Map: NOAA, National Centers for Environmental Information
For many decades our planet, Earth, has been warming, principally due to the burning of fossil fuel by the capitalist-imperialist system. But global warming has taken a leap. Every single day for the past year, ocean temperatures reached record heights for that day.1 Every month, for the last 11 months, the temperature of the air has been on average hotter in that month than ever before in recorded history. Climate change has a relentless and intensifying grip on our planet.
Climate scientists have long said that it would be very dangerous if the overall temperature of the planet reached sustained highs for many years that are 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees in the Fahrenheit scale used in the U.S.) above the levels of the mid-1800s when industrialization began to take place on a major scale. Over the past 12 months, average global temperatures have been 1.58 degrees Celsius above those levels. This is not yet sustained for many years—but what is happening now is extremely ominous.
A marine biologist on the recent rise in global temperatures: “It’s global boiling, not just global warming.”
This rising heat has enormous impact on the planet and its people. Hotter oceans mean that the ocean water holds less oxygen, suffocating sea life. Hotter air temperatures are killing people across the planet already, right now. Climate change is posing an urgent need for fundamental changes and urgent action, at a time when the capitalist-imperialist order is already under intense stress and tearing apart.
Venezuelan migrants walk across the Darién Gap from Colombia into Panama, October 15, 2022 Photo: AP
Texas National Guard corral migrants after they breached barriers set up on the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, March 21, 2024. Photo: AP
Climate change combined with imperialism’s devastation of the countries of the Global South through reactionary war and exploitation is driving many millions of people to the imperialist citadels seeking a place where they can survive. Those who manage to survive the dangerous treks—facing death on the seas or in scorching deserts—are met with harsh repression and fascist mobilization that deny their right to exist.
We Will Soon Be at the “Very Limit of What Human Beings Can Tolerate”
It is the average temperature of the planet that is setting records—some places are cooler than average, some much warmer. But in just the first five days of May, 70 countries or territories broke heat records: Thailand, Vietnam, India, the Philippines, Mexico, and many others.
Removing the body of a howler monkey that died amid extremely high temperatures in Tecolutilla, Tabasco state, Mexico, May 21, 2024. Photo: AP
In the African country of Mali, one city reached 119 degrees, which may be the highest temperature ever recorded in Africa. This level of heat is deadly. People's liver and kidneys fail, and their brains swell. Here a welder cools off with water in Bamako, Mali, April 18, 2024. Photo: AP/Baba Ahmed
Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist based in Africa, said, “We are used to heat, but this level of extreme we have never experienced. We will soon be at the very edge, the very limit of what human beings can actually tolerate.”2
Massive Destruction of Coral Reefs
The extraordinary ocean heat has caused the largest major bleaching of coral reefs, which are vital to ocean life around the world. Bleaching occurs when corals become so stressed from rising heat that the algae that lives in their tissue, serving as the main food source for the corals and giving them their bright colors, dies. Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that nearly two-thirds of coral reefs globally have been damaged just in the past year—and this percentage is rising.
Coral outcrop on Flynn Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef, July 24, 2010. Credit: Toby Hudson/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
A major coral bleaching event on part of the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: February 2016, courtesy of Oregon State University CC BY-SA 2.0
Coral reefs are beautiful, and they also nurture an estimated quarter of ocean species at some point during their life cycles. Without coral reefs many fish and other sea life would die.
Beyond the coral reefs, the heat is doing tremendous harm to all ocean life. Hot water holds less oxygen, and this kills especially small sea organisms that are food to fish and sea mammals. "It's global boiling, not just global warming," said a marine biologist from Thailand.
A System Problem
Year after year, climate scientists present the evidence that Earth is warming dangerously and that the burning of fossil fuel must be drastically reduced... more people die and more of nature is destroyed as a result of climate change… the governments of the planet gather for “climate talks”…. And year after year, the production, transport, and burning of fossil fuels continue to rise.
This is because fossil fuels are a crucial part of the foundation of the global capitalist-imperialist system. And those running this system will not—and cannot—stop the use of these fossil fuels. Climate change is a SYSTEM problem. For a deep look into why this is so, and how the U.S. plays an outsize role in climate change, go here for an important exposure by Raymond Lotta on Biden’s imperialist climate bill legislation.
A system that prioritizes profits for capitalist enterprises and geostrategic domination of the globe above whether Earth will be habitable for human beings is a system that we can no longer allow to continue poisoning the planet. As Bob Avakian put it in social media dispatch number 3:
How long can we let them continue to do what they do—to people here, to people all over the world? How long?! Why should we put up with this, when there is a whole other, much better way the world could be?
For a sweeping, and concrete, vision and plan for such a radically different and better world, get into the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by Bob Avakian, and We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System, a declaration from the revcoms (revolutionary communists).
From Revolution Number 19, "Yes, a radically different and much better world really is possible!" @BobAvakianOfficial:
This capitalist system that we are now forced to live under has long since developed into a system of international exploitation and oppression—the system of capitalism-imperialism. This system is long outmoded—long past its expiration date, long past any circumstances where it could play any positive role.
And here is the most profound and essential truth in all this: With all the very real horror this has involved, the development of human society, up to and through capitalism, has created the basis for a world without all those horrors. The basis exists now—the technology, knowledge and scientific foundation—to provide a decent and continually enriched life, in an all-around way, for everyone on this earth, without any oppressive divisions among human beings.
And the basis exists for human beings to finally become fit caretakers of the earth as a whole.
The fundamental force preventing this from happening is this system of capitalism-imperialism, which rules in this country and dominates the world. This system treats as the “private property,” of a few, the productive capacity and productive knowledge of human beings, which has been produced through the physical and intellectual labor of masses—of billions—of people. This system is driven by ruthless competition and conflict between different capitalist exploiters and different capitalist countries—leading to the ongoing, accelerating destruction of the environment, and the continual wars, posing a growing danger to the future and the very existence of humanity.
This system has to go—and be replaced by a system based on collective ownership by the people of the productive means that human beings everywhere have created—utilizing this for the benefit of human beings as a whole, now and for future generations: a socialist system, aiming for a communist world where relations of exploitation and oppression, and the culture that goes along with and reinforces those relations, will be eliminated and uprooted, and humanity can truly flourish—with a continually developing scientific approach, building on everything from the past that can contribute to this emancipating future, drawing from the rich diversity of human beings, enabling a flowering of all the people who make up the human race, in the context and on the foundation of cooperation and mutual benefit.
This is not just an impossible dream. It is a real possibility—a possibility that can be made a reality through the revolution that sweeps away the truly monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism and sets humanity on the road to communism.
