By MICHAEL LÖWY*

In my youth, during the 2020s and 2030s, it was still possible to avoid the Great Climate Catastrophe

Hello. Winter is starting and here in Greenland we have a pleasant winter temperature, which does not exceed 40°C. Unfortunately, this is not the case in other places on the planet…

The editors of the Greenland Gazette I have been asked to give a brief account of the dramatic events that have occurred over the course of this century, an account intended for the new generations who were born here and who have not heard this history. I can do so because, born in 2002, I am one of the oldest survivors of the GCC, the Great Climate Catastrophe.

In my youth, during the 2020s and 2030s, it was still possible to avoid the Great Climate Catastrophe. But this would have required urgent and radical measures, such as the immediate cessation of fossil fuel exploitation, a different model of agriculture, a substantial reduction in production, the abandonment of consumerism, etc. It was not possible to take such measures without the expropriation of banks and big business, without democratic planning, in short, without a break with the capitalist system.

But we could have started with a minimal ecological transition as a first step towards global change. A substantial minority of the population – young people, ecologists and trade unionists in the North, indigenous people and peasants in the South, and women everywhere – mobilized for socio-ecological causes. But a large part of the population remained prisoners of the fetishistic alienation of the commodity or the blackmail of the capitalists.

The worst thing was that, in many countries, as the ecological crisis worsened, anti-immigrant racism favored the election of openly ecocidal, denialist, neo-fascist governments. In other countries, we had “reasonable” governments that recognized the need to avoid a temperature increase of more than 1,5°C, but failed to take any of the urgent measures required. They proposed totally ineffective policies, such as the “market for emissions rights” or “compensation mechanisms”, or even false technical solutions.

The fossil fuel oligarchy, made up not only of the big oil, coal and gas companies, but also of the automotive, chemical and plastics industries, as well as their partner banks, had immense power and managed to block any serious progress. From 2040 onwards, the window of opportunity closed and climate change became uncontrollable.

Between 2050 and 2080, we saw forests gradually disappear, devoured by increasingly monstrous fires. At the same time, rivers dried up and fresh water became increasingly scarce. Desertification spread across the land – despite heavy rains and deadly floods – while coastal cities were inundated by rising sea levels (the result of melting polar ice caps).

But worst of all was the rise in temperature, which gradually reached 50°C or more, making entire countries and then continents uninhabitable. It could have been even worse: if production – and therefore emissions – had not collapsed from 2050 onwards, the entire planet would have become unfit for human life.

As you probably know, the survivors took refuge at the poles: the inhabitants of the North here in Greenland, and those of the South in Antarctica. Scientists estimate that within a few centuries, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be considerably reduced and the temperature of the planet will gradually return to its Holocene level. We can console ourselves with this optimistic forecast, but personally I cannot accept that so many human beings of my generation have disappeared, victims of the terrors of the Great Climate Catastrophe.

The Catastrophe was not inevitable. But our warnings went unheeded. We, the IPCC scientists and the advocates of an anti-systemic ecology – ecosocialism, social ecology, degrowth communism, etc. – played Cassandra. But, as we know from the Trojan War, we don’t like Cassandras: their alarmist speeches are unpopular. That said, we certainly made mistakes: we were unable to find the arguments, the language, the proposals capable of convincing the majority.

We have lost the battle. Let us hope that within a few centuries, humanity will be able to return to inhabit the entire planet Earth, with a more harmonious way of life, based on solidarity between human beings and respect for Mother Earth.

*Michae Lowy is director of research in sociology at Center nationale de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Author, among other books, of Franz Kafka unsubmissive dreamer (Cem Cabeças Publisher) [https://amzn.to/3VkOlO1]

Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.

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