We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.

—Bob Avakian 

PART 1: A Movement Steered Towards Complicity with Potential Extinction, A Refusal to Confront the Reality and Dynamics of Capitalism-Imperialism

I. INTRODUCTION

The climate crisis and larger environmental emergency are accelerating rapidly. Huge swaths of the globe have been engulfed in wildfires. North America, Africa, and Asia experienced their hottest months of July on record. In late August of this year, the world's oceans were hotter than ever previously recorded. 

The catastrophes and suffering caused and exacerbated by global warming are intensifying and spreading. 

On September 2, the United Nations announced that Earth's global temperature over “the next few years” is almost certainly to be 1.5 degrees Centigrade (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above global temperature at the start of the Industrial Revolution. This rise in temperature is a kind of tipping point past which more irreversible damage is being baked into the trajectory of our planet...with greater likelihood of Earth becoming uninhabitable. 

Meanwhile, global oil and natural gas production reached record levels in 2025, with the U.S. leading the pack. For all the warnings of climate scientists and the reality of ecosystem loss, fossil fuels continue to provide some 80 percent of the world's energy consumption. 

The carbon produced by the burning of fossil fuels traps heat in the atmosphere. This is the main driver of the rise in global temperatures. These carbon emissions continue to rise. This is so because industrial manufacturing, electricity, heating, and transport in the world-capitalist system remain heavily reliant on these fuels. And the warmer oceans caused by rising temperatures, along with the reckless clearing of the planet's forests for commercial-industrial purposes, is robbing the planet of natural systems for absorbing carbon. 

Obscenely, governments the world over are failing to meet, or flat-out abandoning, pledges to reduce carbon emissions rapidly and move decisively away from fossil fuel. 

Yet in the face of all this, a once-robust climate movement in the U.S. is barely to be seen. It has been largely passive and disoriented over the past few years. This is politically and morally unacceptable. 

There are multiple reasons for this. But a major one is that, over the years, prominent thought-leaders of this movement—like Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, and Rebecca Solnit—and allied “political leaders” (like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez) have pushed the climate movement in a disastrous and reprehensible direction. 

These leaders have promoted a kind of “magical thinking” about the nature of the capitalist-imperialist system. They would have those involved in the climate movement believe that this system can be pressured and brought to its senses...and reformed in the direction of the needed “green-energy transition.”

Truth be told, these leaders seem to believe more in the capacities of this system than even the capitalist-imperialists who preside over it. 

And despite the no-doubt sincere intentions of some of these movement leaders, the mode of thinking and political program these leaders have knowingly chosen and promoted is complicit in the potential extinction of humanity...IF we allow it be so. 

There is an alternative—a very difficult, but reality-based and possible, alternative—that gives us the only real chance to “save the planet.” And that is to make a real revolution to overthrow this system and forge a fundamentally different economic system and form of political rule in which the protection and repair of the planet are integrally bound up with the emancipation of humanity.

A central theme of this essay-polemic is this. If we are going to be scientific about climate change and act commensurately, we not only need to grasp the science of climate change. We also need to be scientific about society and confront the reality of the system that we live under and that rules over us: capitalism-imperialism. 

This is a matter of epistemology—of going deeply for the truth as opposed to blinding oneself to or distorting reality for political convenience. It is a matter of acting with a morality founded on a scientific epistemology—of “doing the right thing” to effect the necessary, radical change in the face of enormous challenges. Fighting for this approach is a decisive part of winning people to revolution.

If you want to keep your head down and play out your lives under the shadow and the increasingly horrific reality of human extinction and massive destruction of nature, then read no further. But if you are willing to come to grips with the utterly systemic character of this crisis and what must be done to end it...then read on.

II. POISONOUS MAGICAL THINKING, IN THREE ACTS 

Magical Thinking, Act 1: Distort Reality to Tell a More “Positive and Hopeful” Story

Donald Trump came into office in 2017 proclaiming that global warming is a hoax, and that climate scientists and climate activists are fear-mongers and doomsayers. The Trump fascists were rejecting (and seeking to bury!) the unassailable evidence in the reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific studies that have been correctly sounding the alarm and calling for urgent measures and bold policies to restructure economies away from fossil fuels. 

