Capitalism facilitates firestorms, floods and tornadoes

Summer 2024 has been host to severe and persistent wildfires and tornadoes throughout the United States. Long before the summer, just from January through March alone, more than 2,669 square miles were charred in the United States. That’s larger than the area of Delaware and was already half of the total area impacted in 2023.

Moreover, the National Weather Service confirmed 180 tornadoes in July, the most the country has had since 1997, when there were 190. Most of these tornadoes resulted from two storm systems: Hurricane Beryl and the July 15 Derecho — a very long-lived and damaging thunderstorm that can itself be as damaging as a tornado — that impacted Chicago. 

Currently the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is projecting an above-normal 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. NOAA is forecasting a range of 17 to 25 total named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher.). Of those, eight to 13 are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including four to seven major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; with winds of 111 mph or higher), Forecasters have a 70% confidence in these ranges. 

The past two summers have been the hottest on record, causing weather extremes throughout the planet. Despite the United States’ position as a global superpower and its stranglehold over the industries that are predominantly responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, the governments of the U.S. and its equally industrialized imperialist allies in Western Europe, Japan and Australia have done nearly nothing to combat the climate crisis.

Climate change and capitalism

Climate change is a long-term shift in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the “scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” According to NOAA, the Earth’s temperature has risen by an average of 2 degrees Fahrenheit since record-keeping began in 1850. 

Furthermore, the rate of warming since 1982 has tripled, and the majority of this warming has occurred since then. This warming is caused by human activity, referring to the extreme amount of greenhouse gasses emitted under the industrial capitalist mode of production. The United States is the largest per capita contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and studies indicate that climate denialism, as a cultural and political phenomenon, is most pervasive in the United States. 

These weather events are made more frequent and severe because of the rapid heating of the oceans, atmosphere and land. What were once in a lifetime weather events are becoming annual or semi-annual events.

The United States’ aging infrastructure has exacerbated the effects of this extreme weather. Recent tornado storms in Ohio, which were caused by the mixture of humid air from hurricane alley and cool temperatures from a low-pressure ridge in the Midwest, have caused severe power outages in Cleveland. 

As of Aug. 18, nearly 300,000 people had been without power since Aug, 12. Meanwhile, Texas has been dealing with a power outage affecting 2.7 million people since Hurricane Beryl made landfall on July 8. That category 1 hurricane has devastated large parts of Texas because of the state’s particularly faulty power grid infrastructure. 

In order for capitalism to develop and sustain its need to maintain and increase profits, it must exploit the environment at a steadily increasing pace. Capitalism requires infinite growth in a world with finite resources. It plunders workers and ecological systems throughout the world. 

Class systems perpetuated by capitalism also make poor and oppressed peoples more at risk of climate-related health issues. Poor people are often the first to suffer and the last to be evacuated during disasters; they receive the least effective medical care. Often, they lose their land or assets permanently without proper compensation. All capitalist politicians do is make empty promises and spread climate denialism. 

To end this existential threat workers must unite and implement the integration of science into economic planning under socialism.