Climate change is often portrayed as a problem that affects everyone. Higher temperatures, droughts, floods, extreme weather events: faced with these phenomena, it would seem we're all in the same boat. But that's not the case. Climate change, like almost every other social phenomenon, has a distinct class dimension. Not everyone contributes equally to emissions, not everyone has the same opportunities to protect themselves from the effects of global warming, and, above all, not everyone decides how land is used and for what interests the economy is organized. A family living in a poorly insulated apartment, unable to afford to replace a boiler or install efficient systems, does not have the same climate responsibility as a large, energy-intensive company. A worker who must use a car to reach a distant workplace does not have the same choices as a company owner who decides its location and work schedules.
Speaking generically about "individual behavior" therefore risks hiding the fundamental problem: who owns, who decides, and who pays?
The transformation of our towns and cities is no accident. Every new warehouse, every shopping center, every parking lot, every road, and every new development arises within economic relationships and political decisions. Land can be considered a common good or a resource to be transformed into income and profit.
When agricultural land becomes buildable, its value can increase dramatically. When an area is urbanized, someone cashes in on the value generated by the transformation, while the costs are often distributed throughout the community: more traffic, more pollution, more land use, greater need for infrastructure, increased soil sealing, increased pressure on sewer systems, and greater vulnerability to extreme events. Land, however, is not infinite. Every sealed square meter is a square meter that no longer absorbs water. Every green space eliminated means less heat-mitigating capacity. Every new development often means more cars, more infrastructure, and more energy consumption. This is why the fight against climate change cannot be separated from a critique of the commodification of land .
When a heat wave hits, the problem isn't the same for everyone. Those who live in efficient homes, have access to green spaces, can use air conditioning (which, it should be remembered, produces heat and consumes energy), and perhaps can afford not to work during the hottest hours of the day, have protective equipment that others don't. Think instead of those who work on construction sites, in fields, in warehouses, on the roads, or in manufacturing plants. Think of the elderly who live alone, those who live in small, overheated apartments, and those who can't afford energy efficiency upgrades. The same temperature therefore has different social consequences. The same is true for extreme events. When a flood damages a home, not everyone has the same resources to cover the costs of reconstruction. Those with assets, savings, and insurance have options that those already living at the limit of their income don't.
The climate crisis thus tends to exacerbate inequalities that already exist .
Faced with this crisis, we're often offered a list of individual behaviors: consume less, use the car less, buy "sustainable" products, change light bulbs, recycle. Many of these practices can be helpful. But turning the climate issue into a sum of individual responsibilities ignores the workings of the market economy.
A worker can decide to commute by bike only if safe infrastructure exists and the distance allows (moreover, it is often poor workers, usually immigrants, who are the cyclists encountered every day on the extra-urban roads connecting towns and suburbs to companies and logistics hubs). They can reduce energy consumption only within the limits imposed by the building they live in and their income. They can choose an efficient home only if the real estate market makes it affordable.
People cannot be asked to "choose differently" when the material conditions of their choices are determined by economic and social relations over which they have no control .
The ecological transition cannot therefore be built on blaming those who have less, even simply because, overall, those with limited economic resources consume vastly less and therefore have a smaller environmental impact.
Some data:
- the 10% of the world's population with the highest consumption levels causes environmental damage worth up to $5.7 trillion a year, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the Oxford Martin School, the University of Oxford and the University of Leiden and published in Communications Sustainability;
- according to the IPCC, (1) the ten percent of households with the highest emissions produce between 34 and 45 percent of global consumption-related emissions; the poorest half of humanity produces between 13 and 15 percent. The gap grows even further at the extremes: the footprint of the top one percent has been estimated to be 175 times that of the bottom ten percent (IPCC, AR6 WGIII);
- A study published in Nature Sustainability estimates that in 2019, the richest ten percent were responsible for 48 percent of emissions, while the poorest half accounted for 12 percent. For the top one percent, a significant portion comes from investments and capital ownership (Nature Sustainability);
The climate crisis, therefore, has a reverse accounting system. Those with the least impact often have dilapidated homes, poorer health and well-being, and jobs that prevent them from avoiding exposure to risk. Those with the greatest impact can purchase insulation, cooling, leisure time, and afford a vacation or a second or third home by the sea and/or in the mountains. However, these behaviors are then blamed for their less than virtuous behavior, forgetting that having the ability to choose is, first and foremost, an economic privilege.
The situation is paradoxical. On one side is the wealthy owner of luxury properties: he travels constantly by plane-often private-disguising his vacations as "business trips," and he owns a photovoltaic panel company. On the other is his worker, forced to drive a ten-year-old used car and live in a dilapidated apartment, without the financial means to insulate the house or install renewable energy systems. The paradox is fulfilled when the billionaire accuses the worker of being environmentally insensitive, praising himself as a champion of ethics simply because he sells solar panels. What a shining example of morality!
It is precisely at the local level that these contradictions become concrete.
A municipal administration should use urban planning tools to decide where to build, where not to build, how much land to consume, which areas to reclaim, and where to build parks, parking lots, bike paths, and infrastructure.
It can encourage the concreting or the regeneration of existing buildings.
It can design completely waterproof squares or transform them into green, tree-lined and permeable spaces.
