The People’s Climate Summit demonstration has kicked off few hours ago. People and organisations from all over the world are marching to demand action against the climate crisis and environmental destruction. ISp comrades from 5 countries are taking part in the demo and will intervene in the summit that follows in the coming days. Read the text they are distributing to the protesters:
The climate crisis is accelerating. Extreme heat, floods, droughts and wildfires are threatening the lives of millions, deepening water and food crises and accelerating biodiversity loss. According to the latest scientific reports (TIME, 14.10.2026, “Climate Change Is Accelerating Faster Than We Can Respond”):
- The rate of global warming has accelerated from ~0.05°C per decade between 1880 and 1970 to ~0.36°C per decade between 2010 and 2024 (up by ~700%).
- In May 2026 atmospheric CO2 was higher than any time in 2 million years.
- July 2026 was the hottest month on record in the USA, with ocean temperatures also at record highs.
- The 2°C threshold, meant to limit planetary damage, could be reached before 2050.
- Concentrations of greenhouse gases reached record levels in 2026.
- Fossil fuel consumption rose by 0.9% in 2025 with oil, coal, and gas all reaching record highs.
The report concludes:
“We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system… This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present.”
“GREEN” CAPITALISM HAS FAILED
Governments and major corporations are well aware of the dangers. So why have decades of climate summits failed to produce results? Because the necessary measures conflict with corporate profits and geopolitical competition between states.
The transition to renewable energy is a must. But reality shows that: a) carbon emissions are not decreasing but increasing, with new explorations and drilling continually taking place and b) new vast destructions of the environment and of human lives are taking place in the name of “green transition” – oil monopolies are replaced by lithium monopolies and renewable energy investments destroy land, mountains and water.
A PROGRAMME TO FIGHT FOR
Production and investment must be determined by social needs. Energy, water, housing, transport and healthy food are fundamental rights. Those who did not create the crisis must not pay the price. Workers, women, small producers, low-income groups and people in poorer countries suffer disproportionately from the consequences.
As industries undergo transformation, workers must be guaranteed new jobs with equivalent wages and rights, income security and free retraining. Small producers, cooperatives, agricultural workers and agroecological production must be supported against corporate monopolies over land, water and seeds.
Climate finance cannot be allowed to become another mechanism for creating debt. Rich countries which bear the historical responsibility for the crisis, must provide non-repayable funding for adaptation, loss and damage. Unsustainable external debts of poorer countries must be cancelled, and grants must replace loans as the principal form of climate finance.
The costs of greenwashing must not be shifted onto workers, women, small producers, the poor or the poorer countries.
We need a programme that connects today’s struggles with the socialist transformation of production, ownership and decision-making:
- Stop all new fossil fuel exploration and extraction projects
- All major energy companies must be brought into democratic public ownership, under the control and management of workers and users, i.e. society. The same with the Food Multinationals.
- Public transport must be radically expanded and made free or affordable for everyone.
- Planned obsolescence must be prohibited. Products must be designed to be durable, repairable, reusable and recyclable.
- Working hours must be reduced without loss of pay. Technological productivity gains must translate into reduction in the working day.
- Agroecology, cooperatives and small producers must be supported. Ownership of water, seeds and other essential resources must be public and commons-based.
- The growth of Artificial Intelligence must be put under democratic public control, because of the dangers not only to the environment but also to humanity itself.
- The production/use of plastics based on hydrocarbons must be drastically reduced with the aim of elimination.
- Large fortunes must be heavily taxed.
- Military spending must be drastically reduced, with resources redirected towards ecological transformation, healthcare, education, housing and care services.
- CENTRAL COORDINATION, DEMOCRATIC PLANNING
There is no national solution to the climate crisis – only international action can bring results. And there can be no confidence in any state bureaucracy to carry out energy, industry, agriculture, transport and resource use transformation.
Workers, trade unions, local communities, women’s organisations, scientists, small producers and users must have genuine decision-making power over production and investment.
Public ownership must be accompanied by democratic social control and coordination needs to be built on an international level.
THE SOLUTION LIES IN ORGANISED STRUGGLE AND SOCIALISM
One has to be naïve to expect capitalism to carry out these fundamental transformations, in the interests of society and humanity, rather than of corporate profit. The working class, which operates the systems of production, is the fundamental social force capable of transforming them.
Workers’ movements and ecological struggles must unite around a common socialist programme and aim for power, to establish the basis for a socialist society.
But what is the main obstacle the working class has to face? This is its own political and trade union leaderships. The parties of the Left, in their vast majority, have disappointed, sold out or betrayed the interests of the working classes. The overthrow of the capitalist system and the building of a new society cannot happen automatically or through spontaneous social explosions. We have seen scores of such social eruptions in the past years, and innumerable in the past decades. But none of them has brought the desirable results – the capitalists continue to rule and take our lives from bad to worse.
Thus, it is necessary to build new working-class organisations, especially new parties of the Left, that will challenge the system –on an international level because the crisis knows no borders.
GET IN TOUCH!
Internationalist Standpoint (ISp) fights for the building of socialist-revolutionary parties on a national and international level. It’s opposed to the multi-fracturing of the anticapitalist Left, often for entirely secondary factors. It believes in the close collaboration of revolutionary socialists and of radical left currents, internationally, with the future aim of a revolutionary international Organisation, based on agreement on the fundamentals and with respect to the differences that are bound to exist.
Join the struggle, fight back, contact us, at:
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Website: www.internationaliststandpoint.org
