Climate change is here, it’s devastating, and it’s the working class that pays the price for the crisis that we didn’t create. While working class Floridians and North Carolinians waited in hours of traffic to flee two “once a century” hurricanes, billionaires flew to their third homes in their private jets. The billionaires can fly to vacation homes during the hot summer while workers are dying of heat exhaustion on the job. For the billionaires, climate change is an inconvenience, for the working class, it’s life or death.
In the new era of inter-imperialist conflict, governments are dropping the pretense of a green transition in favor of fossil-fueled “energy independence” and preparation for war. We live in a time of rising militarism, and you wouldn’t power a tank with a wind turbine. Despite his fake “anti-war” stance, Trump will only escalate this trend towards greater militarism, fueling and worsening climate disaster.
With Trump entering the White House, the struggle against his agenda will be an uphill battle, but history shows that corporate politicians can be forced to act by mass movements. The climate movement needs to be clear about who we can depend on as an ally in this fight against Trump and his war on the climate.
The Climate Under Trump
Trump is a massive threat for the climate. During his first term, he rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations. “Drill baby drill” is his motto, and his administration is a lot better organized this time around. Oil and gas production will be ramped up even higher than their current record levels. Trump vows to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and get rid of pollution standards. He wants to kill the Inflation Reduction Act—except for the parts that help American billionaires. A Trump presidency means accelerated climate disasters for us and massive profits for the fossil fuel executives.
We need to fight back against Trump and his climate-killing agenda from day one of his presidency. We know Trump is reactionary; the only way to stop him is an organized, mass movement. The week of the election, Socialist Alternative called rallies in 13 cities across the country and the Sunrise Movement called for national school walkouts. This is a great start, but we need to keep building. We need to involve as many people as possible around a real program that includes demands that can pull in both students and workers.
If we’re organized, we can win—even under a reactionary president. In fact, the EPA was formed under Nixon, not because he cared about the climate, but because 20 million people—with massive support from the UAW and the labor movement—participated in the 1970 Earth Day Protests. We need to bring this collaboration back. The climate movement, together with the unions, should call for walkouts for Inauguration Day to fight Trump’s climate attacks and for a massive green union jobs program.
The Democratic Party is a Dead End
The 2019 school strikes led by Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future were a lightning rod for young people around the world who saw climate change as a dire threat to their future. In the US, the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate organization, rose to prominence with their sit-in alongside then newly elected AOC demanding a Green New Deal. Hundreds of thousands of students walked out for climate justice across 1000 events. Most significantly, many workers, including 1,700 workers in Amazon’s corporate offices, walked off the job to join them.
With the ascendance of AOC and the Squad, the idea that we could use the Democratic party to win progressive reforms gained traction. During the 2020 election, Biden made a string of ambitious promises to tackle the climate crisis: no more drilling on federal lands and net-zero emissions by 2050. In 2020, the Sunrise Movement basically turned into a GOTV organization for Joe Biden on the basis that by supporting Biden, they could convince him to pass “bold climate legislation.”
Four years later, Biden has approved 9,522 drilling permits on federal land, 50% more than under Trump. With oil and gas production at an all time high, we’re not getting any closer to net-zero. AOC is no longer the anti-establishment politician that packed Nancy Pelosi’s office with climate activists demanding a Green New Deal. She now endorses establishment Democrats like Biden and Harris without hesitation. This year, despite Kamala’s repeated commitment to fracking and brags about historic oil and gas production, the Sunrise Movement poured their energy into getting her elected, explicitly seeing their role as winning over disillusioned young people to voting for Harris.
The failures of AOC and the Squad to build this type of movement while in office shows that you can’t change the Democratic Party from within, the Democratic Party changes you. The problem is not with the whims of individual politicians but the parties they belong to and are ultimately accountable to. The Democrats, while recognizing the threat of climate change unlike many Republicans, are inextricably tied to the fossil fuel industry and the capitalist system which is incompatible with solving the climate crisis.
What Way Forward
- Bring back the climate strikes in schools and colleges across the country!
- The climate movement needs to break from the Democrats and be part of building an independent, working class party.
- The climate movement must link up with the anti-war movement! Climate catastrophe cannot be ended without ending imperialist war, and both pose dire threats to working people everywhere.
- The labor movement needs to urgently take up the fight to organize green industry, and fight for the retooling of the fossil fuel industry and re-training of workers while at minimum maintaining existing union representation, pay, and benefits.
- The climate movement must call to nationalize the top 100 polluting companies and bring them into democratic public ownership.
- We need an internationally planned, socialist economy to effectively combat climate change. For a socialist world!