The unions in Australia today are a shadow of their former selves, led by cowards
whose main job is to police their members to ensure that unions aren't fined outof business by the vicious anti-union laws. This needs to be turned aroundcompletely before workers will consider fighting for a Just Transition - but alsofor workers to defend working conditions, maintain health and safety and beadequately compensated for the inflation that is now ripping through the economyand devastating real wages. And to do that, we need to take on the unionbureaucracy and beat them. ---- Each year, the concentration of greenhouse gasesin the atmosphere increases. Polar ice melts to an unprecedented degree. TheGreat Barrier Reef suffers worse and more frequent bleaching events. Droughtslengthen. Record breaking floods hit Pakistan. Unprecedented heatwaves bakeChina, Europe, India, West Asia or Australia. A polar vortex diverts icy stormsdeep into North America. And, behind the year-to-year variations, the globaltemperature trend climbs ever higher.This is climate change. And what we're seeing is only the beginning. Even if anemergency transition is begun today, the planet will become a good deal hotterbefore it starts cooling. Scientists warn that every fraction of a degree ofwarming beyond 1.5ºC increases the risk of setting off runaway global warmingthat would wreck all known ecosystems, kill 80 to 90% of the human population anddestroy industrial civilisation. This is the burning issue of our time. The fateof the biosphere and, within it, the human race, is in the hands of the peoplealive today.In response to the growing threat of climate change and the inaction ofcapitalist governments, a great social movement has arisen. Millions are takingaction to stop green house emissions. Unfortunately, the movement has noeffective strategy. People's energy is being directed into activities that areonly part-solutions, marginally effective or sometimes even counter-productive.The problem: capitalismCapitalism is the fundamental cause of climate change and the sooner we get ridof it, the easier it will be to eliminate greenhouse emissions and beginrestoring a sustainable climate. Some major global capitalist industries arebased on the production or consumption of fossil fuels, having two consequences.Firstly, powerful countries, huge corporations and many billionaires have largefossil fuel investments protect. Even if they also invest in renewable energy,they would lose money by, for example, shutting a coal mine which still has coalthat can be profitably extracted. The same goes for corporations reliant onconsuming fossil fuels. A rapid switch to electric vehicles would make Ford'sexisting factories write-offs and force it to build EV factories decades beforethey are planned, purely to prevent its competitors taking its market share.The second consequence is perhaps even more powerful. A political decision thathuge corporations have to close down and billionaires be forced to write offtheir fortunes would be a terrifying example that threatens all capitalistcorporations. The market must always rule and, while it may be tweaked, it canunder no circumstances be made subordinate to the general good. Iftrillion-dollar corporations can be sent to the wall because society needs it,what capitalist is safe from having their fortune confiscated?An additional consideration is more basic and applies to the entire relationshipbetween capitalism and the environment, well beyond climate change. This is thatcapitalism is addicted to endless growth and can't survive in a situation wherehumanity has to live within planetary limits. This slows the efforts of thosecapitalists who do want to stop climate change and creates ever-more-frequentcrises through habitat destruction, resource depletion and environmental pollution.Current strategiesUntil recently, the most common demand of the climate movement was for a carbonprice. Set a ceiling on emissions, reduce it by a predictable amount each yearand let market actors buy and sell credits to allow the market to find theleast-cost path to decarbonisation. The political strategy which goes with thisis electoral - vote in a government which will price carbon. This is totalneo-liberalism and would force the price of decarbonisation onto the shoulders ofthose least able to bear the burden. The rich can continue their high carbonfootprint lifestyles because they can afford it, while kids have to wear clothesthey've grown out of because their working class parents spend all their money onpetrol for driving to work.We saw how this plays out in Australia a decade ago. The Labor Government and theGreens in 2010 introduced a carbon price, but they were crucified by thereactionary press for it. Their neo-liberal strategy drove the working classinto the arms of the climate deniers and brought Labor to a heavy defeat. Inshort, carbon pricing can't work. If it doesn't have holes in it that negate itsostensible purpose, it will be politically unviable.More recently, the movement has shifted to demanding that fossil fuel productionbe shut down. Usually, this is framed as a demand for no new coal or new gas. Asan immediate demand it is inadequate (most existing reserves have to stay in theground, too, to preserve a liveable climate). It is also, though, a threat to thejobs of workers in fossil fuel industries and the existence of communitiesreliant on them. As a coal mine is worked out, it is often replaced by a nearbyone, sometimes operated by the same company.This tactic is advanced electorally by the same people previously arguing for acarbon price, but it is also attracting supporters of more militant tactics. Herein Australia, we have Blockade Australia, while Britain has seen the emergence ofExtinction Rebellion and, this year, Just Stop Oil. Direct action movements haveemerged in Germany, the United States and Canada as well. All of them have comeunder heavy police and government repression, even the dogmatically pro-policeXR. The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group opposes all police repression againstenvironmental groups. We are especially incensed at the campaign of policepersecution and lies against Blockade Australia over a botched police operationin June this year and call for all charges to be dropped.The MACG's issue with Blockade Australia and similar organisations overseas isn'tthat their disruptive tactics go too far. Instead, we think they don't causeanywhere near enough disruption. A network of small secretive affinity groups canonly cause minor and sporadic interruptions to the corporations destroying theplanet. Furthermore, the activists are targeted with massive penalties which faroutweigh the impact of their actions. We support these protestors, because atleast they're doing something, but this isn't how the movement will win. A betterstrategy is needed.Class struggleThe people best placed to stop the capitalist death machine in its tracks are thepeople who keep it going on a day-to-day basis: the working class. When workersorganise in the workplace to fight for their interests, they threaten the powerof capital at its source. And when workers understand their power to fight, theycan lift their heads and look at the uses their employers make of their labour.When it comes to climate change, the workers who are necessary for fossil fuelsto be produced, transported and consumed are the ones who can stop it.Working class action to stop climate change would have very different dynamicsfrom the current movement. Instead of small groups of martyrs for the cause, we'dsee workers acting en masse and being protected from police retaliation by sheerstrength of numbers. The action would also dodge the trap of "jobs vs theenvironment" that the capitalist media love to set up, because the workers wouldbe fighting for a Just Transition they designed themselves.This program of class struggle is not a fairy tale. Instead, it's the onlypossible path forward. And it is possible, as demonstrated by the Green Bans ofthe NSW Builders Labourers Federation in the 1970s. Workers can and do take upradical social issues, provided it is an extension of the fight against thebosses. The Green Bans weren't imposed by workers who sacrificed their materialinterests, but by workers who fought for and won big wage rises, shorter hoursand much improved health and safety.The unions in Australia today are a shadow of their former selves, led by cowardswhose main job is to police their members to ensure that unions aren't fined outof business by the vicious anti-union laws. This needs to be turned aroundcompletely before workers will consider fighting for a Just Transition - but alsofor workers to defend working conditions, maintain health and safety and beadequately compensated for the inflation that is now ripping through the economyand devastating real wages. And to do that, we need to take on the unionbureaucracy and beat them.Stopping climate change therefore requires re-building the unions in Australiafrom the ground up, in the teeth of opposition from the union officials and theentire capitalist class. The struggle for the environment is the same as thestruggle for workers' immediate issues. So environmentalists who are members ofthe working class should join their union and start organising.GREEN BANS FOR A JUST TRANSITION*This article is from the newsletter of the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group(MACG) ‘The Anvil" Vol 11, No 4, July-August 2022.*If you want to download this issue go here:https://melbacg.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/anvil-vol-11-no-4-web.pdfRelated Link: https://melbacg.files.wordpress.comhttps://awsm.nz/?p=13807 https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32675_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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