The climate catastrophe represents an existential crisis for humanity. No wonder that for millions of working people and youth across the country, this question has taken on tremendous urgency. The mountain of overwhelming scientific evidence was never an enticing call to action for the capitalist class and its craven representatives. But now that the economic cost of the crisis is coming into view, the ruling class has begun to take note. Three-quarters of economists now agree that “immediate and drastic action” is needed. They project that the cost of damage from climate change will rise from today’s yearly impact of $1.7 trillion to a staggering annual toll of $30 trillion by the year 2075.

However, due to its profit-driven structure, capitalism is incapable of effectively responding to the crisis, which demands a complete overhaul of the energy and transportation sectors and just about all forms of mass production and distribution. Truly tackling the climate crisis will require a mass party of the working class armed with class-struggle policies and a revolutionary transformation of society.

With the help of the servile liberal mass media, which is frantically selling the incoming administration as an FDR-style national savior, Biden has put forward a “progressive” image on this issue. Despite superficially striking some of the right notes on this issue, we should never forget that Biden’s administration is directly accountable to American capital and ultimately reflects its interests. In Marx’s famous words, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Compared to the scale of action necessary to address the already-upon-us crisis head-on, Biden’s policies represent token gestures aimed at averting eyes from overall inaction.

Biden’s (in)actions

One of Biden’s first executive orders was to revoke the permit for the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline. However, despite blocking this high-profile project, he has allowed construction on over 20 other oil pipeline projects to continue across the US. One such project is the Dakota Access Pipeline, the subject of massive protests at Standing Rock supported by millions around the country. Biden promised that he would pass legislation to make polluters “bear the full cost of the carbon pollution they are emitting.” Yet, he remains unwilling to challenge a barely legal pipeline that has been a target of activists for years.

Biden’s reentry into the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) likewise represents a merely symbolic gesture. This agreement has not inspired the necessary action thus far and is unlikely to do so in the future. To start with, the PCA is a voluntary, non-binding agreement. Its stated aim is to reduce emissions to keep global warming below 1.5C to 2C, compared to preindustrial levels, to avert a “worst-case” scenario. The science indicates that a rise of 2C or more would trigger dire shifts in the globe’s ecology.

However, recent studies have shown that the targets for reducing emissions in each country would need to be 80% more ambitious than the PCA guidelines to keep global warming below 2C and avoid catastrophic fallout. According to a University of Washington study, there is now only a 5% probability that the world will achieve this upper-end target. Therefore, membership in the PCA means little when it comes to effective climate action, which must be global by its very nature, as the countries that are parties to it are not anywhere near on track to meet their emission reduction goals.

Biden campaigned on a promise to prioritize the climate in international relations. Despite this assurance, as the New York Times reported, “the administration showed that more immediate demands, like bolstering military security and repairing strained friendships, will provide stiff competition.” Or, as the president of the Council on Foreign Relations put it, “Climate has to compete with other issues and priorities in the US agenda.”

In other words, the immediate interests of imperialism always come first. Biden is “all for natural gas” when it’s generating profits for US industry. But not so much if it’s being pumped out of Russia and increasing European energy reliance on a geopolitical rival.

In this context, Biden’s recent announcement of an ambitious $2 trillion infrastructure plan represents a desperate attempt to shore up the position of US imperialism against two creeping existential threats: climate change and competition with China on the world market.

US infrastructure is crumbling and has been for decades. Year after year, it has received dismal ratings by independent agencies, and currently rates a “C-”, up from a “D” rating every year since 1998 when reporting began. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the cost of fixing the national infrastructure—independently of all climate-related transition costs—would be approximately $2.6 trillion over ten years.

Besides planned expenditure on infrastructure, Biden’s plan proposes about $282 billion towards developing climate response measures over a decade. But effectively combating climate change would require this kind of investment on an annual basis—and would need it to be matched by governments around the world. As of 2019, investment in renewable energy in the US is approximately $55 billion annually—a far cry from what is necessary.

Furthermore, Biden’s plan has already received considerable pushback by lawmakers in both parties, and would need the support of every Democrat to get this bill passed. If it is passed, it would likely be in an even more reduced form, leaving the door open for a further deepening of the climate catastrophe.

Capitalist profits set the timeline

Private property and production for the market means all decisions must serve one underlying objective: returning a profit to accumulate capital. This basic law of capitalist political economy asserts itself at every step of the conversion from fossil fuels to renewable energy. If left to the capitalists, the transition will happen on a timeline driven by the profit motive—not by science and the needs of collective humanity.

Though there is growing investor speculation in renewables, it is not yet a mature or stable market for investment, as far as large asset managers and institutional investors are concerned. I.e., there are bigger profits to be made elsewhere. It will likely take years for investors to organically shift their portfolios into renewable markets on a mass scale, as there is a high degree of certainty needed for the largest investors to move their capital into a new market.

Biden exemplifies those who would like to move more quickly in this direction, so we will likely see an acceleration of this transition compared to previous years. However, this transition is still ultimately guided by the profit motive, and considering the scale of the changes involved, any real tipping point will only come long after Biden’s presidency—by which time it may be too late to avoid the worst case scenarios.

As outlined in the Paris Accord, limiting global warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees would require a 50% cut in emissions by 2025 and an 80% reduction in emissions by 2035. On a world scale, The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) projects that the transition to renewable energy will require an exponential increase in investments from now until 2050, incrementing annually by an additional $550 billion over each previous year. This figure will only rise the longer we continue to burn fossil fuels. But current annual global investment in renewable energy is merely $300 billion—far short of what is needed.

In addition to these costs, $100 billion per year is needed to aid less advanced capitalist countries to meet their 2025 transition goals. After centuries of imperialist plunder, former colonial countries continue to transfer a yearly $2 trillion to rich countries through debt payments, capital flight, and repatriation of profits. According to the IIASA, keeping these poorer countries on track to meet the 1.5 C goal by 2050 will require “considerably more” funding.

Aside from the inadequate pace of the transition to clean energy sources, there are already clear signs that the capitalists will force the working class—especially in the energy sector—to bear the burden of the changes. Layoffs and attacks on wages, benefits, and conditions have spurred recent strikes and lockouts in this sector, providing a glimpse of the bitter class battles on the horizon.

Socialism is the only way forward!

Tackling the climate crisis is not a question of tightening belts and making small changes here and there, but one of a complete remapping of the way humanity generates and utilizes energy across the entire world. For comparison’s sake, World War II was the most expensive collective struggle on which humanity has ever embarked. Its total cost was around $4 trillion in today’s dollars. The financial costs of combating climate change will dwarf this sum.

To manage their wartime affairs, the capitalists were forced to hand major sections of the economy to state direction or ownership. These nationalizations were mostly temporary, generously compensated, and undertaken in the overall interests of the ruling class. To truly combat climate change, we must go far further than this. We cannot leave it to the caprices of the capitalists to retool their operations when it becomes profitable for them. The nature of the crisis cries out for a socialist planned economy under the democratic control of the world working class. Instead of being constrained by the arbitrary logic of the profit motive, humanity requires conscious control of its productive forces to rationally organize and carry out a united struggle against climate change.