(The following article is from the October 1-15, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

(From a presentation by Young Communist League General Secretary Johan Boyden on the environmental crisis.)

     We see ecological problems as deeply connected with social problems, and likewise the solutions. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than the climate crisis. Already, youth and students around the world are mobilizing for December. That's when the world's countries, rich and poor, meet in Copenhagen for the next climate conference. Copenhagen will update the 1997 Kyoto protocol, establishing a binding global agreement from 2012.

     The colossal scale of global warming should not detract from the necessity for emboldened campaigning on other environmental fronts. Peace is an environmental issue. Water pollution, the release of toxic wastes, species extinction, unsustainable resource use, soil erosion, and desertification all pose immediate dangers. Such poisons are historically woven into the fabric of working class, Aboriginal and racialized communities which will also be hit hardest by global warming.

     Welcome to Hurricane Katrina. Welcome to the future.

     The urgency of the situation is captured in the shift of the goals leading into Copenhagen. The events the Kyoto process was supposed to prevent are already beginning. Kyoto's targets placed the overall goals at 2 degree Celsius increase. Now it is 3 degrees.

     Overwhelmingly, youth and students reject the status quo. To August's United Nations international youth day slogan, "Sustainability: our challenge, our future," you could add: "our bitter inheritance." Students and trade union youth have recently formed the Youth Climate Coalition. Planning a conference in Ottawa this October, they call to surpass Kyoto's targets.

     Our generation has seen the climate debate shift: it can no longer be denied or obscured as a long-term issue. The question now is: what will be the content and direction of the response?

     Many scientists insist that without radically change in the near term, we will reach an irreversible point. But scientific conclusions are refracted through ideological prisms and class-based realities. In Canada, business produces the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions.(Stats Can, "Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: Socio-economic Information", 2007, says 82% comes from the "business sector".) Modest measures of environmental protection are resisted by transnational corporations and their right-wing extremists in Parliament and in the media. The Stern Review (2006), while characterizing global warming as the "widest-ranging market failure ever seen," rejected all solutions that are not "economically viable."

     This brings the issue into sharp relief. Which comes first: nature, or profits? What social system has the capacity to arrest and reverse this crisis?

     If capitalism were compatible with solving the climate crisis, and companies could make more profits by charitably protecting the environment, we would have seen green capitalism long ago. Corporations don't need any help figuring out how to make more money. In contrast, according to the 2006 Living Planet Report, published by the World Wildlife Fund, socialist Cuba is the only country in the world that enjoys "sustainable development."

     But we don't have to wait until a socialist revolution. The strategy and tactics needed to win a better Canada and world start with today's problems. That's why we need to break with dealing with the environment like a charity issue. The claim that "the conscious consumer is the best weapon against climate change" makes the main enemy you. Drive a better car. Turn down your thermostat. Recycle.

     How many reserve communities can even afford municipal recycling? How many people living in Toronto's Jane and Finch neighbourhood already turn their thermostats way down? How many parents can't afford childcare let alone eco-holidays? How many students are unable to afford tuition, rent and dinner, let alone buy organic?

     No wonder that historically oppressed and working class communities have seen the struggle to protect the environment as "middle-class"! But there is a common link between exploitation of the environment and exploitation of working people - the capitalist class and their drive for profits. People's solutions to climate crisis must target big business as the main enemy to a sustainable environment.

     In fact, youth, workers and all people in Canada have much to gain. Can we unite the fight for Employment Insurance reform with a green housing and industrial jobs strategy? Stopping plant closures also means keeping factories under Canadian environmental regulations. Could we connect the fight against the tar sands with the call for democratic control of all energy and resources? Unlike market solutions ("cap and trade" or the carbon tax) public ownership allows democratic planning for people's needs - and is a source of funding for renewable energy and conservation programs, mass transit, free education and childcare.

     From our vantage point, meaningful parliamentary advance - like emergency legislation drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions - isn't possible without the people's mass action. Finding the tactics to move the most people forward is complex; media stunts aren't enough. What's needed is a united mass movement of all progressive forces, championing social and ecological alternatives.

     As we head towards Copenhagen and possibly another election, we must turn up the political heat on Harper's Conservatives and the big polluting corporations. More and more Canadians realize that the only thing green coming out of these guys is sludge. Let's clean up that sludge, pushing for a real democratic and ecological alternative.