With 70.000 on the national climate demonstration in Brussels on 10 October this was an impressive event. It was the biggest protest in the country of this year and last. In recent months, the consequences of the climate crisis have become very real: from floods in Wallonia to fires and heat waves elsewhere. At the same time, the pandemic and the lockdowns have amply demonstrated that changes in individual behavior are insufficient to prevent climate catastrophe. We have no time to lose: we need a system change!
With 70,000 people, this climate and environmental protest has once again put the issue at the top of the agenda. But the 2019 movement has taught us that mass mobilisations do not simply bring about the necessary change. Achieving it requires a relentless struggle against capitalism to overthrow this system and replace it with a democratically and rationally planned economy. In this way, existing resources and opportunities would be mobilised to meet the needs of the majority of the population in an environmentally sustainable way. This is what we mean with socialism.
The Active Left Students (ALS) and the ROSA Campaign formed a combative block on the demo that spoke out against capitalism and for a socialist alternative. We raised funds to send 100 young people to Glasgow in November for the protests during the UN climate summit. We will be joining a delegation from our international, International Socialist Alternative (ISA). Capitalism is organised internationally, our resistance must be too!
We distributed a leaflet with the 10-point program of the Active Left Students and the ROSA Campaign. At our stands and in the discussions with our militants, we saw a great openness for our socialist answers. We sold over 170 copies of our monthly paper. Do you agree with our proposals? Support our Glasgow Fund, contact us to join us!
The pandemic and the floods have demonstrated the crucial importance of public services funded to meet the challenges. Budget cuts have taken their toll, leaving us helpless in the face of the climate crisis. We need massive emergency public financing of health care, civil protection, fire services and other public services.
The green transition must not be used as an excuse to tax ordinary people. What we need is more, better and free green public transport.
The scientific community has been sounding the alarm for decades but has been ignored. Major investments in green technologies have only been made if they are profitable in the short term for shareholders. Let’s free scientific research from the logic of profit! With the abolition of patents and massive public investment, scientific research will be able to flourish on the basis of collaboration, not competition.
Urban and regional planning must be thoroughly reviewed in the interest of the inhabitants, not of property developers or large construction companies. We need a public plan for the renovation and construction of social housing on a mass scale and a public plan for the insulation of buildings on a neighbourhood by neighbourhood basis.
The insurance companies only want to pay out 590 million out of between 1.3 and 1.7 billion euros of insured flood damage in Wallonia. Between 2012 and 2019, they made a profit of more than 15 billion euros in Belgium thanks to the premiums paid by the insured, which are threatened with further increases. All affected people must be compensated, insured or not. The entire insurance sector must be expropriated and democratically controlled and managed in such a way that it stops robbing the population and makes the necessary funds available for compensation and ecological infrastructure work.
As the recent 3M industrial pollution scandal in Antwerp has shown, multinationals don’t care about the current (already insufficient!) environmental legislation and the risks for workers and local residents. 5 companies in Belgium emit as much greenhouse gas as all the households in the country. You can’t control what you don’t own: climate criminals must be expropriated to stop doing harm!
The energy sector functions according to the dictatorship of the shareholders: polluting energies are still used despite the ecological emergency. Only by collectivising the entire sector under the democratic control and management of the workers can we release the huge resources we need for a rapid energy transition.
It is not up to the workers to pay for the ecological transition. Jobs in polluting industries must be converted into green, socially useful jobs with good wages and working conditions. We can face the economic and ecological crises by sharing the available work between everyone through the 30-hour working week, without loss of pay and with a reduction in the pace of work.
The climate crisis hits the poorest hardest and increases inequality. Climate refugees are added to those fleeing wars and misery. The right and the extreme right make them scapegoats to protect the rule of the capitalist class. We must be united to defeat it. The fight for the climate must be based on international solidarity and the rejection of all forms of discrimination and oppression (racism, sexism, LGBTQI-phobia,…).
Green capitalism is a lie. Private ownership of the means of production and exchange is the major obstacle blocking the green transition. The key sectors of the economy (finance, pharmaceuticals, agri-food, distribution chains,…) must be taken out of private hands and placed under democratic management and control of the working class. In this way, we could put an end to the wastefulness inherent in the chaos of the market economy and enjoy a rational economy based on what is necessary for humanity and nature: a democratically planned socialist economy. Youth and workers: in solidarity in the struggle for a democratic socialist world!
