By John Kendall Hawkins
The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of 'believing science' or individual 'carbon footprints' - it is a class problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from material production. As such, it will take a class struggle to solve. In this ground breaking class analysis, Matthew T. Huber argues that the carbon-intensive capitalist class must be confronted for producing climate change.
Yet, the narrow and unpopular roots of climate politics in the professional class is not capable of building a movement up to this challenge. For an alternative strategy, he proposes climate politics that appeals to the vast majority of society: the working class. Huber evaluates the Green New Deal as a first attempt to channel working class material and ecological interests and advocates building union power in the very energy system we need to dramatically transform. In the end, as in classical socialist movements of the early 20th Century, winning the climate struggle will need to be internationalist based on a form of planetary working-class solidarity. [Amazon blurb for Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet. (Verso, 2022)]
Matt Huber is a professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He is the author of Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
He spoke with me by Zoom on March 17, 2023. Below is an edited transcript.
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Hawkins:
Matt, I suspect that a lot of people wouldn't see the relationship between climate change and capitalism. And yet, it is sometimes glaringly there in your face. For instance, a couple of days ago Joe Biden announced that he was going to let drilling start up in Alaska, near the Arctic Circle. It's been talked about for some time. Militarists Mark Milley and James Stavridis have both suggested not long ago that one silver lining of a melting Arctic is that it would open up new fossil fuel and gas opportunities. And a chance to refreeze the Cold War with the Russians.
But what is the link between capitalism and climate change?
Huber:
So just a quick note about the Alaska project. The firm that wants to drill, ConocoPhillips, is planning to basically install technologies that will prevent their equipment from sinking in the melting permafrost [by re-freezing some of the tundra]. It's beyond comedy
Hawkins:
It's absurd.
Huber:
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