Sam Hey
Manchester Socialist Students

The COP28 climate summit, an annual conference for countries to discuss the ongoing climate crisis and attempt to agree concrete steps that they can take to combat it, began last week.

As reports emerge that this year’s COP president, Sultan Al-Jaber, has planned to use the conference to broker business deals with his state-run oil company, it looks as if this year’s COP summit will be no different to the same capitalist talking shops that have come before.

In this article written for the Socialist Students magazine in September, Manchester Socialist Students member Sam Hey asks: what is really needed to save the planet from catastrophic climate change?

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The planet is burning. July 2023 was just the latest month to be dubbed ‘hottest in history’. Wildfires have engulfed Canada, putting over 50 million people under air quality alerts. Similar fires have raged through Europe, North Africa and Hawaii this year.

Meanwhile, the British government has announced over one hundred new fossil fuel licenses to extract as much oil and gas from the North Sea as possible, in a move that Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak claims is “entirely consistent with our plan to get to net zero”!

How can we trust pro-capitalist politicians like Sunak to save us from this real-life dystopian nightmare? To reverse the impact of climate change a coordinated global effort is needed, but while we live in a capitalist system that promotes competition over collaboration, short-term profits will always come before people’s lives and the planet. Based on competition between nation-states, each acting in the interests of their own capitalist class, capitalism cannot foster the level of coordination and cooperation necessary to reverse the impact it has already made.

According to a report by the One for One campaign, banks could need as much as $4.9tn in international bailouts if net zero emissions were achieved by 2030. This would be due to what are known as ‘stranded assets’, infrastructure and resources that would become virtually worthless if fossil fuels stopped being used for generating electricity. These stranded assets present another obstacle to putting the brakes on the climate emergency, as different capitalist governments seek to prevent financial crisis while also protecting the fossil fuel assets of their country’s energy companies, banks and financial institutions.

The climate emergency confronts capitalism with an inescapable dilemma. If governments continue to sit by and allow the environment to collapse further, then they risk trillions of dollars of infrastructure being swallowed up by rising sea levels, or rendered unusable due to heat. But if they move towards seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions, then they still stand to lose trillions of dollars in stranded assets! In either scenario, the capitalists and their politicians would try to make ordinary people pay for their lost profits. We cannot leave control over stopping the climate crisis in their hands.

We need a socialist alternative

Just look at Britain. When it comes to the ballot box, the choice is between broken climate promises in blue, or broken climate promises in red. Labour have scaled back their pledge to invest £28bn a year into green jobs and industry under the guise of ‘fiscal responsibility’. Under Keir Starmer, the Labour Party has abandoned the working class.

Capitalist parties like the Tories and Starmer’s Labour have no solutions to the climate crisis. The only solution to this crisis is a socialist one. Under a socialist system, all banks, major industries – including the major energy companies – and the monopolies would be placed in the hands of workers, not the capitalists. By cooperating and discussing together, it would be possible to democratically draw up a plan of production based on human need, including the need for a healthy environment. The world’s massive wealth, resources and technology could be steered towards ensuring we live sustainably. Millions of high-quality, eco-friendly jobs would be created as societies shift rapidly towards green energy. Decisions about where to locate renewable energy production could be made democratically, with proper community consultation.

Achieving a socialist transformation along these lines would require mass movements, based on the working class, to overthrow capitalism internationally. However, that does not mean that workers and young people cannot fight for measures right now, which could at least slow the pace of environmental degradation. At the same time, by linking our immediate demands around climate change to the need to ultimately overthrow capitalism and replace it with a democratically planned socialist system, socialists can build support for revolutionary ideas within the climate and wider workers’ movement.

For example, Socialist Students calls now for a free, integrated, publicly owned transport system, run democratically, to help reduce environmental pollution. Because most public transport is run privately for profit, or operated by unaccountable local authorities looking to supplement budget cuts by charging rip-off fares, a large number of workers have no other option than to use their own car. Currently, many working-class people are being fined for using their cars due to so-called ‘Clean Air Zones’. But a public transport system run by workers and services users can be expansive, reliable, affordable, and much more environmentally conscious. This would actually lay the foundation for a massive shift away from individual vehicle usage.

How we process and purchase our food also has an immense environmental impact. Socialist Students stands for a food processing and retail industry under democratic control and management by consumers, small farmers and workers involved in the production, processing, distribution and retail of food. Through this we can produce food and reduce overproduction to minimise the environmental impact of wasted food and overfarming.

Socialist Students also calls for the nationalisation of the energy companies, under democratic workers’ control and management, alongside a publicly funded insulation and energy transition plan for existing housing stock, which could dramatically reduce our energy consumption quickly and cheaply. The Tories promised to insulate homes as part of a policy that committed them to net zero, but they failed to deliver. Their own Climate Change Committee said: “the UK continues to have some of the leakiest homes in Europe and installations of insulation remain at rock bottom.” It is clear, as the big energy companies continue to achieve record profits, that the Conservatives have no intention of carrying out any green policies that would impact on these, and therein lies the problem at the heart of the government’s inaction.

Build a mass party that fights for us

All of these demands also point to the need for a political party that could begin to implement them. As Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto included a £250 billion green transformation fund, a commitment to a publicly owned national grid, and for the “supply arms of the big six energy companies to be brought into public ownership”. His manifesto, which also included other bold policies such as the scrapping of tuition fees, electrified millions of young people. However, Corbyn’s anti-austerity programme has been ripped up by Starmer and his Blairite leadership, which is now firmly in control of the Labour Party. That’s why Socialist Students calls for a new mass workers’ party, armed with a socialist programme, which stands for a very different agenda than just lining the pockets of the capitalists.

It cannot be overstated how devastating the climate crisis will become if left to the hands of capitalism. Socialist Students wants to take the issue of the climate crisis into workplaces, trade union branches, and universities, and organise around it. We want to work with any groups who want to fight climate change – for example, holding joint meetings, debates on the way forward, and organising protests together. We say that the only way to end climate change is through socialist change. If you agree, then join us!

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