IWU-FI Statement
International Climate Action Week: Global Climate Change Strike
A UN report by 250 scientists from 70 countries predicts an environmental catastrophe by 2050, where the planet would be uninhabitable for the human species. This report overturns the agreements signed by 195 countries to reduce CO2 emissions in the Paris Climate Change Agreement of 2015. The United States withdrew from this agreement, one of the main countries with the highest CO2 emissions, accompanied by Donald Trump’s idea that climate change is “a tall tale”.
This report shows that the predicted catastrophe will be the consequence of maintaining and deepening the logic of capitalist production that large multinationals and capitalist governments sustain to generate extraordinary profits at the expense of the depredation of nature and the over-exploitation of workers. The burning of fossil fuels, the main source of CO2 emissions; the deforestation and burning of the great forests and lungs of the world to favour the cultivation of biofuels seeds such as soybeans; the mega-mining for the extraction of minerals, which contaminate soils and water; and mass production with useless surpluses that generate wastes that end up in seas and oceans. It is the capitalist-imperialist system that leads us to an irreversible environmental catastrophe if we do not change this course.
Despite the agreements signed to revert this situation, they have done nothing to achieve the aim. The big transnational corporations and imperialist powers continue with the destruction. In 2018, the gas emissions of greenhouse effect, instead of being reduced, increased by 22.2 percent.
That is why from 20 to 27 September, activists call for international days of action for the climate. Large student strikes for climate change took place have in Europe, promoted by the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Thousands of young people from different cities who called themselves joined these demos every Friday. All over the world, mobilisations, rallies and different activities are being prepared during the week, culminating in a great global strike for climate change on 27 September.
From the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI) we joined the week of actions, strikes and mobilisations affirming that the one accountable for the climate disaster is the imperialist capitalist system itself. The only way to stop this catastrophe is to end capitalism by imposing a workers’ government. Governments should expropriate the big capitalists with no compensation, protecting workers; they should plan mining, agricultural and industrial production at the service of the broad working majorities and the care of nature.
From the IWU-FI we call to mobilise during the days from 20 to 27 September, under the modality of each country. We do so by supporting the struggles against water, air, land, and sea pollution; against the destruction of the jungles and indiscriminate logging; against the depredation of nature by the multinationals and their imperialist plundering; for the prohibition of open-pit mining and for the expropriation of the multinational mining, oil and gas companies, and agrochemicals like Monsanto-Bayer and others.
International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)
12 September 2019
