In 2019, International Socialist Alternative mobilised and participated wholeheartedly in the global wave of climate school strikes and protests worldwide. At its high point, 20th September 2019, 4,500 actions took place in over 150 countries that brought more than 4 million onto the streets! Led by the young generation and supported by broad parts of society, this movement evoked widespread debate about the climate crisis and even achieved some limited victories. Yet once again, the environmental disasters we experienced in the past months showed the urgent need for more. The climate battle is not over. But how can we win?
Our Movement Must be Anti-capitalist
Extreme weather conditions, infertile and rocky soils and even the pandemic: scientists predicted all of it. Yet for decades, governments and big business refused to develop a real plan for avoiding such disasters. Instead, they developed an enormous campaign to deny the climate crisis and to shift responsibility towards individuals using their governments. Multinationals invested in so-called “scientific research” that tried to deny the link between fossil fuels and climate change. The oil company ExxonMobil spent around $40 million on such lies in the last 20 years. Since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the biggest companies in the fossil fuel industry spent more than a billion dollars lobbying against green energy!
Yet the pressure of the growing climate movement has pushed parts of the ruling class towards investing in climate related measures and green technologies. The climate crisis is of such a scale today that is undermining the productivity of society and the profits of the capitalists — just think about how natural disasters make the world (and economy) stop. While some of these investments will be positive developments and victories of the climate movement that could slow down or help to protect against the effects of the crisis, we must sound a clear warning: these investments do not represent a drift towards a sustainable “green capitalism”. There is no such thing.
This is why the climate movement must be anti-capitalist. We need system change, for an international plan that answers this crisis with working class solidarity and socialism. All possible means should be mobilised to solve this crisis. But the internal contradictions of capitalism, such as the competition between nation states and the super rich, make it impossible to develop the international plan needed.
The Movement so Far
The movement of 2019 introduced some methods, which are important steps forward. It was understood that big and collective international action should be the priority for the climate movement, and no longer consumer choices or individual actions.
The idea of a strike was introduced, through the proposal for a school strike and platforms such as Fridays For Future. These and other platforms, including Extinction Rebellion (XR), called for international days of action and international organisation. Greta Thunberg also called on climate activists to support the protest and strike movement of Indian farmers. When we compare this to the previous period, it’s clear that these changes represent ideological defeats for capitalism, and an advance in the social and political understanding of millions of young people worldwide.
Throughout society, the whole mood and understanding of the climate crisis radically shifted because of the impact of the movement, together with the real impact of climate change on our lives. The movement has helped to expose who is really responsible for the crisis and popularised important facts such as the fact that 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions originate from only 100 companies. Even more importantly, the movement did not limit itself to criticising the polluters: it called for system change, for structural changes. The slogan “system change, not climate change” represents a step forward in the search for a radical solution to the most pressing crisis facing humanity. In reality, system change means revolutionary change.
Mistaken Methods and a Lull in the Movement
However, it must also be said that many leading figures have been drawn towards methods that have not really benefited our movement. One expression of this was a drive to get as many prominent people and organisations as possible behind the cause in order to build public pressure on governments and corporations to change course (see the examples from Belgium below). Although this seems like a logical desire, in practice this was often done at a price — sacrificing the political clarity and anti-system character of the movement and its demands.
These methods ultimately began to demobilise the movement and even worse: opened the door to establishment parties and even big companies to try to co-opt our movement. The “greenwashing” of those who share responsibility for the climate crisis was often tolerated in order not to “polarize” too much.
This approach and the decline in the size and frequency of mobilisations, with Covid-19 as an additional factor, allowed the ruling class to start to fight back. Corporations and governments started to reintroduce, with greater intensity, their discourse about “how you as an individual can fight climate change in your everyday life”. Lockdowns cut across social struggle during the first phase of the pandemic and finally, the climate movement entered a relative pause. Since the global climate protests on 24 September 2021 and as COP26 approaches, we can see some new momentum in the movement, which remains largely in place as COP26 approaches. Only some smaller actions have continued to take place, but we know that much more is needed. So, what do we need to do to rebuild the movement and avoid the same outcome?
