They are relying on the arsonist to put out the fire: COP 30 between
climate statism and green capitalism ---- COP 30 is the 30th UN climate
conference, held in Belém (PA), in November 2025, bringing together
countries to negotiate actions against the climate crisis. It seeks to
accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement and maintain the
1.5°C target, discussing national emission reduction targets, climate
finance, and the transition away from fossil fuels. For Brazil, hosting
the event brings diplomatic prominence to the federal government, but
also highlights contradictions such as deforestation and
socio-environmental conflicts, while the Lula government tries to
present itself as a climate leader, proposing initiatives such as a
Climate Coalition and a US$125 billion fund for tropical forests.
From the perspective of social class analysis, COP 30 represents the
confluence of different national technocracies and international
capitalist factions, along with a minority of social movements
integrated into the capitalist-statist order, to discuss our climate
future within the framework of this same order. In this sense, they
ignore the class and political aspects of the climate emergency, part of
the broader ecological crisis promoted by capitalism, focusing
discussions on illusorily technical and financial measures. The
solutions proposed by these agents of climate statism and green
capitalism range from palliatives that a more or less regulatory state
and a financial capital duly greened for the climate problem can provide.
On the other hand, indigenous peoples and traditional communities have
in fact contributed to mitigating the climate crisis because their
territories, when recognized and protected, concentrate disproportionate
carbon stocks and systematically exhibit lower deforestation rates than
other areas, a direct result of their own forms of territorial
organization and management. In other words, the fact that these
territories remain forested is, in itself, a global climate "service" of
enormous scale (Tropical forest carbon in indigenous territories: a
global analysis, UNFCCC COP21, 2015).
Since the beginning of COP30 in Belém, indigenous peoples have already
staged at least three direct actions against the official climate
theater: one led to the occupation of the event's main pavilion, and
another blocked the entrance to the so-called "blue zone," where the
planet's destinies are negotiated behind closed doors. The immediate
response from the UN Convention bureaucracy was to demand increased
security and perimeter control, attempting to contain what the press
calls "incidents" but which, in practice, is the eruption of real
struggle within the sanitized space of green diplomacy. On Saturday
(November 15th), hundreds of indigenous people marched with social
movements through the center of Belém in protest, while the Brazilian
government, in a calculated move, avoided open criticism of the
mobilizations. When the Munduruku people blocked the entrance to the
pavilion on Friday (November 14th), the conference president, André
Corrêa do Lago, and ministers Marina Silva and Sônia Guajajara rushed to
negotiate with the leaders and end the blockade-a clear example of how
the State seeks to manage and neutralize the indigenous offensive,
preserving the "normality" of negotiations that keep intact the
structures responsible for the climate crisis itself. COP 30 in Belém
reproduces on a micro scale the contradictions of the statist-capitalist
order we live in, where the arsonists responsible for the climate crisis
are called upon to put out the fire, while those who have built a
sophisticated system of socio-ecological relations with nature and who
are currently preventing the worsening of the climate situation are
repressed and expelled.
Towards a proletarian climate policy
We understand that the climate issue permeates the issue of territorial
disputes over mineral and energy resources, central elements in dispute
in this Second Cold War that we have already addressed in previous
statements. The struggle for land for the extraction of minerals
necessary for the "energy transition"
Thinking about climate policy from the perspective of the working class
and oppressed peoples means inverting the starting point: it is not "how
to save the climate without hindering growth," as the agents of climate
statism and green capitalism reason, but how to organize the class
struggle on a warming planet. Therefore, climate policy is not a
separate "environmental" issue, but a central field of contemporary
class struggle, as it concerns the dispute over who has the power to
decide what to produce, for whom, under what conditions, and at what
human/ecological/territorial costs.
Three-line struggle in climate policy
The working class, oppressed peoples, and anarchist revolutionaries need
to correctly discern the different lines at play when it comes to
climate policy. The 1) liberal and 2) social-democratic lines enjoy
greater visibility in public debate, while a 3) proletarian line only
sketches its existence and outlines its minimal and revolutionary
programs. The first two lines lead to the reproduction of the interstate
and capitalist system as we know it, not to its overcoming in political,
economic, and ecological terms. In this sense, they are auxiliary lines
of the current order, prolonging the climate problem instead of solving
it. The solution to the ecological crisis, of which the "climate
emergency" is only one of its constitutive aspects, necessarily involves
the end of capitalism and the state as forms of organizing social life
on local and global scales.
