Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Box
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 The Climate Crisis and Systemic Alternatives
- PART ONE THE CLIMATE CRISIS AS CAPITALIST CRISIS
- PART TWO DEMOCRATIC ECO-SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES IN THE WORLD
- PART THREE DEMOCRATIC ECO-SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA
- CONCLUSION
- Contributors
- Index
CONCLUSION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Box
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 The Climate Crisis and Systemic Alternatives
- PART ONE THE CLIMATE CRISIS AS CAPITALIST CRISIS
- PART TWO DEMOCRATIC ECO-SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES IN THE WORLD
- PART THREE DEMOCRATIC ECO-SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA
- CONCLUSION
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
Donald Trump, his administration and the finance–fossil fuel forces supporting him (such as the billionaire Koch brothers), have openly challenged a global scientific consensus that climate change is real, is human induced and will have disastrous consequences for many societies. Hurricanes (such as Harvey and Irma) and raging wildfires in the US have not pushed back the Trump administration's denialist positions and pro-fossil capitalism politics. While the UN-led Paris climate agreement has brought too little, too late, for systemic transformation, Trump's withdrawal from the agreement marks not only the further decline of US hegemony in the world but places the US on a collision course with humanity and all life forms. The ecocidal logic of this imperial politics threatens all of humanity but will increasingly become fascist to ensure zones of privileged existence are protected for the few, while policing and imposing regimes of dispossessing life at the frontiers of complex hydrocarbon extraction, land grabs for export-led food production, collapsing societies due to climate shocks and flexible accumulation premised on wageless majorities. Has the time come for climate justice sanctions against the US carbon criminal state? Should the world isolate the US? We believe this is very necessary and mass power has to be built to achieve this.
Transnational ruling classes and elites have failed humanity. This volume emphasises this through rigorous political economy analysis. Moreover, the corporate-and imperial-induced climate-driven world we inhabit is new and holds out serious challenges for present and future generations. In this regard, climate justice politics is also a new politics, seeking to provide an alternative way forward for humanity in its interconnectedness with ecosystems. Climate justice politics connects the dots of fossil fuel extractivism, hunger, inequality, imperial domination and corporate-induced climate change. It stands in opposition to a failing capitalist system, recognising that such a system is racist, patriarchal, exploitative and driven by a logic of imperial ecocide. Through this recognition, climate justice asserts that the victims of capitalism's oppressions are not going to pay the cost for more of the same.
At the same time, this volume emphasises the need for climate justice politics derived from a dialogue between Marxism and contemporary anti-capitalism to be transformative, through advancing systemic reforms and deep just transitions at different scales.
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- Climate Crisis, TheSouth African and Global Democratic Eco-Socialist Alternatives, pp. 338 - 342Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2018