Alongside the global rise of the new climate movement, environmental NGOs have also gained more support. At first sight, one might think “the more the merrier”, but a closer look reveals the limitations of an NGO-type approach in the face of necessary system change. In their whole approach, NGOs present themselves as allegedly non-ideological lobbying groups from below. They aim to build public pressure via petitions, media campaigns and symbolic protests to lobby the state into adopting more progressive positions and laws.
While most NGOs would agree with the obvious fact that states put corporate profit interests before the needs of people and the environment, they have a wrong explanation for why that is the case. In their understanding, the rich and powerful are simply better connected and thereby have a strategic advantage in the power game. NGOs see the state as a neutral structure that, like a vessel, could be filled with different ideologies depending on which side is pushing stronger. This is fundamentally wrong: Capitalist states are not neutral structures, but tools which have been historically developed to further the profits and interests of capitalism. If capitalist states did not defend the interests of their national corporations, they would be doing a bad job.
This central misconception is directly connected to the NGOs’ lack of a class understanding, which is why they cannot see the reason for the blatant difference in interests between the working class and the capitalist class. In their view, the state could theoretically pass and enforce the right regulations to tame capitalism and thereby create a humane and sustainable system. From this skewed analysis then flows NGOs’ strategy for change: be louder than your opponent and get your foot in the door of the backroom discussions and government strategy meetings.
Although many climate NGOs also mobilize for demonstrations, their primary focus lies on symbolism to “build public pressure” and not on organizing students and workers to become active themselves and raise their own demands. From their perspective, it then also makes sense to dilute their demands to a common denominator in order to “reach more people” and thereby increase the pressure on governments. This is tied to a top-down “we do this for you” approach, where the role of people is limited to financial support and participating in pre-planned tokenistic campaigns.
There is no possibility for people to discuss and decide on the political basis of the campaigns as NGOs don’t have democratic structures. Instead, NGOs typically function like companies, with a small leadership that is not elected. All of this points away from what needs to be done in the fight for climate justice.
The climate movement’s strength stems from mass organization and we need more, not less democratic structures and discussions to bring the movement forward. Only if we understand that capitalism is at the very heart of the climate crisis and that united class struggle in schools, universities and workplaces is the most effective essential method to fight the climate crisis do we stand a chance of winning the battle for the survival of human civilization as we know it.
We Are Not All in the Same Boat: Climate Struggle is Class Struggle!
The inability of the ruling class to solve the climate crisis has implications for building the climate movement. It means the movement should be aimed at fighting for an alternative to the ruling class’ capitalist system. The movement has nothing to gain from alliances with “greenwashed” defenders of the capitalist system and should aim to build an independent movement. Alliances with the ruling class not only allow them to greenwash themselves, but also stimulate dangerous illusions in “green capitalism”. This is why capitalists also look for coalitions with the climate movement, to stop and demobilise it, especially with its rapid growth and radicalisation.
In Belgium in 2019, an enormous momentum was built by the movement, exerting huge pressure against big polluters. The school strikes were up to 35,000-strong and street protests brought out up to 100,000. Then, right at the peak of the movement, a coalition called ‘Sign For My Future’ was set up, which changed the situation a lot.
Well known climate action groups joined this campaign, together with big companies such as Colruyt, Ikea, Proximus and Solvay, some of Belgium’s biggest employers’ organisations and even big banks like BNP Paribas, KBC and ING, which invest millions of euros a year in the fossil fuel industry. While some may have hoped that this campaign could give the impression that the climate movement was becoming broader and stronger, this was only an illusion.
The campaign was allegedly supposed to put pressure on politicians who weren’t willing to act, but in reality it only gave big businesses a new way to avoid taking responsibility for the climate crisis. The campaign did not change anything about the way that participating companies invest or produce.
Many climate activists disagreed with this coalition being set up. But sadly, the movement didn’t have the democratic structures necessary in the movement to express our disagreement with the self-proclaimed leadership of the movement, which organised in a top down way. Therefore a mass movement, whose strategy, demands, program and methods are discussed in a democratic way will be needed. Only a democratic movement can ensure our independence from the big polluters!
Our Movement Must be Democratically Organized
This anecdote explains why International Socialist Alternative has always insisted on the need to get properly organised. Imagine what would have been possible if this historic climate movement had been organised in climate action committees in schools, universities, towns, cities and workplaces.