A line centered on the working class places climate directly on the
terrain of class struggle. The difference between this and the other two
approaches is not merely one of "degree of state intervention," but also
of starting point, political subject, tools, and historical horizon.
The liberal perspective starts from the idea that global warming is
essentially a market failure: carbon does not have an adequate price,
and economic agents do not incorporate "environmental costs" into their
decisions. Climate policy, in this context, is conceived as a set of
mechanisms to "correct" this failure through prices, incentives, and
technological innovation. The main actors are national governments and
multilateral organizations in dialogue with capitalist companies and
investors. The stated objective is to reduce emissions "at the lowest
possible cost," without undermining economic growth and maintaining the
structure of private ownership of the means of production: the energy
source is changed, processes are improved, a carbon market is created,
but the pattern of accumulation and reproduction of capital is not
questioned. The state appears as a neutral mediator, guaranteeing a good
"business environment," and the market is treated as the privileged
space for the solution. In this context, class struggle tends to
disappear, replaced by problems of "governance" and investment.
The social-democratic line recognizes the same crisis, but formulates it
as a public problem that cannot be simply handed over to the market.
Here, climate policy combines environmental regulation, carbon taxes,
subsidies for so-called "clean" technologies, and compensatory social
policies. The political subject expands: the welfare state, progressive
parties, institutionalized unions, NGOs, and multilateral organizations
enter the picture. The idea of a "just transition" becomes central:
reducing emissions, yes, but with compensation for losing sectors and
regions, negotiated productive reconversion, and job protection through
a social pact between the state, companies, and unions. The market
remains important, but "tamed" by regulation; the state, in turn, is the
actor that coordinates and redistributes. Class struggle is
acknowledged, but channeled into forms of institutional negotiation and
gradual compromises between capital and labor: the horizon of rupture is
replaced by a regulated capitalism, with a "cleaner" energy matrix and
some reinforcement of the welfare state.
However, the perspective from the working class shifts the axis of the
debate. Here, the climate crisis is not seen as a market failure, nor
merely as a problem of public management, but as a historical result of
class exploitation, colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy under
capitalism. Climate politics is seen as a central field of contemporary
class struggle because it concerns who decides what to produce, for
whom, under what conditions, and with what impacts on territories and
peoples. The political subject is no longer the "well-intentioned State"
nor the abstract "civil society," but the working class in its broadest
sense: rural and urban workers, formal and informal workers, indigenous
peoples, peasants, quilombola communities, residents of the peripheries,
women and precarious youth, organized in grassroots movements, combative
unions, assemblies, and territorial councils.
If in the other two lines, the "lines of order," the central criterion
is "reducing emissions" in an economically efficient or socially
sustainable way, here the criterion becomes more incisive: reducing
emissions and ecological destruction while expanding the power and
autonomy of the working class and oppressed peoples. This implies
shifting the question "how much does it cost?" to "who pays and who
decides?" Instead of financing the transition with regressive taxes and
tariffs that fall on workers, from the point of view of a minimum
program, it is proposed to tax fortunes, extraordinary profits, and
fossil and agrarian-export income, as well as the expropriation of
explicitly destructive assets. Instead of a transition designed by state
technocracies negotiating with corporations, the focus is on
ecological-democratic planning, with social control of key sectors such
as energy, transport, sanitation, and food through workers' and
community councils, with real veto and decision-making power.
This "breaking point" also alters the role of territory in climate
policy. In liberal and social-democratic frameworks, territories appear
primarily as spaces where projects are implemented - wind farms,
hydroelectric dams, "low-carbon" agribusiness, regional development
programs. From a class perspective, territory becomes a front of
conflict between the state and capital on one side, and rural and urban
communities on the other. Climate policy necessarily involves the active
defense of indigenous peoples, peasants, extractivists, quilombola
communities, favelas, and peripheries against extractivism and
megaprojects. Instead of viewing forests, savannahs, or coastlines as
"carbon assets" to be integrated into global markets, an ecological
agrarian reform and a radical urban reform are proposed that recognize
traditional territories and peripheries as subjects of climate policy,
and not as mere spaces for compensation and top-down directed development.
