In 2021, the disastrous impact that climate change is already having became apparent for all to see. This year we have seen:

* The Amazon rainforest, the “lungs of the planet,” so degraded and burned down by this system that for the first time it is starting to release more carbon than it absorbs.¹

* Massive heat waves hit Greece, Turkey, the Pacific Northwest in the U.S., and many other places.² In Pakistan temperatures reached 124 degrees! Over a billion sea creatures in the Pacific Northwest were cooked to death by hot ocean water.

* Fires burned across northern Siberia. Siberia has the lowest winter temperatures on the planet outside of Antarctica but now summer temperatures reach 100 degrees F. “Zombie fires” smolder underground and never go out, emitting smoke from under the snow.³

* Add to this the hurricanes, massive floods, tornadoes and drought that have ravaged people around the world; the ice caps and glaciers melting; the growing mass extinction of species; the rising, warming and increasingly acidic oceans. Many thousands are already dying as a direct result. This is the world that NOW EXISTS and we are barreling down the tracks for much worse as long as capitalism-imperialism continues to rule.

In 2021, the science of human-caused climate change also became even more definitive and even more alarming. In August, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report made even more clear that climate change is happening NOW and accelerated in its effects, which are already quite bad, and can be observed in every region of the world—and that the planet is careening, if current trends continue, towards a catastrophic situation (see here and here).

The Existential Nature of What We Confront with Global Warming Came into Even Sharper Relief

What has been the response of world “leaders” to all this? Nearly all the world’s governments gathered at climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, bickering and fighting among themselves, reaching no agreements even in words to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions; to keep oil and coal in the ground; to transform human society’s relation to the planet. Instead, they produced phony claims of “advances”—a thin gloss over capitalist-imperialist business as usual. Raymond Lotta called this out for what it is, “an obscene, annual charade of empty promises and pledges.” In case there was any confusion, “climate leader” Joe Biden went home from Glasgow and led the way by announcing the largest ever sale of oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

In Glasgow, and countries throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets demanding the climate crisis be recognized and acted on as the existential emergency it is. This sense of urgency and desire to act, this sense of responsibility to all inhabitants of our planet, especially the exploited and oppressed in the global South who have borne the greatest burden of the climate emergency, is something to be welcomed and that people in far greater numbers must join and further energize. 

Meanwhile the streets were almost completely empty in the U.S.—the country most responsible for CO2 emissions [!!]—where all-too-many people tried to ignore the crisis humanity is facing and go on about their lives… or else wallowed in despair… or put their hope and energies into pressuring the Democrats to Build Back Better Bullshit and other dead-end illusions and pathetic non-solutions.

In 2022 all this must be urgently challenged and radically changed! Millions in this country and around the world need to wake up and confront reality: The environmental clock is ticking. This capitalist-imperialist system and its rulers are taking humanity over the cliff. Only revolution gives us the chance to save the planet.