Skip to main content

Biden’s Climate Summit Chicanery: Poisoning the Planet and Deceiving the People

The global Earth Day summit convened by Biden was a cruel imperialist deception, a slap in the face for anyone who cares about the fate of the planet. A summit that showcased pledges and proposals that fly in the face of what science tells us about the urgency of the environmental crisis and the scale of action needed. Greta Thunberg, the global climate activist, righteously called out the summit for what it was: “bullshit.”

The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show Episode 49: EARTH DAY 2021 Capitalism Is Destroying Our Planet. We Need: Revolution—Nothing Less!

1. Biden committed to a target of a 50-52 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030—a measly drop in the carbon bucket relative to the catastrophic situation of rising global temperatures.

Global warming is leading to the collapse of polar ice sheets and ever-faster rise of sea levels ... greater frequency of extreme weather events ... the prospect of widespread crop failures ... and is magnifying the burdens and horrors that climate change already places on the oppressed populations of the global South. The Biden target is obscenely out of whack with this reality—and with the culpability of U.S. capitalism-imperialism in the environmental emergency that humanity faces. Keep in mind:

  • The U.S. is responsible for the greatest amount of greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere, and is today the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (carbon and methane produced by fossil-fuel based electricity generation, transport, industrial and agricultural production, fracking, etc., that trap heat in the atmosphere).
  • The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer in the world.
  • The U.S. uses far more fossil fuels per person and produces more carbon pollution per person than any major economy in the world.

In short, the Biden targets are not a fundamental draw-down from fossil-fuel-based production and the fossil-fuel infrastructure of the U.S. And these inadequate targets are not even binding or enshrined in law!

Bob Avakian, "Not fit caretakers of the earth"

2. Bullshit carbon emissions accounting.

When the U.S. says they are going to reduce emissions in the range of 50-52 percent, greenhouse gas emissions caused by their genocidal military machine is not even in the scope of discussion, and completely untouched. The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world, and a key pillar of U.S. imperial domination. Nor do they include the emissions caused by their cheap-labor/pollution-intensive global supply chains of exploitation—a network of companies in other countries that send products like iPhones back to the U.S. for assembly, packaging and sale.

The bedrock principle of Biden’s climate program is what is called “zero net emissions.” This means that carbon can be pumped into the atmosphere as long as it is based on promises of carbon “removal” at some far-off date. Meanwhile, the carbon is doing its damage in the atmosphere. Just as bad, the whole idea is based on completely unproven technologies to suck up and store carbon emissions. So this is NOT zero emissions (which means no carbon emitted); it is not the radical transition away from fossil fuels that is needed to deal with catastrophic changes in climate and threats to biodiversity. “Zero net emissions” is a dangerous fantasy and deception that prolongs fossil-fuel production and consumption.

Constitution For The New Socialist Republic In North America cover 400

 

How Would a Revolutionary Socialist Society Address the Environmental Emergency?

Excerpts from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America

  • A. The Economy.
  • B. The Environment.
  • Article IV. The Economy and Economic Development in the New Socialist Republic in North America.
  • Section 5. The System of Public-State Ownership is the Foundation of the New Socialist Economy.

3. When Biden says the U.S. must become “the global leader” in combating climate change, he means that U.S. imperialism must respond to and utilize the climate crisis to maintain U.S. dominance in a world imperialist order that is facing new threats: environmental and geopolitical.

The Earth Day summit was the first major diplomatic offensive of the liberal imperialist Biden administration. Under the fascist, climate-denying Trump, the U.S. moved away from global negotiations and agreements. Meanwhile, rising imperialist China has been moving to extend and cement its global influence. This summit represented a move by U.S. imperialism under Biden to drape itself in the mantle of “climate concern,” to regain and reassert U.S. “soft-power” authority in the global arena, and to set its terms for how this environmental emergency will be responded to. Not in the interests of world humanity and towards saving the planet—but, rather, preserving U.S. dominance in the system of capitalist-imperialist property rights, profit, and plunder that is destroying the planet.

This Revolution special issue focuses on the environmental emergency that now faces humanity and Earth’s ecosystems. In this issue we show:

  • the dimensions of the emergency...
  • the source of its causes in the capitalist system, and the impossibility of that system solving this crisis...
  • a way out and way forward for humanity—a revolutionary society in which we could actually live as custodians of nature, rather than as its plunderers.

As part of this issue see: Some Key Principles of Socialist Sustainable Development

Also available in brochure format (downloadable PDF)

State of Emergency Environment

 

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CLOCK IS TICKING...

ONLY REAL REVOLUTION GIVES US THE REAL CHANCE TO SAVE THE PLANET

DONATE to revcom.us
DONATE to the revolution.

From the genocide in Gaza, to the growing threat of world war between nuclear powers, to escalating environmental devastation… the capitalist-imperialist system ruling over us is a horror for billions around the world and is tearing up the fabric of life on earth. Now the all-out battle within the U.S. ruling class, between fascist Republicans and war criminal Democrats, is coming to a head—likely during, or before, the coming elections—ripping society apart unlike anything since the Civil War.

Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has developed a strategy to prepare for and make revolution. He’s scientifically analyzed that this is a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible, and has laid out the sweeping vision, solid foundation and concrete blueprint for “what comes next,” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

The website revcom.us follows and applies that leadership and is essential to all this. We post new materials from BA and curate his whole body of work. We apply the science he’s developed to analyze and expose every key event in society, every week. Revcom.us posts BA’s timely leadership for the revcoms (revolutionary communists), including his social media posts which break this down for people every week and sometimes more. We act as a guiding and connecting hub for the growing revcom movement nationwide: not just showing what’s being done, but going into what’s right and what’s wrong and rapidly learning—and recruiting new people into what has to be a rapidly growing force.

Put it this way: there will be no revolution unless this website not only “keeps going” but goes up to a whole different level!

So what should you give to make 2024 our year—a year of revolution?
Everything you possibly can!
DONATE NOW to revcom.us and get with BA and the revcoms!

Your donations contribute to:

  • Promotion of BA on social media and the Bob Avakian Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show
  • Strengthen revcom.us as an accessible, secure, robust website able to rise to the challenge of meeting the extraordinary demands of navigating the storms and preparing for revolution in this pivotal, unprecedented year
  • Fund revcoms to travel to national “hotspots,” where extreme contradictions are pulling apart the fabric of this country and creating the possibility of wrenching an actual revolution out of this intensifying situation
  • Expand the reach and coverage of revcom.us
  • Printing and distribution of key Revcom materials including the Declaration “WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM” and the Proclamation, “WE ARE THE REVCOMS (Revolutionary Communists)