Tessa Warrington, Leicester Socialist Party
Just 36 fossil fuel companies extract fuel responsible for 50% of global carbon emissions, new data has shown. The Carbon Majors report revealed that fossil fuel giants produced fuel which pumped more than 20 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2023, the hottest year on record at the time. More worrying still; they’re not slowing down. Of the 169 active producers included in the study, 93 increased production. In the same year, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP grossed profits of over $100 billion.
Meanwhile, millions of lives are being destroyed around the world as a direct result of climate change. The LA wildfires, flooding in València and across Eastern Europe, the worst hurricane season in the US since Katrina 20 years ago. Extreme weather events have claimed hundreds of lives and devastated many thousands more, just in the past year. More refugees have now been displaced by climate change than conflict and war.
Unless global emissions fall by 45% by 2030, rising temperatures are unlikely to halt at 1.5°C, the internationally agreed target set by the Paris Agreement in 2015. Yet investment company BlackRock has sunk over $1 billion into fossil fuel ventures from their ‘sustainable’ fund, and oil juggernaut BP just axed almost $4 billion from green investments and announced 8,000 job cuts! There is no will from those profiting hand over fist to address the environmental crisis in any serious way and, no matter how many COP conferences are held, this will not change.
In Britain, Keir Starmer has already rowed back on Labour’s £28 billion climate fund pledge and is allowing the drilling of new oil fields adjacent to existing fields. All while workers still struggle to cover fuel costs after the 54% price cap increase in 2022 added £40 billion to energy bills. Over 6.7 million households now experience fuel poverty in the UK.
Not only are fossil fuels not being replaced with green energy but emissions are on the rise and globally workers are paying the price – with our bills, jobs, homes and lives.
We need socialism
A socialist plan of production would see the energy companies brought into public ownership under democratic workers’ control and management. There would be no need to compensate the fat-cat shareholders who have extorted enough; only small shareholders and pension funds.
In this way, jobs and wages could be guaranteed for workers in the energy industry, and at the same time those with the knowledge and skills could begin the wholesale retooling of production towards renewable energy. It could also see an immediate reduction in bills to customers by scrapping the extortionate subsidies currently paid out to the energy giants.
Workers’ green transition
There already exists a huge appetite for such a plan with 66% of the UK public supporting renationalisation of the energy companies. It is a vital task of the trade unions in this sector to develop and use proposals for alternative green energy production as a tool to organise workers to fight. It is clear, however, that to be fully able to reorientate the resources of society towards the decarbonisation of the economy, a socialist plan of production would require democratic planning not just of energy but of all major industries.
As a global problem, climate change ultimately necessitates a global solution, impossible on the basis of profit-driven, competition-based capitalism. Only by fighting for socialist change and genuine workers’ collaboration can the interests of humanity and the planet be given precedence over the destructive greed of private profit.
