Later this month, on September 21st, the largest climate march in history will step off in New York City. The march marks not only the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the climate movement, but also is the potential beginning of a new beginning in broader struggle for justice.
The connection between the environmental movement and the broader anti-oppression movement is obvious given the ever-growing number of looming ecological catastrophes. Without immediate and far-reaching action—without replacing the profit-first system with a needs-first system—climate catastrophe may devastate most life on Earth. Given our current course, Earth will be 2ºC warmer than before the industrial revolution. At that point, climate change will be considered runaway: Tundra loss, desertification, ocean acidification and other phenomena will spontaneously pick up pace. These are the factors which normally keep global temperatures in check, but the changes caused by such a drastic rise in temperatures would mean their effects would fade.
Those who are already the most oppressed would be the first to suffer and the last able to adapt. The United States alone produces enough food to feed the world. If the United States has let people around the world starve for decades already, why would its millionaire politicians have a change of heart if food is even more scarce for people in the developing world as species loss, ocean acidification and rain scarcity reduce fishing and agricultural output? The legacy of colonialism means the dividing lines between those who are more insulated from food scarcity and those who will face hunger first are drawn along race, among other lines. For this reason, environmental degradation is in effect environmental racism.
Though the movements combating environmental racism and climate change are usually treated as separate, their overlap is obvious, particularly given the mammoth scale of a climate change catastrophe. The merger of these and many other types of environmental organizing—from opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline to pressuring universities to divest from oil companies to stopping asthma-causing pollution—is one of the most significant developments coming from the September 21staction.
Between them, they share economics as common ground. Endless profit-seeking and competition drives polluting industrial practices when the technology exists to produce without the same environmental impacts. Endless profit-seeking and competition force food producers to convert agricultural product to ethanol as people starve around the world. In other words, these movements are in essence anti-capitalist in effect, particularly in light of climate change, which aggravates all other negative environmental effects.
Unity and a clear anti-capitalist orientation form the bedrock of an effective environmental movement. Unity is necessary because small, individual-but-related actions cannot have the effect of a broad movement representing many voices. Five finger-pokes at capitalist destruction can never have the same effect as a well-placed punch. Without a clear anti-capitalist orientation, the struggle for climate justice blinds itself to the root causes of environmental destruction, risking modest solutions to urgent, radical problems.
While many different environmental struggles will march together this month, this unity is only a kernel of the kind of unity necessary for a fighting movement, for a revolutionary movement. Moreover, there is no guarantee without dedicated action by the revolutionary socialists that the movement will assume an explicitly anti-capitalist character.
The September 21 march will set the tone for the movement to follow. It is up to the most advanced sections of the movement—those objectively supporting unity and elevating the struggle to focus its efforts on the uprooting of climate injustice’s causes—to hone, refine and fortify the movement for climate justice. Our work begins later this month. Without dedication, sacrifice, consistent and conscious effort by those sections, climate catastrophe looms unchecked.
The question facing people around the world is this: How will September 21 2014 be remembered—as the birthday of a revolutionary climate movement, or as a missed opportunity?
