Central Executive Committee, YCL-LJC
December, 2015
As world leaders meet in Paris to discuss a new international agreement on climate change, youth around the world are demanding climate justice. A successful result at the COP21 negotiations demands a sharp break with multinational monopoly corporations and a rejection of imperialist and market ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis. The Young Communist League of Canada joins those voices demanding this necessary fundamental change.
The climate crisis is already causing devastation around the world and what’s at stake is the livability of the planet. Millions each year are already displaced due to drought, flooding and extreme weather exacerbated by climate change. The 2 degree Celsius warming ‘red line’ currently being discussed does not mean that catastrophic events will be entirely avoided (such as the total loss of some island nations), but the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions that warming will reach 3.7 to 4.8 degrees Celsius, means that global capitalism is on track to plunge humankind and the environment into chaos.
Leave it in the ground. Against imperialism, for climate reparations
What is immediately needed is a call for bold action and a binding agreement with teeth coming out of COP 21. This would include a hard cap on climate emissions and a recognition that 80% of current fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground in order to meet the 2 degree commitment and avoid the full brunt of the crisis.
A solution to the climate crisis cannot replicate the current imperialist balance of forces, which is itself to blame. Western imperialist powers have historically contributed a disproportionally high level of green house gas emissions, while at the same time exploiting the Global South. We support the demand for climate reparations in order to allow sustainable development for the people in exploited countries and to stop the United States, Canada and other imperialist powers from avoiding their historic responsibilities in regards to the current climate crisis.
Canada’s government is not speaking for working people in Paris
The new federal Liberal government is continuing Canada’s shameful record on climate inaction. Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, has said no new targets will be brought to Paris other than those created by the climate criminal government of the Harper Conservatives. While ‘hoping’ for a legally binding agreement, she has already played a role in undermining that result by saying that that is unrealistic based on the United States’ rejection of mechanisms for international enforcement.
The truth is that Canada’s federal government and the provincial governments who have enacted inadequate and piecemeal climate strategies have sided with Canada’s oil and gas monopolies against the people and the environment. Contrary to McKenna’s declaration that “we’re all in this together” after meeting with Suncor, Cenovus and Enbridge a couple weeks ago, it is corporate Canada in general, and the oil and gas corporations in particular that remain the principle roadblock against any reform that will impact their bottom line.
The federal and provincial governments’ climate change policies are at best inadequate, and at worst greenwashing campaigns endorsed by Big Oil. The NDP government in Alberta’s recent announcement that it would be imposing a carbon tax was largely well-received by oil and gas. Those ‘leaders of industry’ that joined Premier Notley at her photo-op are no doubt excited that Alberta has a new green image to help them sell their tar sands oil. Alberta’s new climate policy allows for a 40% increase in emissions from the tar sands and half of the new (very low) carbon tax will come back to oil and gas companies as subsidies. While the policy allows for some expenditure for working people to be able to afford more expensive energy rates, and some towards retraining programs for workers, it is essentially a program where working class Albertans and industry pay the carbon tax, and then the oil and gas companies get subsidized to ‘remain competitive’ and continue poisoning the planet. The YCL Canada continues to call for the closure of the tar sands and an end to all pipeline projects connected to the tar sands.
Federal and provincial governments, with Big Business behind them, now admit that climate change is a problem, however their ‘solutions’ are designed to fail. Market solutions such as cap-and-trade, which allows dirty companies to pollute and pay, justifying their criminal environmental actions, and carbon-tax schemes that place a disproportionately higher burden on low-wage and poor people than on the wealthy, leave ownership and control in the hands of the same corporations which are principally responsible for the degradation of our environment. The Young Communist League of Canada demands public ownership and democratic control over Canada’s energy resources, from its primary production/extraction and refinement through to its distribution and sale. Canada’s energy should be developed for the needs of the people, not for profit.
Sovereignty for Indigenous peoples
After five centuries of ongoing colonialism and genocide, Indigenous peoples in Canada are facing the further theft of oil, gas and hydro power from their traditional lands and waters. Environmental racism, where the racialized working class and especially Indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by climate change and pollution caused by climate criminal corporations, is alive and well in Canada. A key struggle to combat environmental racism is the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, which includes the demand that any development on Indigenous lands, both surface and sub-surface, should proceed only with the full knowledge and consent of Indigenous peoples, on fairly negotiated terms.
Capitalism is the cause
The reality has never been more apparent: capitalism is incompatible with an environmentally sustainable global economy, just as it is incompatible with peace and a world without the exploitation of labour. As the World Federation of Democratic Youth said in a statement on the COP 21 meetings:
It is doubtless that the solutions for environmental issues will never come from imperialism, with its complete irrationality and predatory nature, and its goal of accumulation and maximizing profit will always seek the depletion of nature at a pace that overcomes its ability to regenerate, risking, in short, the sovereignty and quality of life of the peoples and, in the long term, risking the human species’ survival itself.
It is no wonder that imperialist leaders have no real answers to the climate crisis. They are trying to save the planet but without upsetting the system that is destroying it. There is no such thing as ‘green capitalism’, and socialism is a prerequisite for building a truly environmentally sustainable economy.
Fortunately democratic movements for climate justice are organizing around the world, with young people at the forefront of many struggles. Working people can put forward solutions to climate change, and capitalism is not a permanent system. The Young Communist League salutes the climate justice march that occurred in Ottawa where 25,000 people participated. On the same day large rallies also occurred in other cities such as Vancouver and Toronto, which shared the demand of a pro-people transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050. Indigenous peoples are fighting across Canada for their sovereignty and against the colonial environmental destruction of their lands. Resistance to pipelines and the tar sands has become very widespread with some key victories being won through this organizing. The divestment movement, especially on University campuses, has also grown and won important victories. The YCL of Canada supports these struggles and in several places across the country has participated directly in them.
A broad and massive movement for climate justice with clear demands that promise a sharp break with corporate power, is essential to winning immediate victories that begin to address climate change. In the long-term, the climate crisis has given new meaning to Rosa Luxemburg’s famous slogan of “Socialism or Barbarism”. We fight for socialism and respond with our own slogan: “the youth are the future, the future is socialism!”