It’s Getting Hot In Here

18 months ago NASA scientist Jim Hansen said we have “no longer than a decade, at most” to hold global warming to a manageable range. If business as usual continues, Hansen said, “we would be producing a different planet.”

What Hansen doesn’t mention is that “business as usual” is an economic system that is fundamentally unjust which is perpetuating wars of empire and widening the gap between the ultra-rich and the global poor even more rapidly than it heats the planet.

The first victims of climate change won’t be it’s main culprits but rather those who are already the victims of the system of production causing it. “It’s the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Our movement can’t stop with the climate. The radical re-invention of our world demanded of us in the coming years must do more than stave off one acute symptom of industrial capitalism (climate change), it must aggressively tackle the chronic impoverishment, suffering, insecurity and injustice experienced by most of Earth’s people, who live with their necks under the boot of the first world.

Indeed, we must produce a different planet. We must produce a planet where all people have access to dignified housing, employment, health care and education and have a say in decisions made by their governments, and where the right to existence of all living things is respected.

If we stop global warming without building a sustainable, equitable economy accessible to all, we will have missed the greatest opportunity our civilization has ever known. This isn’t just a time of crisis, it’s our time for revolution.