Another important shift is in the reproduction of life. The liberal
approach tends to make domestic and care work invisible, focusing on the
"resilient" and entrepreneurial individual. The social-democratic
approach introduces social adaptation programs, insurance, and shelters,
but still within a sectoral policy framework. From the perspective of
the working class, the focus becomes: who takes care when everything
collapses? Extreme events increase the burden of domestic work, almost
always borne by women, and put pressure on public services. Thus, a
class-based climate policy places public and community-based care
networks at the center, valuing invisible labor (waste pickers, health
workers, educators, informal rural workers) as key actors in the
proletarian climate response, and forms of income and protection linked
to the maintenance of life, not to market productivity.
Finally, the dispute between the two "lines of order" and the "line of
rupture" is evident in the forms of organization and struggle.
Liberalism relies on controlled consultations, business forums, and
global governance; while social democracy expands councils, conferences,
and institutional spaces for participation, without breaking with the
structural asymmetry between capital and labor. Climate policy from the
working class demands grassroots democracy and direct action: popular
assemblies, company and neighborhood committees, rural-urban alliances,
climate strikes, blockades of destructive infrastructure, and productive
boycotts for ecological reasons. Climate policy is no longer just a
specialized "environmental issue" but returns to the classic vocabulary
of class struggle, updated by the fact that today the dispute over
labor, land, and territory is, at the same time, a dispute over the
material conditions of possibility for social life itself.
The climate future between the forces of order and rupture
Ultimately, what is at stake are three distinct historical horizons: a
financialized, green capitalism that transforms the ecological crisis
into a new round of accumulation for capitalists; a regulated, green
capitalism with a reinforced welfare state and a supposedly "clean"
energy matrix; and a horizon of social ecology, based on the socialist
self-government of the people, on the self-management of production
geared towards collectively defined needs, and on an ecological
mutualism between nature and society, in balance with ecological limits,
articulating the overcoming of class exploitation with a critique of
colonial, patriarchal, and racial domination. It is within this context
that climate policy, conceived from the perspective of the working
class, is situated: not as just another "thematic agenda," but as a
strategic field in the struggle for a socialist and self-governed society.
The three lines of climate policy today - liberal, social-democratic,
and proletarian - are three ways of imagining the planet's climate
future. The liberal and social-democratic lines, despite differences in
instruments and language, remain within the established order: they
accept the statist-capitalist system as given and attempt to
"decarbonize" or regulate capitalism without addressing the logic of
accumulation, the private ownership of the means of production, and the
centralized command of the State. Thus, they may mitigate impacts and
partially redistribute costs, but they continue to reproduce the same
historical form that produces global warming and ecological destruction:
intensive extraction of energy and matter, territories transformed into
sacrifice zones, and the State acting as manager of this dynamic.
The perspective from the working class emerges as a breaking point
because it places climate directly within the context of class struggle,
colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy. Instead of simply asking "how
to reduce emissions?", it asks "who decides, who pays, who benefits?",
proposing a radical democratization of decisions regarding energy, land,
transportation, and food; the dismantling of structurally destructive
activities; and the reorganization of production and life based on
collective needs and ecological limits. This materializes in climate
strikes, blockades of megaprojects, the defense of territories, and
experiences of ecological self-management led by workers, indigenous
peoples, peasants, and urban peripheries. If statism-capitalism is the
historical form that produces the crisis, then there is no sustainable
climate future within it: both lines of order manage the disaster; only
the proletarian breaking point opens the possibility of a minimally
habitable post-capitalist and post-state world for the majority and for
other forms of life.
