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

Wood for Heating: Is it Good, Clean, Sustainable, What’s it Like?

Let me get straight to the point: using wood is not a fossil fuel and can be carbon neutral because the tree it comes from took in the carbon before it gave it out when burnt. 

But yes, it being a sustainable and clean fuel depends on a few crucial things: the forests that the wood comes from must be managed well, the wood must be dried before burning which takes about two years just leaving it in an airy location, and the stoves and the chimneys must be of the kind that minimise the smoke and the particulates that are harmful.

All the processes and transport necessary to cut, sort, and deliver logs may not run on sustainable fuel of course, but this is nitpicking. In the best case, despite the small amount of pollution that occurs, which is unavoidable to some extent, burning wood is much better for the environment than using other sources of energy for heat, and to repeat, it does not contribute so much to climate heating. The increasing forest fires due to climate heating caused by burning fossil fuels is a far bigger source of particulate pollution, or smoke. Ironically, if this wild wood had been destined for heating homes in wood burning stoves these forests might have been managed better and therefore prevented the wildfires in the first place.

There are other technologies that can come into play with using wood as fuel. Pyrolytic converters can burn and convert wood into wood gas that can function as a fuel even in conventional internal combustion engines. Wood can also be made into a liquid fuel. We will ignore these usages here, but they do have some potential I think. The main thing to remember is that the current priority is trying to reduce climate heating effects, not get a totally perfect fuel source.

Wood as a fuel has been criticized in the press, however.

For instance, in the Guardian, George Monbiot has thoroughly denounced his installation of a wood burning fire in his well-insulated home. It seemed like he was almost going to kill himself with the fire. But this was mainly because he did not make allowance for it to get enough fresh air. I suggest these kinds of articles are just subtle help to the fossil fuel industry, an attempt to ‘balance’ the narrative when there is no balance.

But for the sake of safety, let us look at what you need to do to successfully use a wood burning stove. It is not all plain sailing.

By stove I mean a metal enclosed log burner with a stainless-steel chimney that goes up through the roof, usually via an existing brick-built chimney. Some wood stoves allow you to cook on them, some do not provide a surface for this; some stoves use pellets of wood, but this requires extra processing of the wood that may not be sustainable and of course you pay for this, and also you cannot usually just sort of chuck on a log from the garden on them. But they can make the fire last longer using a hopper system.

Firstly, and most importantly, what you must have if you are to stay alive while using a log burner is a source of fresh air to the stove. If your house is insulated so well that all draughts of air have been prevented, you will probably stifle any log burning fire and cause yourself to die from carbon monoxide poisoning, because the fire will use up all the existing oxygen in your home, which you also need to breathe.

Modern insulated and double-glazed houses might have an air supply problem for fires, but older houses tend to have open chimneys and imperfectly fitting doors and windows that allow in fresh air; the problem is that obviously this air can be cold, and it will push out the warm air making you colder. An efficient wood burning stove can quickly use this air and turn it into heat, so this may not matter in an old house, but still, especially these days of the cost of living crisis, you will probably want to keep all the heat that you can in the house to reduce costs. All other forms of heating in my experience are more expensive.

For safety, it might be necessary to rig up a ventilation system especially for your fire. This can be as simple as installing an air vent near to or a small pipe directly into the stove. You could make this closable manually by the user, but for safety it would be better if it were at least partially passive and permanent. There are existing ventilation systems, ducting, which will exchange the air and keep it warm, but these tend to be more expensive and complicated and can require electricity. But remember, you will need ventilation if you are in a well-insulated house.

What do we do? In our old French stone house I have been installing some wooden double-glazing which has made it more air-tight, but it has open chimneys and some passive air vents so I am not worried. We get logs delivered and we use them usually only in one or two stoves, although we have more in different rooms. We also have a mini split ductless air conditioner (they are often called heat pumps but if they are reversible they can also supply cooling), plus some electric radiators that we rarely use but are there in case we go away and need to keep some heat on (such as to stop the water pipes from freezing in winter).