It can spend public resources to make schools and municipal buildings energy efficient or let families individually bear the costs of the transition.
It can promote private mobility or build real alternatives to the automobile.
These aren't simply technical issues. They are political choices , and the market, profit, and various power dynamics play a significant role in these choices, and technology is often a powerful tool that benefits capital rather than the people.
There is a real risk: using the climate crisis to further shift the costs of the transition onto the working classes.
Mandatory energy efficiency improvements, without funding reform, create profound social injustice. Current incentives reward high incomes and exclude the poorest. Thus, those who own a home solely for living are forced to sustain disproportionate and unsustainable costs.
If energy costs rise without ensuring adequate wages and efficient public services, the burden of the transition falls on the lowest incomes.
If traffic restrictions are introduced without offering accessible and widespread public transport, the result isn't fairer mobility: it's simply a new penalty for those who can't afford alternatives. A true ecological transition must therefore also be a social "transition . "
It should not ask for equal sacrifices from people who live in profoundly different conditions.
The fundamental question then becomes that of moving from the authoritarian control of the territory and resources for the benefit of capital to the collective care of the territory, where everyone is an inseparable part of it and of equal value.
It's legitimate to ask why decisions with a profound social impact must be primarily driven by financial returns. This model pushes the development of areas that communities would prefer to preserve as public, green, or agricultural spaces, sacrificing collective well-being for profit. Similarly, energy efficiency upgrades are left to the economic capacity of individuals, rather than being addressed for what they truly are: a structural and community investment that can no longer be postponed.
The answer cannot simply be "more efficient administration," because efficiency and development are not always synonymous with progress; in fact, the results seem to demonstrate the opposite.
We need to question who decides on the use of resources and land .
This means protecting public assets, removing as much land as possible from speculation, encouraging the redevelopment of existing structures, preventing indiscriminate land consumption, and transforming urban spaces into assets truly accessible to the entire community.
Let's consider seemingly simple interventions. Plant trees along streets and in parking lots. Reclaim abandoned areas. Create urban parks and forests. Make asphalt surfaces permeable. Build rainwater retention systems. Upgrade schools for energy efficiency. Install photovoltaic panels on public buildings. Create energy communities that are truly focused on reducing energy poverty, not just as a pretext for profit and speculation at the community's expense. A city where the shade of trees is a public good, where rainwater is not just considered a problem to be quickly discharged into the sewers, where energy produced by public plants can be used to reduce utility costs and support those who have less.
From this perspective, the "ecological transition" must also be about the redistribution of wealth and not about marketing for financial investments and the centralization of power.
We need a different vision of the city and social organization, with the understanding that relying solely on "technology" is not a good solution, especially if we remain within a capitalist and market system. The fight against the exploitation of the land is inextricably linked to the fight against the exploitation of man by man, with the prospect of replacing the logic of profit and the market with care. On this point, some populations we Westerners call backward have something to teach us, without wanting to fall into primitivism or tribalism.
Then there is another dimension that must not be forgotten: work.
The climate crisis is making it increasingly difficult to work in extreme heat, and the associated and related risks are increasing. But the solution can't be just technological.
Workers' health and bargaining power must be prioritized: adequate breaks, reduced heat exposure, reduced working hours without a reduction in pay, and the right to stop work when conditions become dangerous. Productivity must be for life.
In this sense, the climate issue is directly connected to the history of class struggle: those who control their own time, their own work, and the conditions in which they work possess part of the power needed to address crises, including the ecological crisis.
The climate crisis won't be solved by planting a few trees or with a sustainability ad campaign. But even denouncing capitalism isn't enough if it doesn't translate into concrete conflict and organization.
In the local communities, this means building committees against land use, defending green spaces, organizing against pollution, demanding efficient public transportation, demanding energy-efficient public buildings, opposing the privatization of services, and asserting the collective right to decide how the land is transformed.
It means connecting environmental struggles to those for wages, housing, public services, and health.
Because the worker who fights against factory pollution, the resident who opposes the concreting of the neighborhood and those who demand the right to a decent home are not fighting three different battles .
They are questioning the very social model.
Capitalism has a fundamental characteristic: it tends to transform every need into an opportunity for profit. Even the climate crisis has become a market: new infrastructure, new "green" products, new forms of debt, new speculative opportunities.
The question we must ask ourselves is instead another: transition for whom? Decided by whom?
If the answer is that workers and the working classes will once again pay the price, then we are not facing an ecological transition, but a reorganization of the economic system under new conditions.
A truly radical climate policy must instead start from collective needs: housing, health, water, energy, mobility, food, green spaces, safe work.
Land is not a commodity. Energy is not a luxury. Water is not property. Air does not belong to those who can afford to pollute it. The ability to live in a healthy environment cannot depend on income.
The fight against climate change will also be a fight against inequality, or a new form of inequality. This is why environmental protection must meet class struggle. Not to add a new demand to the many already existing, but because the ecological crisis forces us to ask a fundamental question: who decides how we live, what we produce, what we consume, and how we co-inhabit the land we inhabit?
The answer, from below, can only be one: not the market, not rent, not profit.
The community. The workers. The residents. All those who live and travel through that territory every day. And, above all, their ability to organize and collectively reclaim the power to decide.
Note
1) The IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ) is the main international body for the scientific assessment of climate change .
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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