In our current turbulent times, an event like the Ecosocialism Conference has never been more necessary or relevant. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will have experienced the record-breaking temperatures across the UK over the last week or so. A welcome break from winter was needed but I’m sure for the majority of us, it was a stark reminder of the effects of runaway climate change.
Temperatures reached 34 degrees and we have only just made it into June. This is not normal, this is the beginning of what experts are predicting as a ‘Super El Nino’ weather event which could be “powerful enough to trigger record-breaking temperatures, devastating floods, droughts and climate disruption across the globe” – the experts’ words, not mine.
Since our Ecosocialism Conference in 2024, we’ve already seen a global temperature of 1.48 degrees, just 0.2 degrees away from the 1.5 limit that has been put forward by climate scientists. Anything beyond this will cause serious climate disruption. Extreme weather events have intensified with severe storms and wildfires globally and in the UK, the arctic sea ice hit its lowest recorded thickness level since monitoring began in 1974 leading to emperor penguins now being on the endangered species list – and we also crossed the seventh of the nine planetary boundaries, Ocean acidification. This is just a tiny snippet of the many changes that have happened in the last 18 months to our planet.
In addition to the changes to the climate, we must also acknowledge the political climate that we’re living in. Reform UK and other far right parties and actors have been gathering popularity, primed for a 2028 government unless we fight back now. These are parties that are not just politically, but ideologically opposed, to climate action and policy, considering it inefficient or at worst, a complete hoax.
We have entered an era of ‘zen fascism’
Only last week, we saw former Labour prime minister Tony Blair come out of retirement to suggest the current Labour government throw out all net zero targets and exploit its remaining oil and gas reserves. The years of progressive policy being popular are out. We have now entered an era defined by a kind of ‘zen fascism’; a radical acceptance that we’ve ruined it so badly that we might as well continue to make it worse and live the brief remainder of our lives without the hassle.
This is at the heart of why we organised our third Ecosocialism conference and why we aimed for this one to be different. Tony Blair’s comments aren’t just damaging, they are incorrect. To suggest that we should stop net zero targets, as if we’ve made any meaningful progress with them, is laughable. We have done nothing but continue to exploit our oil and gas reserves even when we are told time and time again to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
And until this last weekend, it hasn’t been our problem. In the global north, we’ve had the luxury of being able to ignore most of the detrimental effects of the climate crisis, but this is not the case for those in the global south. They are suffering now because of our reckless consumption and obscene tech billionaires. In fact, the original 1.5 figure was changed by groups like the Alliance of Small Islands who argued that two degrees in rising temperatures would threaten their entire existence.
But whilst it’s important to mention the detrimental effects of the global north on the global south, it is in fact the global south that has been leading the fight for radical climate policy. Columbia has put in place a binding commitment to eliminating emissions, as well as a programme of adaptation reducing the socio-economic risk. We must follow their lead.
When we talk about climate action that works, we have to make the connection between the climate and our everyday lives. Too often we are willing to separate the two. We don’t see that those who pollute our planet the most are also causing extreme inequality through wealth hoarding. We must make the connection between our current economic system of capitalism and the harm it is doing to our planet.
The planet is our home. Without it, there can be no society and definitely no socialism. Further than that, we have to examine, as a collective, whether we can ever have a thriving planet under capitalism. We live on a planet with finite resources. A capitalist system functions on growth alone at any cost. But it is not the growth of knowledge, love, community or the incredible ecosystems and species that we share our planet with. It is concerned only with the growth of profit for the ultra-rich; the tech billionaires pushing massively destructive, and inherently exploitive, technologies like AI. They do this at the expense of human life and the planet itself.
Envisioning an ecosocialist future
The reality of the climate crisis is a hard one to swallow. It is easy to become apathetic and to try to ignore what’s happening to avoid having to reckon with the sort of inhabitable wasteland that awaits us in the future if we don’t do something now. That’s why it’s so important that we promote and envision an ecosocialist future. We want to channel hope into action. We want to fight for and build the future we all deserve. One where the planet, and the humans and wildlife on it, can flourish.
The Ecosocialist Conference at the weekend enabled us to sit and think differently about the climate crisis; to see it as a call to action. A call to not only fix our planet but fight for the things we need in life to be happy – because we can’t have one without the other.
We must create a broad mass movement and push for revolutionary demands outside of the limitations of capitalist society. We made the core point at our conference that without a change to the capitalist system that relies on exploitation, ecological collapse is inevitable.
Real change needs to come from the bottom up. If we want things to change, we need to make it happen ourselves in our communities, unions, workplaces, housing associations and wherever we organise. We cannot put our faith in has-been, warmongering politicians with other political motives.
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