We rarely need to use the air conditioning for cooling, but it has been great on a couple of occasions recently when it was extremely hot. We do not use it when the wood stoves are burning because no matter how efficient your wood stove is, it will produce some smoke and therefore sooty deposits, especially on start up for the first time in the year, and this is not good for the heat pump.

Of course, there are drawbacks of burning wood and they need to be considered if you are thinking of going this route.

One is that it produces ash as a byproduct. We use this on the garden and put it on the compost heap, so it is ok and even a benefit, but it is a chore, and the fires need maintenance, and cleaning, and tend to be dirtier than other heating systems. The fire will last if we go out for a day but any longer it will go out. This can be irritating. It needs tending, stoking, and feeding.

Wood stoves can be temperamental, they respond to the weather and air pressure, sometimes it can be a devil to get the fire going, especially if the chimney has not been used for a while and if it has been cold and wet weather, it all needs to dry out and heat up. This difficulty is common on starting up the fire but if it persists you may have a blockage or not enough air. Because of this problem, I start a little fire in the stove occasionally, even in the summer when I do not need it, because this will help keep the chimney dry and discourage birds and bats from nesting in it and blocking it.

It is worth bearing in mind that houses can be fickle, some have wood stoves in them that never seem to heat well, for reasons unknown. It is hard to assess a house for this without actually installing a stove, unfortunately. Our house seems to work well with a log burner, but it is old and designed for it I suppose.

Sometimes you might need to put this special chemical stuff on the fire when burning, or special logs, which clean the chimney pipe, making the soot and tar come off and fall down, but you might still need to dismantle the pipes to empty and clean them out, maybe once a year, and this can be a pain and it gets you dirty.

We installed a double skinned stainless steel flexible pipe that keeps the fire hot all the way up the chimney, reducing smoke, so we have few problems with soot, but it was expensive, more than the stove in fact.

Oh, I need to use an axe sometimes to split the bigger logs, very macho but you get more heat with more surface area on the logs, the downside is that it burns quicker so you use the big logs to last the night. You need a place to do this chopping, and this can lead to wood chips going all over, quite messy. Logs have bark which flakes off everywhere, and of course you must get the logs to the stove somehow, and they can be heavy. You will be going in and out often. In the house you will need a place near the fire to stack them, but not too near because this would be a fire hazard. This place will get dirty with bits of sawdust and bark that always needs brushing. I also use a big bowsaw with an ‘americaine’ sawblade which is good for cutting logs, you need this because sometimes the logs are a bit too long to get in the fire. You need the biggest heaviest axe and the biggest bowsaw that you can get, this makes life easier.

Personally, I quite like doing all this work, but sometimes when it is early in the morning and it’s frosty and dark outside (ah yes you need exterior lighting) and I need to get the logs in, it is horrible; I have to put on some old coat that does not matter if it gets dirty; I always forget gloves, and if it is raining, ugh. I used to have a log basket that could carry about four, but it eventually broke, so I just carry them, but it means more trips, and opening and closing the door repeatedly lets out the heat. All this might help keep me fit perhaps but as I get older this is not going to be as easy.

Nevertheless, I love looking at a real fire, it is so restful and seems to somehow be better as heat than any other kind. There is something almost primeval about watching the flames, much better than doomscrolling your mobile or watching TV. And it is cheap as a fuel, relatively. We live, however, in a rural forested area of France where wood heating is normal. Here, it is sold by the ‘stere’ which is about a square meter in stacked logs. We get 500cm logs that just fit the stoves.

But, yes, there are dirty jobs to do with a wood fire and it requires some tools, space, and some basic skills, and it is not a perfect fuel, you do get some smoke and soot even when doing it all properly. But it is not adding to the climate emergency as much as the other fuel sources, and every energy source has drawbacks.

You will already know that not only does burning oil cause climate heating it also has a by product which is cheaply produced plastic that is polluting the environment. Oil has been great for humanity in the past, it has to be said, it has made our great advances as a species possible, but now it is having some dangerous outcomes and using wood for heating is a small way to counteract this.