Climate change

Animal products and the environment — readings

Many on the green left advocate a huge reduction in animal product consumption, society- and world-wide. They point to the industry's environmentally destructive impacts, and call for land to be freed up for rewilding, afforestation, and other climate interventions. Others see it as a distraction from tackling fossil capital, an incorrect assessment of agriculture, a concession to lifestyle politics, moralism, or even authoritarian. What should socialist environmentalists say and do? Workers' Liberty's monthly socialist environmentalist reading group read the articles below, and discussed...

Letters: XR and the police; Vibes won't save us; The bureaucrats had choices; Other Afghanistan films

XR, the police and working-class politics The climate demonstrations organised by Extinction Rebellion and participated in by Workers Liberty saw multiple instances of authoritarian and violent policing not previously witnessed at mainstream environmental protests. The opening days of the two week long protest introduced the police’s van-mounted loud hailer belting out “Section 14” dispersal orders in central London, and by the Tuesday of the second week videos were circulating of police officers mounting an open-top-bus and swinging batons at protesters inside. This, in the context of the...

After XR actions, what next?

The 13 energetic days of XR’s “Impossible Rebellion” finished the same day as Hurricane Ida: Saturday 4 September. What’s next in the fight against climate crises? The priorities vary from city to city, from workplace to workplace, but I note some ideas below. On Friday 24 September a youth climate strike has been called, globally. Take the day off work if necessary, and go down to the local one. If you can find people organising for it locally, get in touch in advance, help them to build and prepare for it. Invite them to trade union and Labour Party meetings, and even organise a workplace or...

Socialist Worker and the banks

The SWP's paper Socialist Worker has published a number of articles (rightly) praising Extinction Rebellion's focus on the City of London.

In the age of Scylla and Charybdis

You will no doubt be familiar with the expression “between a rock and a hard place”. That phrase, apparently, has its origins in labour history. According to one online source, “the phrase originated in America in the early 1900s to describe a dispute between copper miners and the mining companies in Bisbee, Arizona”. Maybe. It’s a modern take on the myth of Scylla and Charybdis, described by Homer as two immortal and irresistible monsters who controlled the narrow waters through which Odysseus needed to pass. I thought about Scylla and Charybdis the other day while I listened to a relative in...

Take the climate rebellion into workplaces

From 23 August, environmental activists from across the UK descended upon London for thirteen days of bold and creative direct action against climate change and its financing, XR’s “Impossible Rebellion”. It was smaller than previous pre-Covid rebellions, but still numbered thousands every day. And not just for a single march, then a coach home: for marching, actions, and confrontation with the police all day long, day after day. Class-struggle and workplace activists, from Workers’ Liberty, “Empower the Unions”, and beyond, have been participating: supporting the protests, while trying to...

Climate: break the rule of profit

Amid a summer of worldwide climate breakdown, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - described as “a code red for humanity” by the head of the UN – lays out unequivocally how greenhouse gas emissions are driving increasingly dire climate crises, and a range of “possible climate futures”. How do we win the future we need? Banks and the rich fund oil, gas, coal development, and polluting businesses, pouring rivers of money into enterprises destroying the planet – simply to make money. The wealth produced by workers but controlled by bosses needs to be seized back...

Come with us to the XR action and COP26

In major environmental events coming up, Workers’ Liberty activists will be fighting to fuse the socialist and environmental movements, and for socialist environmental politics. Come and help us! XR’s “Impossible Rebellion” in London, after a Kill The Bill demonstration on 21 August, London, runs for two weeks from 23 August. The themes will be “Crisis talks”, and tackling the financing of fossil fuels. The high point will be a “climate carnival” on Sunday 29. We are working with others to organise workshops on workplace organising and the anti-union laws, and public ownership of banks, on...

XR plans for August action

The anti-G7 protests in Cornwall confirmed to me a trend I had suspected for a while: that XR, coming out of the year(s) of lockdowns, is by far the biggest activist environmental force around. However many criticisms we have of their politics, that makes it imperative for us to engage with them. As well as organising and mobilising for national and international protests, there are countless local XR groups which are still — or becoming once more — active. Urgency was added to my longer-standing intentions to get involved, not only by the recent upsurge in extreme weather events , flooding...

Climate Emergency Centres: making links

Workers’ Liberty argues that real progress on the climate will only happen when trade unionists embrace environmentalism and make it their own, and when the environmental movement learns to appreciate the potential power of workers to make change. Bringing the two together is not easy but it is essential. One possible avenue opens up in the form of the new Climate Emergency Centres. As 500 local councils declared a climate emergency in response to the youth climate strikes, a group called Space Generators, with experience in the squatters movement and then Occupy, seized the opportunity to...

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