The climate movement could have adapted to the pandemic by putting forward a programme to end it, and staying organised and active in a safe way during the lockdown. Discussions are needed now about which demands would help to mobilise the broadest possible layer of young people and workers in the coming months. The most popular demands of the movement, which were often social and anti-capitalist demands, should be put forward by agreed spokespersons of the movement: Massive investments for free, more and better green public transport as well as green and affordable energy would attract many more to join our fight after this cruel pandemic and new climate catastrophes.
Now, however, our task is different. We need a leadership that does not promote coalitions with those who merely promote more “climate taxes” on ordinary people who are not to blame, or who only speak about changes in our personal consumer behaviour. This is why ISA calls for a movement that can decide democratically who our leadership and public figures are, by electing them and being able to remove them. Moreover, without real democratic discussions about our program and methods we will inevitably make important mistakes.
In Belgium, the groups Active Left Students and ROSA — Socialist Feminists, both initiatives of PSL/LSP (ISA in Belgium), played an important role in politically arming the 2019 climate movement.
Their intervention stood in contrast to what the self-proclaimed leadership of the movement had been doing. By handing out thousands of flyers and organizing over hundred meetings and discussions, ALS and ROSA managed to put up climate action committees in several places.
The goal of these committees was to build a real grassroots movement with democratic structures for discussion in order to i) broaden the mobilisation by getting more climate activists involved in actively discussing the direction of the movement and to ii) raise the collective political level through those discussions. This was combined with actions on a local level around concrete social demands. Through these action committees, we showed in a concrete way how a real action plan and strategy, which is a vital necessity of the movement, can and needs to be discussed and developed in a democratic way.
For a Program that Brings Unity Among the Working Class!
In 2018 in France, the ‘yellow vests’ movement erupted. It was a reaction against an increase in fuel taxes on ordinary people and the rising cost of living, which French president Macron blamed on the climate movement and its program. Yet very soon, yellow vests were to be spotted on almost every climate demonstration and solidarity between the two fighting movements was quickly built.
However, the yellow vests were not the only movement which the ruling class tried to pit against the climate movement. In the Netherlands, they tried to do this with the farmers’ movement. Everywhere, the politicians and media tried to sow divisions between the ‘young climate strikers’ and the so-called ‘elderly polluters’. These divisions are not the only ones used and strengthened by the ruling class to weaken our forces — racism, sexism, LGBTQI+phobia and other forms of discrimination and oppression are still widespread in our societies and continue to be reproduced and strengthened by the structural oppression of the capitalist system.
For the climate movement, this is a crucial question. There can be no doubt about the need to use our programme to build unity among the working class. We do not want to lower anyone’s standard of living, except that of the decadent ruling class. Climate demands are social demands and only a Socialist Green New Deal can provide quality union jobs and wages to all who need them. A genuine internationalist socialist programme for the climate movement can be a decisive step towards building unity among the working class.
The Role of the Workers’ Movement
The social demands that make up such a programme all find their origins in the struggles of the workers’ movement, and that is not a coincidence: The climate movement itself finds its origin in the workers’ movement.
From the very beginning of the 20th century, workers were fighting against pollution in their neighbourhoods. During the US ‘antismoke crusades’, working class women fought against smog coming from polluting factories. The United Steelworkers’ movement attacked ‘Carnegie Steel’ in the wake of the deadly 1948 Donora smog that killed dozens. Later on, and outside of the US, it was the labor movement that took up all vital environmental struggles, which actually achieved many of the environmental protection laws which currently exist.
Still today, we see how the workers’ movement fights on a daily basis against pollution. A company called 3M, operating in more than 70 countries and making millions in profits every year has been knowingly using toxic substances for years. Last summer, excessive amounts of such substances (PFOS and BFAS) were detected on two occasions in the area around 3M’s operations in the port of Antwerp, in Belgium. For much longer, questions had been asked by union representatives in the company about the soil pollution it was causing without receiving an answer from the management. The union also warned that there were risks of pollution from several companies in the region and that raw materials were being used whose effects on people and the environment had not yet been fully clarified.
In order to effectively end such environmentally damaging practices of companies, and even more so to make real gains in the fight against the climate crisis, it will need much more than warnings and questions. Well-organized and persistent strikes at company or sector level, and even more so at a national or international level, can create enormous political pressure and leverage by hitting companies where it hurts them most — their profits.
