A left that does not take the lead in the fight against the climate crisis has no right to exist

What follows is not aimed at the right and its supporters (from business, social services and other areas), who – unfortunately – do their job very well. What follows is aimed primarily at the left, who – unfortunately – do their job very poorly at all…

Here is what we wrote this time last year, shortly after the terrible floods in Thessaly, in an unfinished and unpublished text:

“The shock of the two consecutive 'Mediterranean hurricanes' Daniel and Elias was strong enough to trigger the first major tremors in the climate-skeptical faith of the Greeks. Of course, these are only the first cracks, which will only widen if circumstances force the only political force that can possibly not only explain the climate catastrophe scientifically, but also act massively and concretely to combat it, to take the necessary follow-up measures.”

Of course, this “only political force that can potentially not only explain the climate catastrophe scientifically but also confront it in a massive and concrete way” must be the left. Yet a year later, while the specter of water scarcity looms over Athens and its four million inhabitants more strongly than ever, while there are new extreme droughts, new devastating fires, new historic temperature records and new, even worse heat waves, this left is still invisible, still absent from the front lines of the galloping climate catastrophe. And what is worse, it continues to denounce the neoliberal right in government, not because it refuses to act in time against this climate catastrophe, but because it insists on invoking it to cover up its sins!

And so we continued our text from last year, trying – in vain – to convince people that it was urgent to mobilize “those from below” because our country was literally in the eye of the storm of climate catastrophe:

“Let's talk about the climate catastrophe and our country, because the intensity and volume of the rains of the two 'Mediterranean hurricanes' (Medicanes) that hit it within three weeks (!) of each other confirm the scientific conclusions that the Mediterranean, and in particular its eastern basin and … Greece, constitute a hotspot, that is, a place of high intensity and danger of climate crisis. More specifically, the 889 mm of rain – at least – that reached Zagora and the 886 mm that Portaria reached on Mount Pelion on September 5, not only far exceed any precedent in our country, but are also three to four times higher than the rains that fell a few weeks later, on the day of the deadly floods in Libya. Likewise, the 1,235 mm of rainfall recorded by Makrinitsa last September set a European record for monthly rainfall, while the terrifying intensity of the Elias ‘Medicane’ downpour that subsequently hit northern Euboea, together with the increasingly frequent gigantic fires, heatwaves and rampant desertification, was another indication that our country is indeed a hotspot for global climate catastrophe ‘for decades to come’.

And we concluded with these words:

“What does this mean? According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and several other scientific organizations, it means that “the temperature increase observed in the Mediterranean is higher than the global average”. In other words, “the planet is warming, and the Mediterranean is doing so a little faster”! The consequences are not only predictable, they have already been empirically established: among many other things, such as rising sea levels, we have increasingly frequent, longer and more intense heat waves, increasingly frequent and monstrously destructive forest fires, unprecedented rainfall and floods, but also a drastic reduction in rainfall with the consequent increasing water scarcity, droughts, galloping desertification of ever larger areas, reduced agricultural productivity, etc. In other words, we are facing the most serious threat to the quality of life and existence that the inhabitants of what we now call the Greek territory have ever faced. And as is obvious, all other problems of the Greek population, but also of the world population, are directly affected and subordinate to this greatest existential problem…”

And the Greek left? Where are its demonstrations, strikes and occupations against the climate policies of the Greek governments, the European Union and the capitalists? Where are its reflections and its production of ideas, analyses and programmatic proposals and measures that must be taken urgently? Where is its participation in the large international youth mobilizations and other struggles against the climate catastrophe and its perpetrators, which remain permanently unnoticed in our country? Where is its fight against the obscurantism and conspiracy theories about the climate crisis that are taking the Greek population by storm? Where is its vision of the radical transformation of our societies and our lives that is required to effectively combat the climate catastrophe (see For an eco-socialist degrowth)? And above all, where is its mobilization against the root of the evil, the oil and gas multinationals, the car manufacturers and all those involved in fossil fuels, which are responsible for the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gas emissions?

Instead, the Greek left prefers to accuse Mitsotakis and his government of “mere misdemeanors compared to the real crime he is committing by not only doing nothing about the climate crisis but by making it worse through his policies.” And from time to time, it prefers to indulge in quixotic battles against the imperialists who covet “our” (non-existent, by the way)… oil reserves that would miraculously become… clean fossil fuels because… “Greek.” Or it mocks and denigrates the young Greta Thunberg, who inspires the most massive and radical international youth movement against the climate crisis. Or, even worse, it welcomes into its ranks “people of the left” who tirelessly continue to describe climate change as… “the greatest imperialist fraud”!

The conclusion is tragic: if international big capital, and therefore the capitalist system responsible for the climate catastrophe, has such left-wing enemies, it needs no friends! It can sleep soundly when these leftists – in Greece and all over the world – denounce everything and everyone except the real criminals and with them their bosses, their local subsidiaries, their mouthpieces, their political representatives, in other words their capitalist system. Like for example “the top 20 companies which have together emitted 480 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, mainly from the combustion of their products, accounting for 35% of all fossil fuel and cement emissions worldwide since 196.5” (see table below).

Conclusion: The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that eight billion people are paying dearly for the greed of a few dozen polluting multinational corporations that continue to make monstrous profits – at the expense of their health, their lives, the health and lives of their descendants, the destruction of nature and an increasingly degraded planet.

Worse still, at least part of our left repeats and spreads, often verbatim (!), the “climate denial” propaganda produced by the veritable propaganda factory of these giant, polluting multinationals. And as a sign of how much these multinationals value undermining and denigrating scientific theses on the climate crisis, five of them alone have spent at least $200 million per year over the last decade to spread their propaganda and disinformation about fossil fuels (see the corresponding table for 2018).

A typical example of this type of propaganda is the article entitled “Climate crisis: religious belief or scientific truth?” by Islamophobic former minister Andreas Andrianopoulos, who left New Democracy because he did not consider it… neoliberal enough. The fact that Mr Andrianopoulos was an “advisor” to Mr Putin and Azerbaijan’s President (for life), Mr Aliyev, obviously has nothing to do with the delusional content of his “climate negative” articles. Nor does it have anything to do with the statements and articles of other famous “advisors” of Mr Putin, such as former German Chancellor Schröder or former French Prime Minister Fillon… but also less famous leftists – Greek and foreign – known for their support of the Kremlin tenant.

Of course, this is no mere “coincidence”. Mr Putin and his friends around the world – Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, Milei, etc. – are all fanatical “climate sceptics”, as are their far-right and neo-fascist supporters around the world. And of course, it is no coincidence that all these good people, supported by big international business, which has a vested interest in maintaining the fossil fuel economy, generously fund armies of climate deniers of all kinds, whose sole aim is to prevent the adoption and, above all, the implementation of measures to combat the climate catastrophe….

Since the climate crisis, which will unfortunately worsen and will soon reach its tipping point, is now assuming existential dimensions for humanity and there is no one but us to fight it, the conflict with those and their interests who have caused it and are fueling it by stubbornly refusing to prevent it can only be a conflict of life and death. Now more than ever, it is time for the left to justify its existence by making the fight against the climate catastrophe its absolute priority and its first militant task…