A section of activists, personified by the then-young climate warrior Greta Thunberg, was righteously raising the decibel level of alarm. They were calling out the lying and abject failure of governing politicians, institutions, and official climate summits, and calling for more concerted and radical action. 

But a pernicious view was simultaneously being propagated by some of the climate movement's thought leaders. This was the notion that the movement was losing potential allies, and turning off broader middle forces, by being too “alarmist,” coming off “too negative,” and not offering “practical hope.” 

These voices were not denying the existential character of the climate crisis. But they were denying the underlying dynamics of capitalism-imperialism—and the barriers to environmentally sustainable economies and society that are built in to this system that rules over humanity. The upbeat and uplifting story they wanted to (and want to) tell is that this same system that is hurtling humanity and the planet towards disaster can somehow be put on a positive course that could begin to turn things around. 

This magical thinking pivoted on calls for a “Green New Deal”: government-sponsored initiatives to transition the economy to renewable energy within the framework of the existing system. In her writings at the time, author-activist Naomi Klein was pointing to America's World War 2 industrial mobilization and its post-war Marshall Plan (U.S.-orchestrated funding for West European reconstruction) as worthy models for massive-scale, urgent government action—never mind that all this was in the service of U.S. imperialist domination of the world!

The message of “environmental hope” was on full display in a 2019 animated film, A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Naomi Klein and The Intercept website were involved in its promotion (the film was co-written and narrated by Ocasio-Cortez, a champion in Congress of the Green New Deal). 

The film was presented as a “thought experiment” envisioning what the United States would look like if it enacted the Green New Deal. It told a story of activism leading to massive funding for large-scale social and ecological transformation—leading to a complete overhaul of the energy grid that achieves net-zero emissions of carbon, federal job guarantees, and health care for all. 

It is a fantasy world constructed on its own form of denial-ism: denying the fundamental nature of capitalism and the growing strength and initiative of fascism in power and throughout U.S. society. This denial-ism disarms people theoretically and politically...and actually works against understanding and acting on an existential climate emergency that is bound up with capitalism. 

Now no one should succumb to despair. But falsely placed hope is not the antidote. Which brings us to the Biden climate legislation of 2022. 

Magical Thinking, Act 2: The Inflation Reduction Act as the Climate Fix of Our Lifetimes

The Inflation Reduction Act was the formal name of the signature climate legislation initiated by the Biden administration. Bill McKibben was an enthusiastic proponent, and warned that if we didn't fight to get it passed, “we won't get another chance.” 

The Biden climate bill became a rallying cry and organizing fulcrum for much of the climate movement. The allure of power on top “doing the right thing” (if pressured and supported) channeled and sapped considerable energy. The Sunrise Movement of youth activists that had grown out of campus fossil-fuel divestment campaigns focused energy on lobbying and protesting on behalf of passing this legislation, mobilizing at the state and federal levels. In short order, Sunrise became an appendage to the Democratic Party. 

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed by Congress in 2022. But this legislation was/is utterly out of sync with what is actually needed to address climate change, not least the U.S.'s preponderant role in causing and perpetuating the climate crisis. The legislation was stamped with the interests of U.S. imperialism through and through. A full analysis, written at the time of the passage of the IRA, can be found HERE. To highlight a few key elements:

A) There was no mandate—no institutional charge—in the IRA to quickly phase down, much less phase out, fossil fuels. That was off the table! The thrust of the IRA was to financially “incentivize” (through subsidies, loans, tax credits) the limited development and adoption of renewable energy. The guiding strategy of the Biden program was to build out renewable energy on the foundation of fossil fuels in the U.S. economy. 

B) The promotion of renewable energy in Biden's IRA—as was the case with solar-power support in the Obama years—has been closely bound up with the intensifying great-power imperial rivalry with capitalist-imperialist China. The Biden administration was recognizing the growing importance of solar power in the world imperialist economy and aiming to bolster U.S. capabilities along with the competitiveness of the U.S. auto industry and its ability to produce and sell electric vehicles in a global electric car market that China has since come to massively dominate. 