https://uniaoanarquista.wordpress.com/2025/11/19/so-o-povo-salva-o-planeta-a-cop-30-e-as-tres-linhas-em-disputa-pelo-futuro-climatico/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
climate statism and green capitalism ---- COP 30 is the 30th UN climate
conference, held in Belém (PA), in November 2025, bringing together
countries to negotiate actions against the climate crisis. It seeks to
accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement and maintain the
1.5°C target, discussing national emission reduction targets, climate
finance, and the transition away from fossil fuels. For Brazil, hosting
the event brings diplomatic prominence to the federal government, but
also highlights contradictions such as deforestation and
socio-environmental conflicts, while the Lula government tries to
present itself as a climate leader, proposing initiatives such as a
Climate Coalition and a US$125 billion fund for tropical forests.
From the perspective of social class analysis, COP 30 represents the
confluence of different national technocracies and international
capitalist factions, along with a minority of social movements
integrated into the capitalist-statist order, to discuss our climate
future within the framework of this same order. In this sense, they
ignore the class and political aspects of the climate emergency, part of
the broader ecological crisis promoted by capitalism, focusing
discussions on illusorily technical and financial measures. The
solutions proposed by these agents of climate statism and green
capitalism range from palliatives that a more or less regulatory state
and a financial capital duly greened for the climate problem can provide.
On the other hand, indigenous peoples and traditional communities have
in fact contributed to mitigating the climate crisis because their
territories, when recognized and protected, concentrate disproportionate
carbon stocks and systematically exhibit lower deforestation rates than
other areas, a direct result of their own forms of territorial
organization and management. In other words, the fact that these
territories remain forested is, in itself, a global climate "service" of
enormous scale (Tropical forest carbon in indigenous territories: a
global analysis, UNFCCC COP21, 2015).
Since the beginning of COP30 in Belém, indigenous peoples have already
staged at least three direct actions against the official climate
theater: one led to the occupation of the event's main pavilion, and
another blocked the entrance to the so-called "blue zone," where the
planet's destinies are negotiated behind closed doors. The immediate
response from the UN Convention bureaucracy was to demand increased
security and perimeter control, attempting to contain what the press
calls "incidents" but which, in practice, is the eruption of real
struggle within the sanitized space of green diplomacy. On Saturday
(November 15th), hundreds of indigenous people marched with social
movements through the center of Belém in protest, while the Brazilian
government, in a calculated move, avoided open criticism of the
mobilizations. When the Munduruku people blocked the entrance to the
pavilion on Friday (November 14th), the conference president, André
Corrêa do Lago, and ministers Marina Silva and Sônia Guajajara rushed to
negotiate with the leaders and end the blockade-a clear example of how
the State seeks to manage and neutralize the indigenous offensive,
preserving the "normality" of negotiations that keep intact the
structures responsible for the climate crisis itself. COP 30 in Belém
reproduces on a micro scale the contradictions of the statist-capitalist
order we live in, where the arsonists responsible for the climate crisis
are called upon to put out the fire, while those who have built a
sophisticated system of socio-ecological relations with nature and who
are currently preventing the worsening of the climate situation are
repressed and expelled.
Towards a proletarian climate policy
We understand that the climate issue permeates the issue of territorial
disputes over mineral and energy resources, central elements in dispute
in this Second Cold War that we have already addressed in previous
statements. The struggle for land for the extraction of minerals
necessary for the "energy transition"
Thinking about climate policy from the perspective of the working class
and oppressed peoples means inverting the starting point: it is not "how
to save the climate without hindering growth," as the agents of climate
statism and green capitalism reason, but how to organize the class
struggle on a warming planet. Therefore, climate policy is not a
separate "environmental" issue, but a central field of contemporary
class struggle, as it concerns the dispute over who has the power to
decide what to produce, for whom, under what conditions, and at what
human/ecological/territorial costs.
Three-line struggle in climate policy
The working class, oppressed peoples, and anarchist revolutionaries need
to correctly discern the different lines at play when it comes to
climate policy. The 1) liberal and 2) social-democratic lines enjoy
greater visibility in public debate, while a 3) proletarian line only
sketches its existence and outlines its minimal and revolutionary
programs. The first two lines lead to the reproduction of the interstate
and capitalist system as we know it, not to its overcoming in political,
economic, and ecological terms. In this sense, they are auxiliary lines
of the current order, prolonging the climate problem instead of solving
it. The solution to the ecological crisis, of which the "climate
emergency" is only one of its constitutive aspects, necessarily involves
the end of capitalism and the state as forms of organizing social life
on local and global scales.