The airline Lufthansa, for example, lost 222 million and 230 million euros respectively through strikes in 2014 and 2015, and in 2016, another 6-day strike caused an estimated loss of EUR 100 million. As a result of these strikes, the wages of the 5,400 Lufthansa pilots were increased by approximately 8.7% in 2017 and in 2018, and a three-year wage increase agreement was signed for around 28,000 ground workers to prevent further strikes.
The key to exercising this tremendous collective power is getting organized. Only when we are united in militant action do we have the power to face the capitalist system head on and actually win. Trade unions are, in most countries, the key organizations of the working class. They usually have thousands of representatives and elected delegates in all sectors of the economy. Trade unions also usually have the networks, resources and infrastructure necessary to wage mass campaigns to organize for concrete social improvements and demands to address the climate crisis. Trade unions could be key to the climate movement building towards national and international strikes for the climate.
In fact, already back in 2009, the Campaign Against Climate Change trade union group in Britain published a report in conjunction with four trade unions that made the case for ‘one million (UK) climate jobs’ as part of a green transition. However, not much has happened since then, neither in the British trade unions nor in most other countries.
The Obstacle of the Trade Union Bureaucracy
Climate activists looking for a lead from the tops of the trade union movement have been and will unfortunately probably continue to be disappointed. However, in general, the trade unions have not yet played the leading role that they need to. Although many trade unions have come out in support of the climate school strikes in the wake of the recent global climate movement, this remained largely on a symbolic level. Hardly any important union structures actively campaign and organise around the issue of the climate crisis. Most trade union leaders have to some extent tried to cultivate a “green” image but without actually putting forward consistent answers, either in action or in the form of political solutions.
And much worse, in many countries, union leaders claiming to be “green” have taken political positions in favour of corporate fossil fuel projects, often parroting the false narrative that this is necessary to defend their members’ jobs and conditions. The German IG Metall (industrial union of the metal workers), for example, mobilised over 50.000 people to their #FairWandel demonstration in Berlin on June 29, 2019 and demanded secure employment and a social, ecological and democratic future. However, only one year later, the same union attacked the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) for not supporting buyer’s premiums for petrol and diesel cars. In Austria, the sectoral unions vida and GPA-djp actively support the expansion of the Viennese airport. A union official of GPA-djp named the reason for this support in an interview: “location, money, employment”.
In perhaps the most extreme example, the German IG BCE (industrial union of mining, chemistry and energy workers) organised, in collaboration with the RWE mining corporation, a counter-demonstration of 30,000 workers, against a mass movement to stop deforestation and environmental destruction by coal mining multinationals in the Hambacher forest! So instead of seizing the momentum to build a united front of miners, local communities threatened by expropriation/forced displacement, and climate activists against environmental destruction and for sustainable and well-paid jobs, the union bureaucracy created division among the local working class by striking a corporatist deal with the RWE bosses. In many countries, union leaders claiming to be “green” have taken political positions in favour of corporate fossil fuel projects, often parroting the false narrative that this is necessary to defend their members’ jobs and conditions. In Germany and Austria, this has included support for corporate airport expansions and government handouts to private car manufacturers.
Examples like these show time and again that we cannot rely in any way on conservative and bureaucratic union leaderships, which today dominate most unions in most counties, to lead our struggle. In most cases, such leaders’ wrong approach to the climate crisis is part of an overall approach which fails to effectively represent the working class against the bosses, refusing to mobilise the power of their members and instead taking the road of ineffective lobbying, demobilisation and corporatist deals with the bosses and capitalist parties..
This does not mean however, that we should turn away from the unions, but it means that we must not wait for the bureaucratic leadership to act. Instead, we need to organize with the students and workers who are moving into action on their own, thereby putting pressure on the union leaders through mass militant action, and we need to organize and fight for a radical program within the unions themselves. In this way, we will turn the unions into combative instruments of the working class once again. For the climate movement, and for all struggles of working class people, we need to fight to build new union leaderships with a combative strategy of mass struggle to win gains for working people.
To cut across the wrong “jobs versus environment” narrative that is pushed by the ruling class and the trade union bureaucracy, SLP (ISA in Austria) initiated and built up the group Workers for Future from June 2019 onwards. Workers for Future developed a pamphlet called Climate Toolkit for the Workplace that explained the most important facts about the climate crisis, how the working class is hit hardest by it and what workers can concretely do to effectively organize against it. Besides that, we also organized workshops on “climate and work”. For example, we discussed the issue with social and health care workers at two strike assemblies and joined them afterwards in their strike rally/demonstration for higher wages and the reduction of working time at same pay.
