Extinction Deception

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Greta Thunberg, Climate Change and the ‘Greening’ of Capitalism’s Desolating Nature

THE UNITED NATIONS’ annual “Climate Week,” culminating this past September 23 with a summit meeting of most of the world’s leading capitalists and their politicians, was less of a policy gathering and more of a coming-out party for the new wave of eco-capitalist rock stars, with top billing at the media circus going to 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Thunberg came to prominence in 2018, when she began protesting outside the Swedish parliament, calling for a student strike to stop climate change. Since then, she has become the poster child for “green” capitalism, meeting with all manner of celebrities, politicians and CEOs. Her arrival in New York City by yacht on August 28 began over three weeks of appearances, meet-and-greets, protests and speeches, culminating in a “climate strike” protest in Battery Park on Sept. 20.

However, it was her speech at the UN summit that garnered Thunberg the most attention. Proclaiming humanity to be at “the beginning of a mass extinction,” she chastised those in attendance for stealing “my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” concluding that, “if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.” In response, the politicians and capitalists sympathetically nodded and offered up such platitudes as, “my generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change” (UN Secretary-General António Guterres), and “we need such a youth to help us to change things” (French President Emmanuel Macron).

Why did the world’s exploiters fall over each other to ingratiate themselves on Thunberg? The answer is found in the vision and perspective that she and her companions in organizations like Extinction Rebellion (XR), which plays a

central role in many of the “climate strike” actions, have chosen to put forward.

It goes without saying that climate change is real and presents a serious problem for humanity to overcome — a serious problem that demands an immediate and comprehensive response. However, the perspective put forward by Thunberg and XR is hyperbolic to the point of recklessness. Put simply, humanity is not facing extinction because of climate change. Even the worst-case scenario put forward by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a rise of 8°C in global temperatures over the next century, will not cause our mass extinction. Indeed, humans have survived such a climate shift before … during the stone age, without the benefit of modern technology and modern science.

So, if humanity is not facing extinction, what is? And, moreover, why the falsification? Second question first. The need for falsifying the scientific conclusions stems from the necessity to rally young people of all classes into taking immediate action without the benefit of having thought through the implications of their acts. As for what is facing extinction, it is not humanity, but capitalism as it exists today, specifically its ability to maximize profits through the discovery and exploitation of new wellsprings of natural resources around the world. It is not humanity that they worry will be extinguished in a century, but the social positions and living standards of the exploiting classes who are at the core of the movement.

To put it another way, Thunberg says she wants us to “act as if your house is on fire.” But her solution is to make an alliance with the arsonists so they can have another 100 years to keep doing what they do best: making the world burn!

All of the grandiose speeches, millenary apocalypticism, neo-puritan moralism, performative martyrdom, puerile “militant” theatrics, and so on, does not hide the fact that they are promoting unity with the people who own and control the system of exploitation that has trashed the planet — albeit with a fresh coat of “green” accents, meant to make it palatable until the next century. Such a program can only be seen as conscious deception. It is shameless and despicable.

Unlike these “green” grifters, communists understand that the climate crisis is inseparable from capitalism, and its mode and methods of production. Over 150 years ago, Marx explained how the cultivation of land, natural resources, agriculture, as well as the production of commodities, etc., that is not “consciously controlled” and planned for need, not profit, “leaves deserts behind it.” (Letter to Engels, March 25, 1868) — i.e., “that climate and flora change” over time as a result of the anarchic process of production of commodities for profit.

To fight climate change, it is necessary to organize and fight for revolutionary change — for a working-class revolution based on a proletarian communist program that will dismantle the old mode of production and build a new one that is consciously controlled by our organized class, that is not only sustainable but also restores the balance in the shared metabolism of humanity and nature.

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