Burning summer: what is next for the Climate Justice movement?

Ahead of us we have a burning summer, projects of investment in fossil gas, the delay of a just fossil phase-out, inflation, a cost of living crisis imposed on working people, and another UN climate summit pushing the bounds of absurdity. The climate movement need to be honest with itself, and needs to make plans to make this absurd pathway to climate and social chaos stop. Here are some of the initiatives we are involved in, taking place during the months ahead:

Last Winter of Gas

This initiative aims at pushing for the necessary action against the catastrophic revival of the fossil gas industry. The cost of living crisis, which has its unequivocal origin in the profits of the fossil industry, has been used by the gas sector in particular to stick its claws into the European energy system and perpetuate itself. This guarantees their control over prices, their command over the cost of living of society and solidifies a path to climate collapse.

We will have none of it!

If they are making plans to have gas until the 2050’s, we say that gas use in Europe needs to end in 2024!

We need to end the rule of gas over Europe and usher in a springtime of renewable energy! We need the Last Winter of Gas.

Learn more here.

An initial text was launched during the Power to the People conference in Vienna, in May 2023 – Counter conference to the European Gas Conference.

We need to usher in the #LastWinterofGas in Europe.

It’s their time to pay: Call for September marches against climate and cost of living crisis

It’s enough. We have taken more than it is expected from any society, from any generation. The permanent convulsion ushered in by current politics is repulsive, it is pervasive, it crosses through all governments and forces us to pay, pay, pay, for whichever crisis is mostly outstanding at any moment.

We will not take it anymore. The cost of living crisis is just a manifestation of the repeated choice to make us pay for all excesses of this completely irrational system. The unbelievable prices of energy, food, housing, heating, transport or education are imposed on us to pay for the inflation caused by the spike in fossil fuels prices, that is, their unbelievable historical profits. (…)

On the 30th of September we will gather in the cities and the squares of Europe, demanding price controls over all essential sectors – those which governments didn’t hesitate to force to keep on working during the last pandemic – and imposing the cost on the multimillionaires which live off of the rents and stocks of these companies. They’ve hidden their loot in tax havens and dodgy schemes, but the choice of letting their crimes continue is a political one which we refuse. We have paid more than enough. Now, they will pay! We demand an overhaul of the current energy and transport system based on fossil fuels, which drives prices through the roof, and the deployment of decentralized, community-based and democratically controlled renewable energies and public transport systems, to achieve the massive CO2 cuts climate science tell us is our only chance to prevent a catastrophic outcome. (…)

2023 Global Climate Jobs Conference

The status quo is not providing real solutions to these crises. Left and progressive movements need to fill this vacuum and organize for radically progressive policies that widen its support and build social power.

From Green New Deals to Climate Jobs, many blueprints for just transitions and socioeconomic and ecological transformations have been put forward. But we are failing to build powerful social movements around these ideas while their labels are now being used to promote green capitalism.

We must take these transformational policy visions out of our narrow circles and small discussion rooms and turn them into programs with broad support from working people. We need an agenda that can bring together different social movements. And we need the political power to implement it.

In the 2023 Global Climate Jobs Conference we want to join together everyone who wants to take part in the challenging but pressuring task of building social power to stop climate change. We want to move from policy discussions to action. We seek to set a conference for frank and ambitious discussions on working-class organizing, alliance and movement building and political strategy, towards Climate Jobs and Ecological Unionism.

Learn more here.

The Climate End Game: call for the Earth Social Conference in Pakistan in December 2023

We, on the other hand, are climate realists.

We are on a highway to hell, with their feet still on the accelerator. We refuse to participate in a process of negotiating words that have less value than the ink with which they were written. We have not a single second to waste in Dubai.

It is our responsibility to build a viable, climate-realist, justice-oriented alternative to the ongoing shit show. We must change their system, which sees everyone and everything as commodities and as separate from each other. It is imperative that we forge a new system that restores harmony with nature and among human beings.

To this effect, we are calling for an Earth Social Conference to take place in Pakistan in the beginning of December 2023. Join us to build the collective force we need in order to pull the emergency break.

Organizations and individuals interested in signing this call to boycott COP and joining the process of organizing our climate realist conference and next steps for a movement that dares to execute system change can contact us via:

earthsocialconference@disroot.org.

Learn more here.