The ruling class of China regards solar power both as an economic engine and as a long-term global strategic asset. China today controls well over 80 percent of the global solar-power supply chain. This gives China enormous capacity to shape the emerging energy infrastructure of the global South. These countries become dependent on China for parts, technical support, and finance—which in turn provides China with geopolitical leverage. Countries worried about being cut off from this global supply chain may, for instance, become less likely to deepen military-security ties with the U.S.^*

The IRA was in part a response to this—again, to promote solar and wind capacity within the framework of fossil fuel dominance. It was also subsidizing domestic semiconductor production in the U.S. in order to shorten supply chains—to serve economic and technological and military contention with imperialist rival China, and to enhance war-fighting capacity. 

C) This magical thinking about Biden's climate legislation papered over the force of fascism in U.S. society. The powerful fascist section of the U.S. ruling class led by Donald Trump is aiming to remove any and all impediments to full-throttle fossil fuel. 

The second Trump administration has gutted government incentives for wind and solar power and for electric vehicles; it has been buying back offshore wind-power leases; is opening new oil fields; has expanded production of the dirtiest of all fossil fuels—coal; and has laid waste to environmental regulations. It has also slashed federal government support for climate research, as part of its war on science and ideological program to institutionalize ignorance. 

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The “thought leaders” pointed to in this polemic played a big part in taking a movement that had been filling cities with defiant youth protesters ten years ago, and led them to put their energies into reforming a system that cannot be reformed. Ten years later, there is not much of a movement to speak of, the world has plunged deeper toward the abyss with no end in sight, and yet these “leaders” continue to find new bottles for their delusional wine. 

Magical Thinking, Act 3: The Fallacy of the Capitalist Market Propelling A Green Energy Transition... Of Cheaper, Accessible Renewable Energy Beating Out Fossil Fuels 

As the savage and criminal U.S.-Israeli war on Iran was leading to massive disruption of oil and natural gas shipments out of the Middle East in the spring of 2026, Bill McKibben wrote (and was widely quoted): “sunlight travels 93 million miles to reach Earth, but none of those miles pass through the Strait of Hormuz.” 

Sounds utterly compelling and straightforward. But appearances are deceiving. Because it turns out that sunlight—converted into solar power—has to “pass through” the economic and commodity relations of capitalism in order to take effect on a large scale. 

A) The Constraints of Profitability and the Anarchy of Capitalist Production

For years, Bill McKibben, Rebecca Solnit, and other influential climate voices have been trumpeting the “good news” that the rapid cheapening of solar and wind power is making a complete transition away from fossil fuels technologically and economically ever-more feasible and attractive to investors. 

Solnit, in a 2021 London Guardian commentary, went so far as to share prognoses that “the end of oil is near.” McKibben makes the fullest case for the supposedly irresistible rise of solar power in his 2025 book Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and A Fresh Chance for Civilization. He adds to the economic argument for solar power that it is also a “democratizing” force because of its often-local, hands-on, and decentralized character. This is magical thinking taken to new delusional levels. 

So let's look at what has actually been unfolding. It is certainly true that solar power has come down steeply in price over the last 15 years. The manufacturing costs of components, along with installation and operating costs of solar and wind, have fallen. But consider these sobering numbers: 

In 2000, fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal) accounted for 85 percent of the U.S.'s total energy consumption (electricity, heat, transport, heavy industry). In 2025, fossil fuels accounted for 82 percent of total energy consumption. Not exactly a sea change. (Data here and in paragraphs below from U.S. Energy Information Administration and International Energy Agency.) 

In other words, despite the cheapening of solar and wind-generated power and the huge expansion of renewable energy capacity, the share of renewable energy in total energy consumption of global electricity has been fairly constant over the last 25 years.

Now what has substantially changed—and McKibben is correct about this—is that renewable energy, especially wind and solar, has greatly increased its share of the electricity generated in the U.S.—growing from nine percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2025. But that is only a quarter of electricity generated, and electricity accounts for just over 35 percent of total energy consumption in the U.S.—again, taking in industrial manufacturing, transport, aviation, etc.—that is still dominated by fossil fuels. 

