Big Merla

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pQ1EjNRFsZw

To Tackle Climate Heating International Socialism is Needed

We have recently lived through a period in France (where I live) of repeated heatwaves with daytime temperatures sometimes exceeding 40C and nighttime temperatures offering little respite, and with associated droughts. In the Gironde region and the Var massive wildfires occurred, with thousands evacuated and many people losing their homes to the flames. The ‘megafire’ in Gironde threatened the city of Bordeaux. Today as I write there are or have recently been wildfires in Greece, France, Croatia and the UK, as well as in the USA, Spokane, and Canada, British Columbia, and workers are having to labour in unbearable heat extremes because most nations do not have upper temperature limits for work. It is probably the case that these so called heatwaves are the new normal, and if they join up, summer will become hell unless something is done urgently, but it has to be said, now, no matter how urgently we act, stopping fossil fuel burning abruptly, while it is absolutely sensible and needed, will not be able to immediately prevent or reverse the impact that past energy use will have, unfortunately.

40C is hard to deal with. In our home we used a fan constantly. Some of our upstairs rooms were too hot to stay in, and going outside was not advisable. And we have modern insulation and double glazing. It was quite a scary experience going to get our shopping in the car because of what might happen if you broke down in that heat. Supermarkets with car parks without shelter we tried to avoid because they made your car ridiculously, dangerously, hot. We live in the Morvan, and the direct sunshine was impossible to survive in during these periods. At one point we thought we might have to escape down to the cave, which being part buried in the solid rock stayed cool. Only the old stone part of our house remained OK with the shutters permanently closed. Many of our plants in the garden died, as if burnt to a crisp by the rays of the sun even though I had tried to put them in at least partial shade for most of the day. At one point, rather late on, President Macron came on the news to give us an address about the crisis, specifically in the Gironde. For most of his speech you could not hear him because of some humming machine, the TV station eventually switched to another report that had already been aired, then later came back to his speech, the audio was a bit better now but that was the end of it anyway. 

I caught that he mentioned a few times that the crisis was ‘unprecedented’. This phrase is used a lot these days by politicians concerning the climate disaster. Yes, it was perhaps surprising that it has arrived so soon, but the crisis has been foretold by scientists repeatedly, and we have had many previous forest fires in France, even one in 1949 in the Gironde that was bigger.

The current ruling classes and their politicians are obviously incapable of facing up to the climate catastrophe facing all of us, called human induced global warming caused by fossil fuel burning for energy and industry, and which has led recently to such deadly heatwaves and fires. This demonstrates to us very clearly that what is needed is an international plan for energy, implemented concretely over the years ahead. 

But what does this mean? It means what is needed is socialism, - in other words, it means we need (at least) nationalized, socially owned energy and transport industries in the biggest capitalist nations, so that these industries can be made to work in cooperation and coordination with each other instead of competing, so as to end the use of fossil fuels, so that we can all move to renewable energy infrastructure. 

But unfortunately, this is what the scientists that constantly warn us about global warming avoid saying or are not allowed to say, for reasons that are perhaps understandable but are unsettling; socialism is a political economic system that capitalism and its champions of the free market and its politicians are vehemently opposed to, and these capitalists generally hold to the idea that the free market will provide the solutions to this crisis, in the end. 

This has not happened so far of course, and does not look like it will ever occur, and we are already out of time.

Certainly, the technology for renewable energy has been invented and already implemented in instances, but this has been in a piecemeal, slow, and reluctant manner, as well as also in a fake way, such as to signal virtue and sell more products to expand and increase capitalist growth, for example electric cars stop emissions at the car, but still rely on the production of electricity usually by fossil fuel burning, and they produce more emissions in their manufacture process. So, while the proof of concept has shown us that renewable energy, such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc, does work, the political will to make the transition has not been sufficient and has failed. 

Why? This is because the politicians are not really in full charge of our destiny, even while elected, their class determines what can be done, and their class leadezrs are the big capitalists who make their wealth out of fossil fuels. Clearly there are too many vested interests in continuing the use of fossil fuels, too many jobs involved in these industries as well as too many secondary jobs that rely on these jobs. Capitalists, big businesses, corporations, cannot, even if they wanted to, just discard their profitable industries because of this.

What must we do therefore? Only economies that can command their most essential industries and resources can cope with the necessary task of planning and implementing this future. Only these, socialist, economies will be capable of cooperating internationally rather than competing and, as is often the case, going to war with each other over energy. This is why it is the most urgent task in each advanced capitalist nation that the political parties of the progressive sides understand this and begin to hurriedly work towards socialism.

I say this knowing of course how this will sound to many like a throwback to an earlier stage of history that the media led us to believe was over, and that capitalist democracy is victorious and the ‘only game in town’. But we now know imperialist competition is not over, and thus war is not over. However, the will to resist imperialism seems to have been sapped, I suggest by the media. But previously, during periods of war we, such as in the UK, have successfully implemented socialist policies when needed, even in our capitalist economy, and we should indeed think of ourselves as on a war footing regarding the climate emergency.

For us, the climate must now be understood as an essential part of carrying forward the class struggle, because the bourgeois class will, as has become obvious, fight against this movement tooth and nail and with all of their ruses and clever media. They will make this task seem unpopular, unfashionable, and seem to be untenable, or will divert this movement onto fake paths that seem superficially to be progress but which are not and which will still support the use of fossil fuel. If we do not enter this struggle, we will be shirking our responsibility and shrugging our shoulders at the terrible catastrophes that will inevitably, and sooner than later, befall our species.

I write this with quite a lot of pessimism, given the current state of things, not really expecting this to happen anytime soon, but I have at least spoken and thus saved my soul.

See also:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/aug/14/why-is-andy-burnham-so-reluctant-to-talk-about-climate-crisis