#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #CZECH #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Czech, AFED: newspaper A3: Profit for yourself, ruin for others - Climate battlefield: young people protest, politicians make empty promises, billionaires get rich. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The fight to save the climate, and thus the fate of the planet and humanity as a

whole, continues despite such events as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the
bloody repression against the feminist uprising in Iran, further genocidal
attacks by the Turkish autocrat against the Kurdish minority, or the declining
standard of living and increasing inflation in Western Europe. All these
cruelties and adversities that happen in the world still have seeds of hope in
them. Putin can be defeated, the clero-fascist regime in Iran overthrown, as well
as the one in Turkey, in Europe people can confront social inequalities and share
the wealth that will guarantee abundance and security for all. As for the climate
crisis, it cannot be stopped as if by waving a magic wand. 200 years of dominance
of the fossil industry started processes that cannot be simply cut off. But we
can stand for one thing - to stop doing what the climate is changing at such a
dizzying speed, to get rid of the fossil industry.
The battleground of the climate struggle has different actors. On the one hand,
there are those who are concerned with saving it and the associated rapid changes
in energy, transport and agriculture with an emphasis on a just transformation.
It is no coincidence that these are often young people, such as high school
students from the Fridays for Future platform. After all, it is mainly about
their future, which is completely ignored by the consumer-oriented society and
its political representation. In addition to them, committed university students
organized an "occupation strike for the climate" in several faculties in November
and rounded it off on November 17 with a demonstration under the slogan
"Remembering is not enough". The "Limits are us" initiative drew attention to the
problem of climate change in October at a so-called climate camp, which took
place in Ostrava and ended with a demonstrative occupation of the local coke plant.

Among other things, it should be noted that 15,000 people died in Europe alone
during the last summer due to extreme weather, and millions more died all over
the planet as a result of drought, hunger or social unrest directly or indirectly
related to climate change. The death toll will increase as the planet's average
temperature rises and the symptoms of climate disruption worsen. Rising food
prices, water shortages, new diseases and increasingly frequent extreme weather
fluctuations are slowly becoming our daily experience. It is therefore obvious
that we must quickly slow down climate change, stop it, and create adaptation
measures for that part of the impacts that can no longer be reversed.

This of course requires global action. And so politicians enter the battlefield,
trying to appear to be doing something, but at the same time not to do much, so
as not to pit large corporations and fossil capital against each other. An
example is the recent COP27 conference, held in Egypt, i.e. under the dictatorial
regime of President Sisi, who is massively persecuting environmental
organizations, violating human rights and depriving his opponents of their
freedom while the Western democracies are watching silently. And so the whole
conference was more like a kind of corporate-dictatorship greenwashing, i.e.
painting the problem green without making any move on it. More than the climate,
delegates were concerned with the lack of sandwiches, too much ice cream and
running out of Coke.

Well, another actor on the imaginary climate battlefield is those who are
comfortable with the destruction because it makes them a lot of money. What's
more, new data revealed that, for example, the richest 1% of UK residents are
responsible for as much carbon dioxide growth in one year as the poorest 10% in
24 years. The enormous carbon footprint of the wealthiest over the past few
decades is staggering in its scale. The study suggested that the most effective
way for the government to combat climate change is to properly tax the rich
through a well-calculated carbon tax system. But billionaires resist this.

Daniel Kretínský is one of the biggest fighters for climate disruption in our
country and at the same time for increasing his own wealth - his personal assets
amount to about 120 billion crowns. He makes huge money, among other things, from
an outdated thermal power plant, which he refuses to stop despite calls from
official places, experts and the wider public. In addition to the production of
greenhouse gases, it fills the air with other harmful emissions that directly
harm the health of people in the wider vicinity. It uses cheap labor, saves on
its employees. It finances media with disinformation, anti-ecological and
nationalist content. He is willing to borrow billions from the state for his
business on favorable terms during a general crisis. And when the tax on
extraordinary profits starts to be discussed in connection with the increase in
energy prices for end customers, he announces that he will move one of his
companies, which would be affected by this, abroad, where he is not in danger of
being taxed. Even so, the structure of his holding ends abroad. Profits are lost
in the opaque and complicated structure of Luxembourg and Cyprus companies.

While today people pay outrageous sums for energy and the fate of future
generations and the planet is threatened, billionaires enjoy tax and other havens
and recalculate profits. The fight for the climate is therefore also a fight for
social justice - a class fight.

The A3 wall newspaper is published by the Anarchist Federation every month. They
are mainly intended for dissemination through plastering in the streets or
posting in workplaces and schools.

https://www.afed.cz/text/7796/a3-sobe-zisk-ostatnim-zkazu
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