In absolute terms, both fossil-fuel production and renewable capacity are expanding. But globally, fossil fuels still account for over 80 percent (!) of total energy consumption. Heat-trapping greenhouse emissions continue at unacceptably dangerous levels. And the habitability of the planet is ever-more threatened. 

No Magic of the Market

We are not witnessing—there is no “magic of the market” leading to—the large-scale retirement of fossil fuels and the large-scale displacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy. That is urgently required, and has been repeatedly called for by climate scientists, to even begin to confront the climate crisis. But instead...solar and wind power are being added on to an energy base in the U.S. still dominated by fossil fuel! 

And now something else is compounding the picture: AI data centers. A breakneck, uncontrolled, and environmentally-insane investment spree has been underway in the U.S. over the last five years. Think about it. There is no conscious, rational plan guiding the development of AI. There is no long-term environmental assessment regulating the development of AI. It is the competitive, anarchic drive of capital setting the terms. 

The main fuel-power source of electricity for these data centers is natural gas—which is currently generating 40 percent of the electricity for these data centers. But this is only the beginning. A massive surge in natural gas infrastructure is now underway. At the rate at which AI and AI data centers are expanding, it is projected by Bloomberg investment research that by 2035, AI data centers in the U.S. will be the fifth largest consumer of natural gas in the world (after China, Russia, Iran, and the U.S. itself)! 

Moreover, fossil fuel is deeply embedded in U.S. imperialism's vast and entwined global supply chains of global exploitation: from the garment factories in Bangladesh, to the parts and components subcontracting in East Asia that go into the manufacture of cell-phones, to the raw materials and minerals extracted from hellish mines in Congo and other parts of Africa. That doesn't show up in the U.S.'s standard official greenhouse gas reporting.

The Logic of a System

Production under capitalism is carried out for profit—not for social need or protection of the planet. And investment decisions in different spheres of economic activity are guided by whether this or that investment will yield a competitive return. 

Clearly, if we look at the still-fossil-fuel-based energy grid of the planet, the mere existence of a superior, more climate-friendly technology is not what decides investment decisions in the capitalist world system. Nor do private, competing blocs of capital invest in new technology based simply on how cheap that technology is to produce. Cost and price unto themselves do NOT decide investment decisions in the capitalist mode of production. 

The key criterion is profitability, the expected rate of return. And the brute fact is that renewable energy is not as profitable as fossil fuel.^**

The fossil-fuel sector has the “competitive advantage” of a deeply-established infrastructure for drilling and refining, and pipelines for distributing, this form of energy. It operates on the basis of massive output of oil or gas—and this spreads out the costs of these investments. At the same time, there is a profit-based compulsion to produce and sell more in order to recoup the cost of these investments—and a compulsion to expand output to protect and gain market share against rivals.

The problem is not “greed” of oil billionaires or corrupt ties between the major oil companies and major politicians. The problem is the nature and logic of capitalism. 

B) Oil is not just another input into production. Oil is a strategic commodity. 

Capitalism-imperialism is an international system of production based on the exploitation of wage-labor. It is a system in which massive agglomerations of capital compete for market share. It is a system in which the major imperial powers vie with each other for control over regions, sources of raw materials, denying others access, and seeking dominance in new technologies. 

Control over oil and natural gas reserves and production, of refining capacity, of sea lanes for oil and natural gas transport plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the U.S. global empire. Further, the dollar plays a special role in world finance and in the global oil market—and this is a vital prop of American empire. The U.S. military presence and U.S. aggression in the Middle East are the enforcement mechanism. All this enables U.S. imperialism to exert enormous leverage over the world economy. 

Keep in mind that the U.S. military is the single largest institutional consumer of oil in the world.

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To step back. Capitalism-imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, has developed historically in a certain way, along a certain energy path—especially since the end of World War 2. This has resulted in an economic framework in which fossil fuels are foundational to the profitable functioning and strategic requirements of U.S. imperialism. 

Meanwhile...Earth is getting hotter faster! 

