My weekly comment article in the daily Plymouth Herald newspaper, 13th September 2023, originally timed to advertise a Climate Rally in Plymouth the following Saturday. I had entitled it, “Stop Authorities Administering Armageddon”, that probably offered too emotive if not political headline. The constant issue of keeping a statement to 550 words when the issue is so vast and all-encompassing still befuddles and defeats me and I find these articles become repetitive from the need to state the core issues over-and-over. My original 750 words are below:

After the hottest summer of the hottest year ever experienced by Homo Sapiens – humans – climate change cannot be denied. Detractors will argue whether it’s human made or not, but the graphs of rise in C02 and Methane emissions match the rise in global temperatures. Follow the science.

The floods in Greece and China, the enormous hurricanes across the southern USA, the fires across southern Europe and throughout central Africa, and the drought destroying all potential for life in the arid regions of Africa are this year’s evidence of the real extremes of weather produced by the warming of our air, land and seas.

The wet and humid UK experience is different from the norm, but nothing like as bad as elsewhere, tho’ worse is bound to follow.

The majority of the UK population expresses worry and concern about the climate projections even while feeling powerless to do much about it.

The world remains headed for a temperature rise of up to 2.6C and must take urgent action, says a new UN report. Their “global stock take” informed last weekend’s G20 Summit in India, which offered no new actions to prevent climate collapse.

The richest and most powerful economies with all the power and wealth available did nothing. The G20 leaders’ declaration failed to include any reference to the phase out of oil and gas, despite the burning of fossil fuels being the biggest contributor to human induced global warming.

They are effectively happy to sit back and administer Armageddon. As, it would seem, are our national government departments and local Councils. Having declared a climate emergency, they tamper with cosmetic calls for “the people” (by which is meant the working class) to do more to walk and cycle, recycle, reuse and repair. 

With fuel prices set to rise yet again, food prices still soaring and a housing crisis all threatening misery this winter, we are given little option.

But the issue is emissions, emissions, emissions. 

The human world has to drastically reduce emissions from greenhouse gases to avoid mass extinction, a condition already happening across the rest of Nature. 

That means system change – how energy is produced and used, indeed how everything is produced and used. Jobs need to be transferred from fossil fuel industries into climate jobs: the restructuring of farming away from pollutants and towards home grown veg; the end of gas fuelled heating systems; the building of new electricity transmission grids to ensure constant supply of green energy; the construction of more wind and solar farms and the siting of solar for fuel and water heating on every building, alongside the insulation of at least 18 million of our homes. And much more, some 4 million climate jobs already identified.

This requires societal change. Society’s real decision-makers – the Capitalist owners of production, want business as usual in order to protect their disgusting and indefensible levels of private wealth and personal power. And they tell the politicians of all hues what to do or else be damned.

Next weekend the United Nations meets in New York for a weekend of talks to set new “Climate Ambitions” plans. 

Millions of climate activists across the world will be protesting to demand real action, taking to the streets to show concern and indeed our anger at our rulers’ intransigence.

Trade unions in Plymouth will be supporting the Climate Rally in Plymouth’s Guildhall Square at midday on Saturday 16th September. Workers – we who love, live and care for our children and grandchildren – have to organise for root-and-branch adaptation away from dependency on fossil fuels. This is a collective endeavour.

It is estimated that $4tn annual global investment in clean energy technology is needed to limit temperature rises to 2C. That’s 1/20th of world wealth. In terms of human survival, it seems more than affordable. But the system of Capitalist competition and imperial ambition won’t allow anything like that level of investment. The investment cuts into their short-term profitability and allows predators ready to risk the Earth in order to make a buck to take over.

It is the system of capitalism that has created this existential crisis, a system that cannot solve it.

The working class – we who actually produce the goods, have to organise to force the dramatic changes required for survival. We have to refuse to continue with business as usual. Time is short. We know what needs to be done. Fight Fossil Fuels.

We need system change, now.