All Out September 27th!

Central Executive Committee, September 2019

On September 20, 3 days before a UN emergency climate summit being held in New York, young people and pro-environment networks are mobilising for their largest and first global climate strike to date. They have invited everyone to join them on Friday, September 20 and again the following Friday, September 27 when they will join Earth Strike for climate justice. Global Climate Strike partners (including the YCL-LJC) are encouraging everyone to attend on both dates and beyond.

The YCL-LJC stands firmly in support of youth and workers around the world fighting for a sustainable future and their right to a clean, sustainable and safe environment, and is calling on its members, friends and on all progressive people and organisations (including student unions) to take an active part in local activities during the Climate Strike. 

However, we recognise that the solutions to climate change and environmental destruction cannot be found within the framework of capitalism, “green” or otherwise. Capitalism is a system based on unbridled exploitation of nature and labour for the sake of corporate profits. It cannot be separated from its devastating effects on our planet. The essence of capitalism is the transformation of nature into mere commodities, and into capital, and for this reason we urge all those fighting climate change to demand nothing short of system change, and fight for socialism.

In 2018, the UN issued a stark warning, declaring that we had only 12 years to stop the worst effects of climate change. Consequently, a misunderstanding of the situation and failure to respond appropriately is likely to result in catastrophic outcomes, particularly for the less developed countries, and for working class people least responsible for the crisis – a crisis caused by capitalism. 

The US military alone, with which Canada’s is intimately involved through NATO, is a larger polluter than as many as 140 countries, and Trudeau has promised to increase Canada’s own military budget by 73% over the next 10 years. The purpose of these militaries moreover remains today, as ever, the protection of capital and of corporate interests, both domestically and abroad, including Canada’s proliferation of highly destructive mining projects around the world. 

At home as well, the contradictions of capitalism and its falling rate of profit have demanded the intensification of resource extraction and energy projects on unceded indigenous territory, such as the Trans-Mountain Pipeline. Thus, a failure to strike at imperialism, militarism, and colonialism is also sure to fall short of the necessary reductions in emissions called for by the UN.

The ultra-right forces, including Bernier’s (anti)People’s Party or the Canadian version of the Yellow Vest movement, try to be seen as pro-workers since they reject any kind of serious action to protect environment since according to their rhetoric, defending the environment is opposed to saving relatively well-paid industrial jobs. 

By doing so, they are not protecting anybody’s job, but rather, they are protecting corporate interests. On the long term, it would be beneficial for all workers in the oil or tar sands industry (the most polluting fossil energy on the planet) to find jobs in other renewable energy sectors. But corporations are not ready to move from their exploitative model and as long as they will be masters of the game, something Bernier and his friends don’t question at all, it will be impossible to have a real plan of development corresponding to the nature’s needs and not to corporate greeds. 

For these reasons, we call for immediate binding international climate agreements, hard caps on climate emissions (which goes far beyond carbon tax), climate reparations for sustainable development of over-exploited countries, as well as the immediate transition of energy and major resource industries to democratic ownership and control in order to carry out an urgent transition from fossil fuels, the achievement of which will require continued and intensified activity, increased political consciousness and analysis, and a deepening alliance of progressive forces.

In the end, this planet is ours, the youth, and we won’t pay for their crises, whether they be environmental or economical!

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