A Left That Doesn’t Take the Lead in the Fight Against the Climate Crisis Has No Reason to Exist

Pulp mill along the Willamette River, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Lair.

What follows is not addressed to the right and its supporters (economic, social and other) who – unfortunately – are doing their job very well. What follows is addressed above all to the left, which – unfortunately – is not doing its job at all well…

Here’s what we wrote this time last year, just after the terrible floods in Thessaly, in an unfinished and unpublished text:

“The shock of the two successive “Mediterranean hurricanes” Daniel and Elias was strong enough to cause the first strong tremors in the climate-skeptical beliefs of the Greeks. Of course, these are only the first cracks, which will only widen if there is the follow-up that circumstances demand from the only political force that can, potentially, not only scientifically explain the climate catastrophe but also act massively and concretely to deal with it.”

Of course, this “only political force that can, potentially, not only scientifically explain the climate catastrophe but also act massively and concretely to confront it” must be the left. Yet, one year on, with the spectre of water shortage looming larger than ever over Athens and its four million inhabitants, with new extreme droughts, new devastating mega-fires, new successive historical temperature records and new even worse heatwaves, this left is still invisible, still absent from the frontline of the galloping climate catastrophe. And what’s worse, it continues to denounce the neoliberal right in government not for its refusal to act in time against this climate disaster, but for its insistence on invoking it to cover up its sins!

So here’s how we continued our text from last year, trying – in vain – to convince people that it’s urgent to mobilize « those from below » because our country is literally in the eye of the climate catastrophe storm:

“Let’s talk about the climate catastrophe and our country, since the intensity and volume of rainfall from the two “Mediterranean hurricanes” (medicanes) that hit it consecutively in the space of three weeks (!), confirm the scientific conclusions, that the Mediterranean and in particular its eastern basin and … Greece constitute a hot spot, i.e. a point of high intensity and danger of climate crisis. More precisely, the 889 mm of rain – at least – received by Zagora and the 886 mm received by Portaria on Mount Pelion on September 5, not only far exceed any precedent in our country, but are 3 and 4 times greater than those that fell in Libya on the day of the deadly floods a few weeks later. Similarly, the 1235 mm of precipitation received by Makrinitsa last September set a European record for monthly rainfall, while the terrifying intensity of the Elias “medicane” downpour that subsequently hit northern Euboea was, together with the increasingly frequent gigantic fires, heatwaves and galloping desertification, another indication that our country is indeed a hot spot for global climate catastrophe “for decades to come”.

And we concluded with these words:

“What does this mean? According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and several other scientific organizations, it means that “the temperature increase observed in the Mediterranean is higher than the global average”. In other words, “the planet is warming up, and the Mediterranean is doing so a little faster”! The consequences are not only foreseeable, they have already been empirically established: among many other things, such as rising sea levels, we have increasingly frequent, longer and more intense heatwaves, increasingly frequent and monstrously destructive forest fires, unprecedented rainfall and flooding, but also a drastic reduction in precipitation, with the consequence of growing water shortages, droughts, galloping desertification of ever larger areas, reduced agricultural productivity, etc. In other words, we are facing the most serious threat to the quality of life and very existence that the inhabitants of what we now call the Greek territory have ever had to face. And as is obvious, all the other problems of the Greek population, but also of the world population, are directly affected and subordinated to what is their greatest existential problem…”

And the Greek left? Where are its demonstrations, strikes and occupations against the climate policies of the Greek governments, the European Union and the capitalists? Where are its reflections and its production of ideas, analyses and programmatic proposals and measures to be taken as a matter of urgency? Where is its participation in the major international youth mobilizations and other struggles against the climate catastrophe and those who cause it, which go permanently unnoticed in our country? Where is its fight against the obscurantist and conspiracy theories on the climate crisis that are taking the Greek population by storm? Where is his conception of the radical change in our societies and our lives required to effectively combat climate catastrophe (see For an Ecosocialist Degrowth)? And above all, where is its mobilization against the root of the evil, the oil and gas multinationals, the car manufacturers and all those involved in fossil fuels, which are responsible for the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gas emissions?

Instead of all this, the Greek left prefers to accuse Mitsotakis and his government of “ mere misdemeanors, compared to the real crime he is committing when he not only does nothing about the climate crisis, but actually makes it worse through his policies.]”. And from time to time, she prefers to indulge in quixotic battles against the imperialists who covet “our” (non-existent, by the way, )… oil deposits, which would miraculously become… clean fossil fuels because… “Greek”. Or to mock and vilify the young Greta Thunberg, who inspires the most massive and radical international youth movement against the climate crisis. Or, worse still, to welcome into its ranks “people of the left” who relentlessly continue to call climate change… “the greatest imperialist fraud”!

The conclusion is tragic: when international big business, and consequently the capitalist system, responsible for the climate catastrophe, have such left-wing enemies, they don’t need friends! They can sleep soundly when these leftists – in Greece and around the world – denounce everything and anything except the real criminals, and with them their bosses, their local subsidiaries, their mouthpieces, their political representatives, in other words their capitalist system. Like, for example, “the Top Twenty companies which have collectively contributed 480 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, chiefly from the combustion of their products, equivalent to 35% of all fossil fuel and cement emissions worldwide since 1965” (see table below).

Conclusion: the great tragedy of the climate crisis is that eight billion human beings are forced to pay dearly – at the cost of their health, their lives, the health and lives of their descendants, the destruction of nature and an increasingly degraded planet – for the greed of a few dozen polluting multinationals that continue to make monstrous profits.

Worse still, at least part of our left repeats and disseminates, often word for word (!), the “climate-negationist” propaganda produced by the veritable propaganda factory of these giant polluting multinationals. And, as a sign of the importance these multinationals attach to undermining and denigrating scientific theses on the climate crisis, just five of them have spent over the last decade at least $200 million a year promoting their fossil fuel propaganda and misinformation (see the corresponding table for the year 2018).

A typical case of this kind of propaganda is the article entitled “Climate crisis: religious belief or scientific truth? “ by Islamophobic former minister Andreas Andrianopoulos, who left the New Democracy party because he didn’t think it was… neoliberal enough. The fact that Mr. Andrianopoulos was an “advisor” to Mr. Putin and Azerbaijan’s president (for life), Mr. Aliyev, obviously has nothing to do with the delusional content of his “climate-negative” articles. Nor does it have anything to do with the statements and articles by other famous “advisors” to Mr. Putin, such as former German Chancellor Schröder or former French Prime Minister Fillon… but also less famous leftists – Greek and foreign – known for their support of the Kremlin’s tenant.

Of course, this is no mere “coincidence”. Mr. Putin and his friends around the world – Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, Milei, etc. – are all fanatical “climate skeptics”, as are their far-right and neo-fascist supporters around the world. And of course, it’s no coincidence that all these good people, aided by international big business, which has a vested interest in perpetuating the fossil fuel economy, generously fund armies of climate deniers of all kinds, whose sole aim is to prevent the adoption and, above all, the implementation of measures to tackle the climate catastrophe….

Consequently, since the climate crisis, which – unfortunately – will intensify and soon reach tipping points, is now taking on existential dimensions for humanity, and since there is no one but us to fight it, the conflict with those and their interests who have created it and are fuelling it, by stubbornly refusing to prevent it, can only be a conflict of life and death. Now, more than ever, is the time for the Left to justify its existence by making the fight against climate catastrophe its absolute priority and its first militant task…

The post A Left That Doesn’t Take the Lead in the Fight Against the Climate Crisis Has No Reason to Exist appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Giorgos Mitralias.

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