Rebelling Against Extinction is a Good Thing

There is no doubt that the issue of climate change is the most pressing issue humanity faces today. We have repeatedly warned on this blog that capitalism will destroy life as we know it on this planet. This is not an exaggeration. Nature is all powerful, but we are not guaranteed a future by any means other than a spot in heaven or hell, a view that exists only in the imagination of its proponents.

It should be obvious that our immediate existence, security, shelter, food, the care of our children, is important and it is often that which the more secure middle and upper middle classes that call for change are unable to understand. The few thousand people that own and control the wealth and power in global society, especially those in the US, the most powerful of the capitalist states, are consumed with the rapacious quest for power and money and speed headlong to the precipice dragging the rest of humanity with them.

Greta Thunberg and all those young people that are making an issue of extreme crisis we are facing, extinction, is to be applauded. She says, "We can’t focus on small things. Basically, nothing has changed,” She is correct about this in general, in the last analysis as we fight for day to day reforms we will all be dead.  Anyone with children or grandchildren must grasp that we have decades, not centuries; we owe them a future.

But it is important to recognize that some of those "small things" are very big to the people experiencing them. Greta comes form a middle or upper middle class family, I don't raise this in order to demean her or question her integrity or the importance of what she is doing. But the immediate can be so consuming to millions of people that taking up what seems such a daunting task seems pointless, is not even considered. Feeding one's child and keeping a roof over their head is a powerful draw.

In the article accompanying this video, Greta gives her support for a general strike for climate change. The heads of the trade unions internationally and certainly here in the US have not joined this movement that has arisen and as always, choose to "work with capitalism not against it" as the Wall Street Journal described them in its centennial edition which is the cause of their class collaboration; look at the position they took on the  Keystone XL Pipeline that harms their own members. This will change as the workers organizations and political parties throughout the world are convulsed in turmoil as the global capitalist crisis intensifies.

We have also raised on this blog that union activists and others can take steps to help Greta, the youth and others in their efforts to reverse this climate disaster before its too late or before huge swathes of the planet become inhabitable. We suggest building Save The Planet Committees in every workplace, every union hall, at your church or religious organization.

Save the Planet Committees can be formed in your community, your social club, senior center, wherever people organize or congregate.  Your union is an important area because organized labor will be engulfed in struggle as the rank and file of these organizations are forced to confront the disastrous polices of the present leadership, and in the course of that internal struggle new layers will arise that will spur the movement forward.

Here is the article that accompanies the video: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/22/greta-thunberg-backs-general-strike-climate-change-environment