A line centered on the working class places climate directly on the
terrain of class struggle. The difference between this and the other two
approaches is not merely one of "degree of state intervention," but also
of starting point, political subject, tools, and historical horizon.
The liberal perspective starts from the idea that global warming is
essentially a market failure: carbon does not have an adequate price,
and economic agents do not incorporate "environmental costs" into their
decisions. Climate policy, in this context, is conceived as a set of
mechanisms to "correct" this failure through prices, incentives, and
technological innovation. The main actors are national governments and
multilateral organizations in dialogue with capitalist companies and
investors. The stated objective is to reduce emissions "at the lowest
possible cost," without undermining economic growth and maintaining the
structure of private ownership of the means of production: the energy
source is changed, processes are improved, a carbon market is created,
but the pattern of accumulation and reproduction of capital is not
questioned. The state appears as a neutral mediator, guaranteeing a good
"business environment," and the market is treated as the privileged
space for the solution. In this context, class struggle tends to
disappear, replaced by problems of "governance" and investment.
The social-democratic line recognizes the same crisis, but formulates it
as a public problem that cannot be simply handed over to the market.
Here, climate policy combines environmental regulation, carbon taxes,
subsidies for so-called "clean" technologies, and compensatory social
policies. The political subject expands: the welfare state, progressive
parties, institutionalized unions, NGOs, and multilateral organizations
enter the picture. The idea of a "just transition" becomes central:
reducing emissions, yes, but with compensation for losing sectors and
regions, negotiated productive reconversion, and job protection through
a social pact between the state, companies, and unions. The market
remains important, but "tamed" by regulation; the state, in turn, is the
actor that coordinates and redistributes. Class struggle is
acknowledged, but channeled into forms of institutional negotiation and
gradual compromises between capital and labor: the horizon of rupture is
replaced by a regulated capitalism, with a "cleaner" energy matrix and
some reinforcement of the welfare state.
However, the perspective from the working class shifts the axis of the
debate. Here, the climate crisis is not seen as a market failure, nor
merely as a problem of public management, but as a historical result of
class exploitation, colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy under
capitalism. Climate politics is seen as a central field of contemporary
class struggle because it concerns who decides what to produce, for
whom, under what conditions, and with what impacts on territories and
peoples. The political subject is no longer the "well-intentioned State"
nor the abstract "civil society," but the working class in its broadest
sense: rural and urban workers, formal and informal workers, indigenous
peoples, peasants, quilombola communities, residents of the peripheries,
women and precarious youth, organized in grassroots movements, combative
unions, assemblies, and territorial councils.
If in the other two lines, the "lines of order," the central criterion
is "reducing emissions" in an economically efficient or socially
sustainable way, here the criterion becomes more incisive: reducing
emissions and ecological destruction while expanding the power and
autonomy of the working class and oppressed peoples. This implies
shifting the question "how much does it cost?" to "who pays and who
decides?" Instead of financing the transition with regressive taxes and
tariffs that fall on workers, from the point of view of a minimum
program, it is proposed to tax fortunes, extraordinary profits, and
fossil and agrarian-export income, as well as the expropriation of
explicitly destructive assets. Instead of a transition designed by state
technocracies negotiating with corporations, the focus is on
ecological-democratic planning, with social control of key sectors such
as energy, transport, sanitation, and food through workers' and
community councils, with real veto and decision-making power.
This "breaking point" also alters the role of territory in climate
policy. In liberal and social-democratic frameworks, territories appear
primarily as spaces where projects are implemented - wind farms,
hydroelectric dams, "low-carbon" agribusiness, regional development
programs. From a class perspective, territory becomes a front of
conflict between the state and capital on one side, and rural and urban
communities on the other. Climate policy necessarily involves the active
defense of indigenous peoples, peasants, extractivists, quilombola
communities, favelas, and peripheries against extractivism and
megaprojects. Instead of viewing forests, savannahs, or coastlines as
"carbon assets" to be integrated into global markets, an ecological
agrarian reform and a radical urban reform are proposed that recognize
traditional territories and peripheries as subjects of climate policy,
and not as mere spaces for compensation and top-down directed development.
