The Climate Crisis: The Truth About Polluting Energy

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Almost everything in our daily lives, from turning on the lights to using our cell phones, is powered by polluting energy.

Rebecca Green Socialist Alternative (ISA USA)

Almost everything in our daily lives, from turning on the lights to using our cell phones, is powered by polluting energy.

The largest part (about 25%) of greenhouse gas emissions comes from electricity generation and heat production. In fact, energy production should have been replaced by 100% renewable energy, or more precisely decades ago.

We haven’t always used energy this way. Before the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents worked at sunrise and at sunset, and got around without using Google Maps. They always use firewood to survive the cold winter, face food scarcity for a long time, and have difficulty communicating and traveling over long distances.

The world's energy was produced in a more efficient manner after a bumpy and long journey of innovation, from new waterwheel technology to engines powered by coal and steam in the late 1800s. Soon, in addition to our better ability to generate thermal energy to warm our houses, burning coal also made mechanical engines more efficient than ever.

Airplanes, trains and automobiles followed, and nitrogen fertilizers also increased the food supply exponentially. Living standards have also improved, more people have survived, and the abundance of energy that makes all kinds of modern life possible, thanks to fossil fuels.

But the stories we are familiar with obviously do not end here.

The problems we are facing now basically arise from the use of fossil fuels, which also makes it impossible for us to continue to rely on it to satisfy human civilization without impacting the environment.

The good news is that through modern technology, we continue to discover more green alternative energy sources to operate modern society. The bad news is that fossil fuel companies won't stop there.

The Big Fraud of the Fossil Fuel Industry

In fact, when fossil fuels became our main source of energy, entire industries were already in the hands of a few individual dignitaries. So far this situation has not changed.

The emerging capitalists of the late 1800s needed this new energy for railroads and for building factories and cities, which meant that those who mastered coal could get rich quickly.

But as they and the oil and gas tycoons made their fortunes in the decades that followed, the scientific community had already pointed to the threat to fossil fuels. The Swedish scientist and chemist Svante Arrhenius had proposed in the late 19th century that burning fossil fuels would cause global temperatures to rise.

Subsequently, more and more people agreed, all agreeing and there is a lot of evidence that burning fossil fuels is completely unsustainable.

Fossil fuel companies are well aware of this, and have funded some of the research that found as early as the 1950s that burning fossil fuels would cause global warming, sea level rise, and "dramatic environmental impacts." Conservationist Bill McKibben said the fossil industry had created "the most consequential cover-up in American history."

If society operates rationally, these studies should immediately prompt society to seek and develop renewable energy, and transform it immediately. But this is not the case, under capitalism, as long as the fossil fuel is profitable enough, it will stand in the way of transformation, and it will be extremely difficult to remove it.

In contrast, fossil fuel companies actively fund natural science research to downplay climate change, exaggerate incomplete and selective data, use pseudo-experts, and fuel various conspiracy theories.

At the same time, these oil companies spend unbelievable amounts of money lobbying politicians. These politicians, while aware of climate change, would rather take the dirty money to win elections or get busy dealing with the CEO of Shell Oil. In 1990, the oil and gas industry spent more than $12 million in political donations, but honestly, that's a drop in the bucket compared to their $140.7 million in 2020.

In 2021, large-scale wildfires, floods, and hurricanes are not surprising today. The scientific facts can no longer be denied. Politicians have begun to "keep up with the trend", and even major oil companies have said that they also want to invest in renewable energy! But the Biden administration has released 78 million acres of land off the Gulf of Mexico for oil drilling, and fossil fuel production will continue to grow in 2022.

money is not everything

There's good news, though: billionaires and politicians have never been of much help to ordinary people and the planet, so we don't have to rely on them. We should focus on city councils, public squares, community center basements, school buildings and university campuses. In these places, the working class and young people are organizing for a better future.

On the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million people in the United States participated in 12,000 events before and after. Includes multiple educational talks with around 35,000 speakers and many more organizers. By the end of the year, the EPA was created and the Clean Air Act was passed.

It was the first bill to protect rivers and lakefronts, and university environmental student groups and newspaper environmental columns have sprung up. These are mass-based grassroots organizing movements that politicized tens of millions of people and continued to fight for climate protection after the seminar.

A 2021 report states that Native Americans from Keystone XL​​​​​​​ are resisting new pipeline plans from Keystone XL​​​​​​​​ And community mobilization to delay, disrupt, and completely block various fossil fuel programs, they have delayed the equivalent of 25% of the annual carbon emissions of the United States and Canada into the atmosphere.

There was also a historic victory in Ireland's County Mayo, where local residents, including farmers, fishermen and school teachers, launched a 13-year struggle against Shell. In the end, the company tried but was unable to evict county residents to build the gas pipeline, and it was protests, occupation, and local organizing forces that forced Shell to abandon the project.

There are many more cases, and that's why we should have hope.

We have the masses standing with us, and it is clear that there is no going back. All those fossil fuel companies and billionaires have is money, and that money is useless if we refuse to let them run their factories, let them build new oil pipelines, or even let them control our political system.

In November, world leaders met at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and the International Socialist Path (ISA) joined many others in protest action; we mobilized our members around the world to express our urgent need demands:

• Immediately stop all new fossil fuel projects and immediately transition to 100% renewable energy within the next decade.
• Publicise all oil companies and utilities - we don't trust billionaires, we can't afford a profit-based energy production model.
• Provide emergency help to extreme climate victims, and employ large numbers of emergency responders, nurses, and other medical care workers.
• Introduce a Green New Deal jobs program that employs millions of people to strengthen public facilities, build renewable energy grids, rehabilitate agriculture, restore woodlands, expand public transportation, and implement other green policies.
• Building youth and working-class mass action from every campus to every workplace and around the world, we are the only force that can win a sustainable, socialist planet based on real human needs rather than corporate greed.