Workers’ Control not Market Chaos!
Workers have a proud history of imagining the ‘big future’ when a serious struggle has taken place. When workers at the Visteon car components occupied their plants in England and Northern Ireland in 2009, for example, they issued a statement that said, ‘Our skills — we can make anything in plastic — should be used to make increasingly needed parts for green products: bike and trailer parts, solar panels, turbines, recycling bins etc’. This occupation had echoes of the famous ‘Lucas Plan’ put forward by workers at Lucas Aerospace in 1976 who, in response to announced job cuts, proposed to transfer their skills from building military hardware into socially useful production.
In the 1970s in Britain, a big fight took place around the "Lucas Plan” when workers at Lucas Aerospace were told in 1976 that thousands would lose their jobs. The workers did not accept the announced job cuts, but through their shop stewards combine committee organized the fight against layoffs and for the conversion of production. The Lucas Plan, put forward by the shop stewards combine committee in 1976, asked “for the right to work on reasonable products[…], in order to solve the real problems of humanity instead of producing them”.
With the Lucas Plan, the workers proposed that instead of producing military technology for the British state, they would, with the necessary public funding, produce socially useful products that addressed the interests of society. More than 150 different necessary environmental and social products were to be produced in the plan. These included medical equipment, cheap and green heating equipment for homes, wind turbines, and a rail system to connect rural areas to the public train network.
This was what would have been possible had the workers been given effective control over their workplaces. The climate movement today has the need for many more plans like this. And just as the Lucas Plan teaches us, those plans will come from the working class.
In March 2020, the workers of General Electric in three plants in the US went on strike against planned layoffs. GE bosses used the pandemic as an excuse for these layoffs, but the workers proved to be much smarter. They started organising and striking, but for much more than just the paychecks they deserve. The unions posed the question of why they could not start building much-needed ventilators to fight the pandemic, since all the necessary materials to do this were there in their factories.
In Northern Ireland in 2019, workers at Harland & Wolff, an historic shipyard which went into administration, placing skilled jobs at risk, went on strike for more than nine weeks to demand the nationalisation of their yard to safeguard its future. But that was not their only demand. For years the unions and workers had been putting forward the need for Harland & Wolff to become a specialist in green energy. The workers used Mick Barry, the Socialist Party (ISA Ireland) member of the Southern Irish parliament to pursue questions about upcoming projects that could bring work in the green energy sector.
So What Can You Do?
The workers’ movement is not only best placed to fight the climate crisis because the origins of the environmental struggle can be found within it or because of examples of what it could achieve if in control. The working class is also the only force in society with the power to overthrow the capitalist system and to replace it with a democratically planned socialist economy that puts the real needs of people, the planet, and all life at the centre.
The climate movement needs an orientation towards the workers’ movement and to be very cautious that the climate movements’ actions cannot be misconstrued as targeting working class people. Blocking metro stations without involving workers only really serves to annoy workers who are late for their jobs. Workers in fossil fuel sectors are not our enemies. Why not join the battle of these workers for better working conditions, better wages AND the transformation of their sector into a green one just as the Harland & Wolff workers proposed?
In July 2021, some 30 climate activists blocked the entrances of the country’s largest banks in Switzerland. One of the interviewed protesters said: “we are not here because we’re stupid or have nothing else to do. We’re here because we no longer know what we can do. We have fought for two years.” It’s probably a sentiment shared by many young people. Our future looks so catastrophic, what can we still do?
Our proposal is quite clear: let’s organise, together with the working class in all sectors and industries, with the people from the Amazon forest and other communities fighting against land exploitation by polluting multinationals all over the world. The working class is the source of the wealth and profits of the capitalist class. We are unstoppable when we organise together against them.
To build a climate movement that puts forward this program and methods today remains a big task. This is why ISA is active. Every single day members in over 30 countries organise, protest and expose the cruelties of capitalism. We put forward the need for socialism in the struggles of today. We are an international fighting movement, but we are still too small to complete our mission. Join us, it’s not too late.
