Page 19 - AW SEPOCT 2019

SPECIAL FEATURE

biggest and most urgent challenges for humanity.” swimming pools,” but by the multimillionaires and
Moreover, places such as Siberia—which a decade billionaires who make up the capitalist class. Hundreds of
ago was relatively unaffected by climate change--have billions of dollars are made every year by this cabal and
begun to experience mass permafrost melting, which has they have fought for decades to maintain the status quo
caused towns and cities to literally sink into the Earth as even as the Earth is poisoned and burned.
the formerly sturdy foundations begin to melt. Permafrost Last March, more than one million students and young
melting has the added effect of drastically increasing people marched in the Youth Climate Strike to protest
the atmosphere’s methane content, a greenhouse against global warming. The international demonstration
gas approximately 80 times more potent than carbon evoked a broad response and indicates both the serious
dioxide. Land degradation is caused by climate change nature of the ecological crisis and the radicalization of
and, in turn, accelerates the problem, both by releasing youth all over the world to fight it.
different forms of carbon and by reducing nature’s ability More important is the growing intervention of the
to reabsorb carbon. working class into international politics. The past two
Land degradation is also found in the more advanced months have seen mass protests in Hong Kong, the US
capitalist countries. The most striking example is the territory of Puerto Rico, a strike wave in India and the
lead found in the water of Flint, Michigan, once a major continued “yellow vest” movement in France. They
industrial US city, after the city and state, backed by are the harbinger of working class struggles erupting
corporations and big investors, switched to a polluted throughout the world as workers realize that only they
water supply. themselves can solve the untenable social conditions
The example of Flint also points to the main weakness that they face.
of the entire IPCC initiative, which promotes the illusion Among these is climate change. As the IPCC
that it can pressure politicians to adopt “policy changes” documents state, there must be “rapid reductions in
that will benefit the broader human population. The greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors” if there is any
contempt the world’s ruling elites have towards humanity chance to reverse the impacts of global warming. This
as a whole was summed up when then-president Barack implicitly means that the world economy must undergo
Obama declared that Flint’s residents, and particularly a progressive transformation, one which overturns the
their children, “will be fine” after drinking lead-filled water. present regime based on private profit and a world
Moreover, it washes over the 2017 Carbon Majors divided into warring nation-states and that places the
Report, which showed that 70 percent of all greenhouse productive forces—particularly the agriculture and
gases, the chemical drivers of climate change, are energy industries—into the hands of the working class
released by just one hundred companies. Thus, global in order to restore the planet’s ability to sustain human
warming is not caused by, as the New York Times snidely life. AW (Credit: By Bryan Dyne)
remarked, people with a “penchant for private backyard

Asian Water SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 17