Matt Huber is assistant professor of geography at Syracuse University. He is the author of Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital.
The oil industry, long characterized by boom and bust cycles, has crashed, with prices hitting below zero. The White House will reach for a corporate bailout, but now’s the opportunity to move away from oil extraction and build a rational system of clean energy.
Coronavirus has emphasized a truth we knew before the pandemic: capitalist food systems are irrational and don’t serve human needs. Socialists have to demand a food system based on social and ecological needs — one that can provide food for all.
To build the power to take on climate change, we can’t simply validate individual movements or assume single-issue struggles will add up to something greater than the sum of their parts. We need class politics to connect the dots of our many struggles — and to save the planet.
Solving the ecological crisis requires a mass movement to take on hugely powerful industries. Yet environmentalism’s base in the professional-managerial class and focus on consumption has little chance of attracting working-class support.
Electing Bernie Sanders president wouldn’t be enough to fight climate change. But his class-struggle politics give us the best chance we have to take on the fossil fuel companies.
If we want a Green New Deal that can take on climate change, we need to challenge powerful business interests.
The burden of market-based climate change solutions will fall on workers. We need strong state intervention.
Tesla's new Powerwall battery offers an individual solution to the collective problem of climate change.
Taking on climate change will require massive state investment and the destruction of the fossil fuel industry.