On December 13, the New York Times posted a powerful interactive photo-video montage: “Postcards from a World on Fire.” It graphically depicts some of the devastating impacts that climate change is already having on 193 countries. It’s a sobering and haunting display that is worth viewing: entire species being wiped out, cities inundated with water, superstorms, and apocalyptic forest fires. As you scroll through these “postcards” of a planet on fire, there appears a brief video that is an editorial from the Times. It is full of deadly false “solutions” and dangerous fantasies.

The video-editorial argues that despite decades of international summits, talks, conferences, and promises, “We have failed.” Fossil fuels continue to be burned, because, on the one hand, people are unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to stop the heating of the planet—and, on the other, there have not, until recently, been cost-effective alternatives to carbon-intensive technologies. But now the Times delivers what it describes as “fortunate” good news: “there’s money to be made from saving the planet” (yes, those are their exact words). This is supposed to happen through green innovation, green energy, and questionable, yet-to-be-proven carbon capture and storage technology. And this will be the ticket to solving the crisis.             

This is bullshit on so many counts. First off, we must address this “We” the New York Times refers to that “has failed” to stop hurling us closer and closer toward full scale planetary collapse. It is not “humanity” as a whole that has failed: It is the rulers of this system—the capitalist-imperialists and their political mouthpieces who have “Blah, blah, blah”-ed for DECADES while continuing to burn MORE coal, oil, and natural gas! “Humanity” is not in control right now. It is the dictates of capitalism—driven by the incessant need to expand or die, to extract more resources, to produce more products regardless of the effects this has on the planet—that has driven us to this precipice.

The basic scientific understanding of the role of fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) in causing global warming has been known for over three decades. In a rational economic system, drastic measures would have been taken many years ago to radically limit carbon emissions and move away from fossil fuels. But, and this gets at the crux of the question of “sacrifice,” under this capitalist system, it is profit that will not be sacrificed! And the competitive drive for profit is driving climate change.

The truth is that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels has been foundational to the profitable functioning of this system. There are the oil, gas, and energy companies themselves; the auto industry; and the financial sector that benefits. Fossil fuels are essential to the entire workings of the capitalist-imperialist economy: with its reliance on a global network of cheap labor, raw materials, and goods shipped from wherever it is cheapest to produce to wherever they get sold. Further, there is a tremendous amount of capital—financial investments, technology, land purchases—already “sunk,” or spent on fossil fuel infrastructure, drilling, etc., with future expected profits at stake.

And there is a global geopolitical and strategic dimension to fossil fuels under capitalism-imperialism. The genocidal U.S. military machine (ships, aircraft, bases, and more) enforcing America’s empire runs on fossil fuels. Control over shipping lanes that transport oil, pipelines that carry natural gas, refining and marketing of fossil fuels—this is a mechanism of great power domination over economies and markets.

As for the proposition that we should wait for and rely on this system—which is based on exploitation and profit (and which treats nature as something to plunder for profit)—that this system will save the planet by turning it into a money-making proposition… this is as absurd as it is obscene.¹

As for the mantra that there is “money to be made” in renewable energy. Yes, “money to be made” by gaining control of sources of lithium (essential to electric batteries) in a country like Bolivia where the “cost-effective” extraction of lithium ravages soil and contaminates water and air... yes, “money to be made,” as money is now being made, by savagely exploiting child labor in the cobalt mines of Congo (cobalt is also used in electric batteries).

There is no way under this system that the kind of full-scale transition away from fossil fuels required to prevent the worst effects of climate change—including the real possibility of wiping out the human species, or of destroying human society as we know it—could actually be implemented. There is no way, under this system, for renewable energy to be implemented that does not require life-crushing exploitation. There is, however, a real way out: Hope–on a SCIENTIFIC basis. Now is the time to be organizing for a real revolution that could ACTUALLY bring into being a radically different, socialist society, guided by ecological principles of sustainable development, a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, and international cooperation. But this requires BREAKING with this system’s false hopes and honeyed words—and getting with the new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian. System change—NOT climate change!