With COP29 failureGlobal struggle needed to save the planet

The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year ever. Since January there have been more destructive hurricanes, cyclones and tornadoes than any time in history. Around the globe, record rainfalls have resulted in massive mudslides that wiped away entire towns. As the year’s end approaches, climate scientists report that 2024 “will be the first year in which the world’s average surface temperature exceeded the pre-industrial average by 1.5 degrees Celsius.” (Truthout, Nov. 22)

Global warming “tipping points” established decades ago appear to be on the brink of being surpassed, and many climate scientists already considered the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit to be too high.

The cooptation of COP29

Given these dire predictions one would think that the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, COP29, that just wrapped up Nov. 22 in Baku, Azerbaijan, would have included intense discussions and proposals to address this pending catastrophe. One would think that politicians around the capitalist world would be rushing to do something to save the planet. Unfortunately, one would be wrong.  

Hosting COP29 as its president, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources H.E. Mukhtar Babayev opened the conference by reading a 9,000-word letter — one that evaded mention of fossil fuels except in a positive light. Babayev previously worked for SOCAR, an oil company accused of large-scale pollution. He used the COP29 event to arrange new fossil fuel deals, including granting access to 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists and 480 carbon capture and storage lobbyists attending the conference.

Most lobbyists were promoting natural gas, falsely labeled by the industry as the “green fuel.” Actually, from extraction through processing for export, natural gas causes the release of more greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon monoxide, than coal.

While representatives from 200 countries attended COP29, leaders of some of the top polluting countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Russia skipped COP29 altogether.  

A deep divide at COP29 came at the end of the conference around an agreement on funds pledged by the wealthiest countries to assist developing countries in adopting cleaner energy and coping with the most dire effects of the climate crisis. Wealthy countries initially pledged $250 billion per year by 2035, up from a target of $100 billion set at a previous COP. When developing countries rejected the offer as inadequate, the conference was extended until the offer was increased to $300 billion. Many experts placed the necessary amount as closer to $1.3 trillion per year.

Israel’s war causes ‘ecocide’ in Gaza    

One highlight of the conference was the delegation from Palestine which attended COP29 to shed light on global heating’s intersection with another crisis: Israel’s siege of Gaza.   Advocates have called the genocide in Gaza an “ecocide,” saying the war has made its ecosystems unlivable. “What’s going on in Gaza is completely killing all the elements of life,” said Abeer Butmeh, a coordinator of the Palestinian non-governmental organizations Network and Friends of the Earth Palestine, who had travelled to COP29 from the occupied West Bank. 

Palestinian participants noted that 28% of crude-oil supplied to Israel between October 2023 and July 2024 came from Azerbaijan. Butmah asked: “If they’re fueling the genocide, how can they talk about climate justice?” (The Guardian, Nov. 23)

Energy industry’s control of climate movement

Efforts by the fossil fuel industry to dominate and limit the climate change movement are not new. On Sept. 21, 2014, over 310,000 people filled the streets of New York City for the first People’s Climate March. But in the weeks leading up to the event, fossil fuel companies essentially took control over the messaging, dumbing it down. 

Influenced by the same corporations responsible for global warming, the official march organizers failed to raise any demands or to provide a sound system that allowed speakers to be heard through the entire march. (workers.org/2014/09/16125/)

This pattern of energy industry control, especially by the fossil fuel industry, has dominated successive COP gatherings. In the Paris Agreement that came out of COP21, held in France in 2015, the countries attending updated national climate action plans to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels and spur investment in Sustainable Development Goals. 

However, pressure from U.S. delegates, chosen under President Barack Obama’s administration, blocked the conference from factoring in climate damage caused by the Pentagon and U.S. militarism.

In 2016 former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. And even though President Joe Biden rejoined in 2020, little progress has been made, in large part because Biden’s administration has openly embraced expanding fossil fuel production to make the U.S. a world leader in fuel exports.

As long as capitalism remains the dominant economic system, saving the capitalists’ profit-driven system is the top priority even if it means destroying everything around them.

Chinese innovation: People before profits

For decades and through successive presidents of both bourgeois parties, the U.S. has dominated the globe through superior militarism, super-charged by oil. Its current support for Zionist colonialism stems largely from the U.S. drive to control Middle Eastern oil and gas, including natural gas deposits in the Gaza Marine fields off the coast of Gaza.

But increasingly U.S. dominance is being challenged by the People’s Republic of China. Once considered the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (since U.S. military emissions were not included in statistics), today China is transitioning to becoming a leader in climate-friendly practices.

Under the Communist Party of China and its leader Xi Jinping, China has made a significant shift in its environmental approach. Side by side with policies that have eliminated deep poverty in China, steps are being taken to invest heavily in solar and wind power, set energy efficiency standards for buildings and industries and promote clean energy technology.

In Workers World in July 2024, Lyn Neeley wrote: “In 2023 China produced 60% of the world’s electric vehicles, 98% of the world’s electric buses and two-thirds of all the world’s wind and solar projects. Its workers installed more solar panels than they had in the previous three years combined, nearly twice as much as the rest of the world combined.” (workers.org/2024/07/79887/)

Small solar farms, making up 40% of China’s solar capacity, greatly increased China’s solar power production totals. In 2023 China’s growth in wind power also increased faster than in any country except the United States.

Neeley stated: “China’s goal of peak carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060 may well be reached sooner than expected. The biggest driver of China’s economic growth is innovation and clean energy technology, accounting for 40% of their gross domestic product expansion last year.”

Socialism vs. capitalism

From 2009 to 2023 the Chinese government provided $230.9 billion in state support that included buyer rebates, sales tax exemptions, construction of charging stations and research and development support for the electronic vehicle industry.

In comparison, over the same 14-year period the U.S. military budget was over $10 trillion. This is how working-class taxpayers subsidize the military-industrial complex. The U.S. also sells enormous amounts of weapons worldwide. The Pentagon, while waging wars globally, remains the single largest entity contributing to global warming.

While China is leading the world in production and affordability of electric vehicles, the U.S. is moving in the opposite direction. Even before Trump’s election in November, Biden was increasing tariffs on Chinese imports, including 100% on its electric cars. Now climate change denier Trump, with billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk at his side, threatens to further restrict these imports, while deregulating existing environmental protections.

Workers and oppressed people will need to organize to fight Trump and his fascist cronies, to take on a dying capitalist system and to save the planet. Making this fight one for socialism is a win-win all around.