Climate disaster has become a fact of daily life the world over. Heat waves, wildfires, and floods regularly threaten the lives and livelihoods of working people on every continent. But governments everywhere have callously dropped any pretense of mitigating climate change, instead doubling down on fossil fuels. Trump and the far right are blazing a path of outright climate denialism, paying billions of our tax dollars to get energy companies to abandon wind energy projects in favor of oil and gas drilling. European governments are setting aside climate targets in order to pursue unprecedented military rearmament. The AI bubble has created a frenzy for critical minerals and a drive to construct thousands of resource-chugging data centers around the world that, if built, would be a pollution disaster.
The mask is off. We are in a new era defined by imperialist rivalry, and the priorities of the global ruling classes are imperialist dominance and saving their system—our lives and the planet be damned. There is an urgent need for a renewal of the climate movement, on the basis of a revolutionary socialist perspective to address environmental disaster, and to take the steering wheel out of the hands of the billionaires before they drive humanity off a cliff.
Another Scorching Summer
On July 4, Trump’s national address was delayed by extreme weather at the same time that a record temperature of 106F was being recorded in Atlantic City—a fitting start to the hottest-ever July in the United States. Three consecutive heat dome events baked the country from coast to coast, causing power outages, shutdowns, and dozens of deaths. Canadian wildfires covered the eastern US in smoke for almost a week, and in Oregon, wildfires have consumed a record-breaking 2.3 million acres. Europe has seen severe heat waves that caused 25,000 excess deaths and led to drought, water rationing, and devastating fires in France and Spain.
Trump blames wildfires on the “mismanagement” of forests, but the real culprit is capitalist-driven climate change. Scientists estimate that climate change doubled the likelihood of this summer’s Canadian wildfires and made this year’s fires in Spain more than twenty times as likely.
Scientists are predicting a super El Niño event in 2026-27, set to be the most extreme ever by a “mind-blowing margin.” The natural El Niño cycle has been supercharged by climate change, which in 2024 pushed global temperatures above the 1.5C Paris Agreement warming target for the first time ever. The coming year will almost certainly surpass 2024’s temperatures, possibly reaching 1.7C above pre-industrial levels.
The impact will fall particularly hard on the neo-colonial world, which has already seen devastating floods this year: in Nepal, thousands are missing after a glacier collapse caused a flash flood, and in southeastern Bangladesh, flooding has affected over a million people. Tens of millions are displaced every year by extreme weather, a number that has steadily climbed over the last decade alongside displacements due to armed conflict. In response, governments everywhere are ramping up racist crackdowns against immigrants and refugees.
The Far Right: Sacrificing The Planet To Save Capitalism
Trump has more than delivered on his promise to “drill, baby, drill,” while gutting environmental agencies like NOAA and the EPA. His administration is pushing coal production to power the AI boom and boost exports, going so far as to invoke Cold War-era emergency powers to force through a new coal shipping terminal in California. This isn’t just about making fossil fuel companies rich—it’s about securing the interests of US imperialism, with the Trump administration boasting that they’re “bolstering national security through true energy dominance.”
What semblance of international cooperation existed in previous years has been replaced with a scramble for supply chains, spheres of influence, natural resources, and technological dominance, all at tremendous cost to workers and the environment. Globally, the ruling class has embraced reactionary policies to replace the neoliberal era of “free trade” and globalization. They’re placing their bets on authoritarianism at home and war abroad to secure their interests amidst the growing inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China, and environmental policies are one of the top casualties of this shift, which is also driving the global rise of xenophobia, transphobia, and sexism.
The far right and its anti-climate policies are making strides in the context of an ebb in the climate movement. The Fridays for Future protests and the internationally coordinated school strikes in the late 2010s reflected the massive anger of young people and were the largest environmental struggle in the last decade. Unfortunately, the climate movement wasn’t able to develop roots in broader working class and trade union movements, leading to isolation and demoralization.
Even self-described socialist politicians, who once rhetorically championed climate demands, have stood passively by. For instance, AOC and Bernie Sanders have dropped the fight for a transformative Green New Deal. Zohran Mamdani’s otherwise exciting platform was largely lacking in explicit climate measures. This approach has left the field open for right-wing anti-climate ideas, and even outright conspiracy theories. A bold socialist climate program is needed to cut across these ideas.
What We Need
Humanity is not separate from nature, and any serious climate policy needs to set its sights on repairing the chasm that capitalism has created between human production and the environment. As Marx and Engels themselves emphasized, what makes humans unique is that we are capable of understanding and correctly applying the laws of the natural world. The science and technology needed for a complete green transition have existed for decades, and the only remaining obstacle is political: to break with the capitalist system whose short-term profit seeking is incompatible with such a transition.
Although the climate movement has ebbed, the energy and political consciousness of young activists has not, as shown by the student encampments in solidarity with Gaza in 2024, or the struggle against militarism, for example in Germany this year where over 50,000 students have participated in three school strikes against the reintroduction of conscription. These struggles dovetail with climate issues, given the disastrous effect of imperialist war and militarism on the environment. The fight against imperialist war and the far right should be actively linked together with climate and other social issues through campaigning on a program of demands that addresses the interconnected horrors of capitalism. A resurgent climate movement needs to make deep connections with the labor movement, championing immediate working-class climate demands like protection from extreme heat on the job, full rights and protections for climate refugees and all immigrants, and replacing the construction of polluting data centers with publicly funded, socially productive jobs like building social housing.
Victories on initial demands will give our movements confidence to fight for further-reaching demands that address the actual root of climate crisis: taking polluting companies into democratic public ownership; providing green union jobs to workers in those industries with no loss of pay, seniority, or benefits: and, ultimately, allowing workers themselves to democratically decide how to organize production for socially useful and environmentally sustainable ends. This is something that the working class has always aspired to—for instance, union autoworkers helped spearhead the first Earth Day, and Lucas Aerospace workers fought for their own socially conscious production plan to combat layoffs.
But the capitalist class will never allow these demands to be fulfilled, which means the climate movement needs to set its sights on a revolutionary fight against capitalism itself.
Climate change has never meant a single “doomsday.” It is an already unfolding process, punctuated by increasingly frequent and catastrophic events. Interrupting and overcoming the climate crisis will require the full breadth of human ingenuity and solidarity, unleashed by an international, socialist system of planning and cooperation.
Photo: OregonDOT