Only a Mass Working-Class Climate Politics Can Free Us From the Climate Doom Cycle
The latest UN climate report was just released, and it’s brought the usual doom loop of grave headlines as emissions keep rising. The way out isn’t getting people to “believe the science” but building a pro-worker climate politics that can win power.
We’re stuck in a doom-loop news cycle where scientific reports create headlines, earnest commentators insist they represent a true “wake-up call,” and emissions keep rising anyway. (Getty Images)
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its “synthesis” report summarizing the findings of its sixth assessment (the last occurred in 2014). The findings are painfully familiar: the world is falling far short of its emission goals, and without rapid reductions this decade, the planet is likely to shoot to beyond 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius of warming this century (we are at 1.1 degrees now).
We seem to be stuck in a doom-loop news cycle where scientific reports create headlines, and earnest climate commentators insist the new report represents a true “wake-up call” for action, and then . . . emission keep rising. They hit a record once again in 2022.
The world of climate politics appears to exist in two completely different worlds. There is a largely liberal and idealist world of climate technocrats where science informs policy, and there is the real, material capitalist world of power.
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