Another important shift is in the reproduction of life. The liberal
approach tends to make domestic and care work invisible, focusing on the
"resilient" and entrepreneurial individual. The social-democratic
approach introduces social adaptation programs, insurance, and shelters,
but still within a sectoral policy framework. From the perspective of
the working class, the focus becomes: who takes care when everything
collapses? Extreme events increase the burden of domestic work, almost
always borne by women, and put pressure on public services. Thus, a
class-based climate policy places public and community-based care
networks at the center, valuing invisible labor (waste pickers, health
workers, educators, informal rural workers) as key actors in the
proletarian climate response, and forms of income and protection linked
to the maintenance of life, not to market productivity.
Finally, the dispute between the two "lines of order" and the "line of
rupture" is evident in the forms of organization and struggle.
Liberalism relies on controlled consultations, business forums, and
global governance; while social democracy expands councils, conferences,
and institutional spaces for participation, without breaking with the
structural asymmetry between capital and labor. Climate policy from the
working class demands grassroots democracy and direct action: popular
assemblies, company and neighborhood committees, rural-urban alliances,
climate strikes, blockades of destructive infrastructure, and productive
boycotts for ecological reasons. Climate policy is no longer just a
specialized "environmental issue" but returns to the classic vocabulary
of class struggle, updated by the fact that today the dispute over
labor, land, and territory is, at the same time, a dispute over the
material conditions of possibility for social life itself.
The climate future between the forces of order and rupture
Ultimately, what is at stake are three distinct historical horizons: a
financialized, green capitalism that transforms the ecological crisis
into a new round of accumulation for capitalists; a regulated, green
capitalism with a reinforced welfare state and a supposedly "clean"
energy matrix; and a horizon of social ecology, based on the socialist
self-government of the people, on the self-management of production
geared towards collectively defined needs, and on an ecological
mutualism between nature and society, in balance with ecological limits,
articulating the overcoming of class exploitation with a critique of
colonial, patriarchal, and racial domination. It is within this context
that climate policy, conceived from the perspective of the working
class, is situated: not as just another "thematic agenda," but as a
strategic field in the struggle for a socialist and self-governed society.
The three lines of climate policy today - liberal, social-democratic,
and proletarian - are three ways of imagining the planet's climate
future. The liberal and social-democratic lines, despite differences in
instruments and language, remain within the established order: they
accept the statist-capitalist system as given and attempt to
"decarbonize" or regulate capitalism without addressing the logic of
accumulation, the private ownership of the means of production, and the
centralized command of the State. Thus, they may mitigate impacts and
partially redistribute costs, but they continue to reproduce the same
historical form that produces global warming and ecological destruction:
intensive extraction of energy and matter, territories transformed into
sacrifice zones, and the State acting as manager of this dynamic.
The perspective from the working class emerges as a breaking point
because it places climate directly within the context of class struggle,
colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy. Instead of simply asking "how
to reduce emissions?", it asks "who decides, who pays, who benefits?",
proposing a radical democratization of decisions regarding energy, land,
transportation, and food; the dismantling of structurally destructive
activities; and the reorganization of production and life based on
collective needs and ecological limits. This materializes in climate
strikes, blockades of megaprojects, the defense of territories, and
experiences of ecological self-management led by workers, indigenous
peoples, peasants, and urban peripheries. If statism-capitalism is the
historical form that produces the crisis, then there is no sustainable
climate future within it: both lines of order manage the disaster; only
the proletarian breaking point opens the possibility of a minimally
habitable post-capitalist and post-state world for the majority and for
other forms of life.
https://uniaoanarquista.wordpress.com/2025/11/19/so-o-povo-salva-o-planeta-a-cop-30-e-as-tres-linhas-em-disputa-pelo-futuro-climatico/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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