Whatever area of struggle you are involved in, the climate and nature struggles are your struggles. There can be no secure economic future or social justice without pulling the handbrake on carbon emissions and the destruction of nature.
By Nella Broome
Just a few weeks ago, the world’s climate scientists delivered a ‘final warning’ with an IPCC report spelling out that the risks of climate warming are much higher than previously thought. And yet in 2022, global emissions rose again to set a new record.
We have no choice – we must all sound the fire alarm and build a movement capable of halting and reversing the damage.
That’s why all progressives should mobilise for ‘The Big One’ a mass mobilisation called for 21 – 24rd April in Westminster by Extinction Rebellion and backed by trade unions, green groups, religious groups, and anti-poverty campaigns.
Tens of thousands of people are set to gather outside the Houses of Parliament and government ministries to protest against the Government’s refusal to act.
It’s been four years since XR brought parts of London to a standstill with waves of mass-scale non-violent direct action, parking a pink boat in Oxford Circus and shocking the country to attention. It was an act of great service and sacrifice.
Alongside the Fridays for Future school student strikes and anti-imperialist Climate Justice movement protests, it resulted in the UK parliament and local authorities across the country declaring a climate emergency.
But now with hundreds of climate protesters arrested, many jailed and a new Tory crackdown on the right to protest, new tactics are needed. This April is an attempt to drive the climate crisis back onto the national agenda with lawful mass-scale protest.
It has been called just as the Government deliberates over licensing a vast new oil and gas field off Scotland – Rosebank. Burning Rosebank’s reserves would generate more than the combined annual CO2 emissions of all 28 low-income countries in the world, including Uganda, Ethiopia and Mozambique.
The IPCC report signalled very clearly that oil, gas and coal projects currently in production will blow our chance of limiting heating to 1.5C, unless some are shut down early. “Projected CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure without additional abatement would exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C,” the report says. Any new fossil fuel developments are completely incompatible with a safe planet.
The IPCC report also emphasised that the climate crisis is fundamentally a crisis of injustice: “The 10% of households with the highest per capita emissions contribute 34-45% of global consumption-based emissions, while the bottom 50% contribute 13-15%.” The climate emergency cannot end without addressing the gross inequalities of the capitalist system. That requires class struggle and uniting the majority of the country and humanity in this fight.
Whatever area of struggle you are involved in, the climate and nature struggles are your struggles. There can be no secure economic future or social justice without pulling the handbrake on carbon emissions and the destruction of nature.
Every opportunity to bring together the trade union, anti-racist, feminist, anti-war and other struggles with the climate movements must be made as a matter of urgency.
The IPCC report was chilling: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” Greenhouse gas emissions must peak “at the latest before 2025”, the report says, followed by “deep global reductions”.
“Adverse impacts and related losses and damages from climate change will escalate with every increment of global warming” risking “abrupt and/or irreversible changes in the climate system, including changes triggered when tipping points are reached.”
Put more positively, this means that every tonne of CO2 emissions prevented reduces the risk to hundreds of millions of lives.
Capitalism has brought us to the brink of climate and ecological breakdown. As socialists and progressives, only we can turn this around. To do so we need to urgently step up the fight.
- The ‘Big One’ is a four-day action from the 21st to the 24th April 2023. People from all groups and movements will gather throughout Westminster to demand climate action. Full details here.
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