The planet has experienced the hottest summer ever recorded in human history. Ocean temperatures off the coast of Florida reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit; high temperatures have been fueling devastating hurricanes and damaging coral reefs for some time. The last few months saw the second largest ice melt in the Arctic in recorded history. Massive wildfires killed many people in areas where they have rarely happened before.

All this is driven by the continued and relentless burning of fossil fuels by this capitalist-imperialist system, which is hurtling humanity and the planet toward climate catastrophe. Scientific reports have been saying for several decades that carbon emissions—the primary cause of global warming—need to be massively and quickly brought down. Yet carbon emissions of the United States and the imperialist world economy as a whole increased in 2022.

The Reality Behind the Fanfare

In a calculated bid to project an environmentally friendly image to those concerned about the accelerating climate catastrophe, Joe Biden announced in early September that he would block drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the largest and most pristine wilderness in the United States.

Point one: that this system would even consider drilling in this refuge is itself criminal.

Point two, and more immediately: this moratorium on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is nothing remotely close to what is needed to respond to climate change and the devastation of the natural world. Let us count some of the ways:

• Biden's announcement does NOT stop drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. The environmentally disastrous Willow Project that Biden greenlighted earlier this year continues. 
• Biden's announcement and broader energy measures do NOT stop drilling on U.S. government-owned lands inside the United States: for instance, the auctioning of oil and natural gas leases to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. 
• Biden's announcement does NOT in any way address a major fact: the U.S. leads the world, and aims to maintain its lead, in oil and gas production. The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and gas. Yes, renewable energy is growing, BUT the amount of oil and gas produced continues to rise (most of this is on land owned or controlled by the energy companies).
• Oh, and in August, Biden quietly reversed his commitment to stop funding oil and gas projects overseas in order to use oil as a weapon in its rivalry with imperialist Russia (by stepping up these projects, the U.S. hopes to lessen Russia's clout in world oil markets). 

So against this backdrop of a rapidly heating planet and escalating inter-imperialist rivalry in which fossil fuels play a crucial role... the Biden administration rolls out and touts a drilling ban in parts of the Alaskan Arctic. This is an attempt by the Biden administration to cynically portray itself (and the United States) as a climate champion with a (as an administration press release put it) “historic conservation and climate agenda” And it’s an attempt to maintain some legitimacy among people alarmed about what is happening to the planet, especially as the 2024 elections approach.

Yet even Biden's limited ban on drilling was too much for the Republican-fascists, causing them to foam at the mouth. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso called it part of Biden’s “war on American energy.” Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska called it “sickening.” The slightest restriction on oil drilling is viewed by these fascists as an existential threat to the world they aim to bring into being! 

Confronting Some Scientific Facts... and the Nature of Capitalism

Scientific reports over the last several years have said over and over that a starting point to preventing runaway and ever-more-difficult-to-reverse climate change is to stop immediately any new fossil fuel infrastructure or drilling. But Biden has approved new fossil fuel drilling projects. They do great harm—emitting more heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. 

At the same time, these projects are capitalist investments for profit. They are not something that can just be turned off. The construction of the wells and pipelines represents billions of dollars that are locked into the production and emission of greenhouse gases for decades. 

The U.S. capitalist-imperialist economy is driven to continue to use fossil fuels. As Raymond Lotta wrote last year in his important article Worse than Fine-Print Trickery... Biden's Imperialist Climate Bill: The Devil Lies in the Big Picture:

The U.S. capitalist-imperialist economy has historically evolved in a certain way. Its industrial system, its infrastructure, its technology depend on fossil fuel. All this capital that has been sunk into the economic structure—including massive fossil fuel investments in exploring, drilling, refining, etc.—must be profitably recouped by different private blocs of capital. The U.S.'s global supply chains, which pivot on the super-exploitation of labor in the Third World, also depend on fossil fuel.

The calls by scientists to take decisive action to stop fossil fuel production and emissions are evidence-based and utterly rational. But here is the rub: taking that kind of massive and urgent action collides with the profitability of U.S. capital... with the competitive position of U.S. imperialism in relation to its rivals... and with America's ability to dominate countries around the world. 

The cold reality is that Joe Biden never was an advocate for Earth and its climate. He was and is a representative of and ruling class guardian of U.S. capitalism-imperialism—which has been a disaster for the environment.

An Inconvenient but Liberating Truth

To act on the climate emergency, the existing capitalist-imperialist system and institutions of government in this country must be abolished and dismantled through revolution. Readers should go to the revcom.us environmental crisis resource page to get more into this. The entire economy must be transformed along the lines laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. As the proclamation WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM says, “The new socialist economy will not function on the basis of global supply chains of exploitation and plundering the planet’s resources. There will be systematic and ongoing attention to developing the economy on an environmentally sustainable basis.”

The real and fundamental choice before us is this: either we allow this capitalist-imperialist system to hurtle humanity and the planet to catastrophe... or we make revolution.