,
socialist Scotland, based on public ownership of all the centres of production,
distribution and exchange. A democratic plan of sustainable production.
In essence, we need to organise and fight for socialist
change, not climate change.
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| Some of the SSP at Scotland's Climate March, Nov '25 |
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