III. You Cannot Effectively Act on the Climate Crisis and Environmental Emergency Within the Confines of the Capitalist System...A Radically Different System Is Needed

As emphasized in this polemic, if we are going to be scientific about climate change and act commensurately, we not only need to grasp the science of climate change, but must also be scientific about society and the system that we live under and that rules over us: capitalism-imperialism. 

This system has a basic nature and is governed by certain dynamics. That is what is driving global warming and environmental catastrophe. And this system cannot be reformed into something other than what it is. 

The foundation of the capitalist economic system is privately-owned, competing blocs of capital that exploit laborers worldwide. 

• It is an economic system whose units of ownership are driven—as a matter of competitive survival—by the quest for profit and more profit. 
• It is a system that interacts with nature as a “cost-free” input to be poured into production for profit.
• And the broader societal and environmental effects of production-for-profit are not part of the “cost calculation” of these competing capitals. 

Under capitalism-imperialism, there is no society-wide means, no direct mechanism, no governing power to set rational priorities...to allocate resources according to social need and environmental sustainability...and guide economic and social development. 

This is a system whose political structures and processes enforce and reinforce its ruthless exploitation, murderous oppression, and massive destruction of people and the environment. To put it another way: capitalism-imperialism is not only the primary cause of the climate crisis, it is also the barrier to acting on this crisis in the interests of humanity and preservation of the planet.

But Bill McKibben, Rebecca Solnit, Naomi Klein and other “thought-leaders” of the climate movement have propagated reformist programs and modes of thinking that contribute to keeping people locked within the confines of this system. They speak of climate science but are utterly unscientific and anti-scientific when it comes to understanding the deep cause of the climate crisis in the nature and workings of this system...and recognizing (that is, refusing to recognize) that the necessary way forward requires as a first step...getting rid of this capitalist-imperialist system. 

The kind of “magical thinking” in the climate movement critiqued here is a major obstacle to people coming to grips with reality as it is, and as it must and can be transformed. This mode of thinking traffics in pragmatism—casting about for and extolling seemingly “practical” solutions, like the Inflation Reduction Act. Or arguing that if we “change the narrative” and put on a “hopeful” face about solar power conquering the market—we can build an ever-bigger base of support for legislative and electoral solutions, that is, dead-end solutions.

A core element of their methodology is to “cherry-pick” examples of solar power showing its promise, like a month in which solar provided over half of electricity in California, or Australia providing three hours of free solar power every day to households. Very seductive data-points—but out of touch with the reality of the deeper structure and dynamics of capitalism addressed here. 

This refusal to confront the reality of this system leads McKibben to ridiculous assertions such as this: “Every time a solar panel goes up, every time an EV drives out of the showroom...every time this happens, the political power of the fossil fuel industry incrementally decreases. We're going to come to, at some point, a place where their political power is broken.” WTF?!? 

But this is worse than erroneous thinking. It is worse than false consolation. It is complicity with a system that is force-marching humanity to the abyss and Earth to planetary ruin. And this “magical thinking” and pragmatism have contributed to a climate movement that has become disoriented and “barely to be seen.” 

Here's the cold truth about fossil fuels and global warming. To seriously deal with climate change, you would have to put the oil and natural gas companies and the entire capitalist-imperialist class,“out of business”—strip them of their political and economic power and seize their assets. It's just that basic.

For that to happen, and for society to interact with nature in a sustainable way, requires a socialist revolution—a revolution to overthrow this system, to create a new state power in order to socialize ownership of the major means of production and forge a planned socialist economy. 

There IS a reality-based alternative to the madness and destructiveness of this system. There IS a whole new way to live, a radically different and far-better system to free humanity from all exploitation and oppression and to interact with nature in a rational and sustainable way. The vision and blueprint are set forth in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America authored by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. As to why this capitalist-imperialist system is steering people to the abyss and what is required, see Bob Avakian, HUMANITY ON THE BRINK: A Forced March Into the Abyss, or Forging a Way Forward Out of the Madness? 

How the new revolutionary socialist society would tackle the environmental emergency—the monumental challenges it would face and the unprecedented transformative possibilities this new system would open up—is the subject of Part 2, coming in October.