Environmentalism and Resistance

The figure of 1.5° was the critical limit that 195 nations established in the “Paris Agreement” of COP21 (2015), motivated by the multiple scientific evidences predicting that a greater increase in the planet’s average temperature would have devastating and irreversible consequences for life on Earth. Far from acting accordingly, the culmination of almost a decade of inaction is that 2024 became the hottest year ever recorded and the first with a temperature above the limit figure of 1.5°. Furthermore, it also broke the global record for fossil CO2 emissions.

The ecological and climate catastrophe we face is global. However, the responsibilities for this situation and, therefore, for the necessary solution through a transition towards a system that respects the biophysical limits of the planet, fall on very specific actors. In the first place are the major international powers, which bear enormous responsibility both for being the main agents causing climate change and for having an enormous capacity to combat it effectively. In second place, it is transnational corporations that, supported by financial power, cause enormous environmental imbalance through the various processes of extraction and control of natural resources. Finally, the media and social networks, which play a key role in establishing the discursive framework and the “agenda”, often function as an extension of economic-political powers.

A fundamental part of repairing the climate crisis requires that those responsible assume their responsibility for the problem and pay the climate debt. However, over the last 30 years, international legislation on trade and investment has been taking precedence over the climate emergency. This is nothing more than a symptom that the problem we face is structural, and therefore resolving the crisis is not a matter of individual discipline. Debates on how to address the climate crisis often revolve around the various Green New Deal proposals, although this is a fallacious debate since capitalism cannot resolve the climate crisis, as it is the main cause of this crisis. Green capitalism aims to mitigate the symptoms of capitalism —global warming, mass extinction of species, destruction of ecosystems— without transforming the model of accumulation and consumption that has been causing this situation.