Last year entered history as the hottest year on record. This is despite almost five decades of verbal commitment of capitalist governments to address the climate crisis. And it portends danger to humankind and all life on earth.
In February 1979, the World Meteorological Society, in collaboration with some other United Nations agencies convened scientists, policymakers and experts from more than 50 countries for the First World Climate Conference. The conference core drew attention to climate change as a critical global concern and issued a call for international action taking on board climate research and policy, to avert a global climate crisis. The resolutions of this set the stage for a framework of engagement regarding international cooperation between states/governments on climate.
The World Climate Program (WCP) was established at this conference. Over the following decades, several other bodies were created. These include the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992.The UNFCC became the space for negotiations which led to the Paris Agreement of 2015, where 196 nations pledged to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade.
Fast forward to 2024 which was the hottest year in human history, and where global temperature records were repeatedly shattered month after month. Average temperatures have risen above the 1.5 degrees centigrade compared to pre- industrial levels. The threshold which the Paris Agreement of 2015 was supposed to avoid. From wildfires in Canada and the Amazon, heavy floods in Pakistan, to heatwaves in Nigeria and India, the climate crisis is no longer a future problem-it is already here.
Governments across the world have failed to rise up to the challenge of addressing the climate crisis. Their commitments under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the Paris Agreement remain insufficient. In 2023, the United Nations reported that global emissions had to fall by 43% compared to 2019 by 2030, to meet the set target of the Paris Agreement. But they have rather continued to rise. New promises and pledges in the form of COP26 and COP28 about boosting Climate financing have been made, yet the lack of requisite funding has shown these pledges to be mostly empty rhetoric.
At the heart of the governments’ failures lie the capitalist emphasis on infinite growth and profit. And this is driven by the entrenchment of the fossil fuel industries in the major industrial nations. Oil companies spend tens of millions of dollars in lobbying the United States’ Congress alone while the IMF says that direct, indirect and consumer subsidies for fossil fuels amounted amounted to $7trillion in 2022. This figure dwarfs renewable energy investments. In addition, wealthy nations (responsible for 92% of excess emissions) have failed to deliver the $100billion a year climate finance pledge to developing nations. This creates a cycle where low-income countries would suffer the heaviest impacts of the climate crisis, while the developed countries evade responsibility.
Africa as a whole contributes less than 4% of global emissions but faces the most acute threats of climate change. For Nigeria, it’s the most populous country in the region and one of the world’s poverty capitals, this injustice is even more stark. From oil spillage and gas flaring destroying farmland and fisheries in the Niger Delta to increasing desertification in northern Nigeria, environmental degradation worsens. Irregular rainfall disrupts agricultural production where about 65% of Nigerians are employed. Floods have displaced millions of Nigerians and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. Rising sea levels threaten the coastal cities, especially Lagos. And herder -farmer clashes over decreasing arable land portend increasing economic and social devastation. The World Bank says Nigeria could lose up to 19% of its GDP by 2050 due to climate Change.
The question to ask then is “what is to be done?” What are the pathways to the mitigation of climate change and its effects, to solutions and justice? The media ecosystem is awash with sometimes eye catching solutions for example; green industrialization. This proposed solution sees African countries leapfrogging the use of fossil fuels by investing in renewables, within the capitalist system. Nigeria’s Solar Power Naija Initiative aims along that direction. Climate Justice where the advanced capitalist economies will change their behavior, out of benevolence or enlightened self-interest and provide debt cancellations and climate reparations is another utopian solution that is often provided.
All of these solutions and goals will remain illusions to be pursued without overthrowing the capitalist system. Capitalist development is driven strictly by the logic of maximization of profit. And it is a worldwide system. Green industrialization in low-income countries within global capitalism is nothing but a mirage. The climate crisis is something that shows the need for international socialist revolution more graphically than any other thing in human history. We need global unity of working-class people to overthrow capitalism worldwide. We have to fight against those who exploit us and the planet. We must defeat the capitalists to stop this halt to extinction. We have nothing to lose but our chains when we use and fight. And if we tarry, we will not even have a world to win.
by Emmanuel EDOMWONYI
