The Albanese Labor Government has been in power for several months now, and their action on climate change has been predictably pathetic. Their newly legislated target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 is not only inadequate in the urgent fight against climate change, but actively harmful to the climate movement and progress towards zero emissions. It greenwashes our government and over-inflates the impact of our climate action while forging ahead with destructive policy.
There is no set ‘deadline’ by which to fight climate change, but the timeline is accelerating beyond expectation. Shocking images of rivers in Europe and China almost entirely drying up this summer, while devastating floods destroyed whole regions in Pakistan, are stark reminders that even the projections made by leading climate scientists may be too optimistic. We cannot be clearer: in the Albanese era, climate delay is equivalent to climate denialism.
Beyond the inadequate 43% target, which offers no enforcement mechanisms and consists mainly of regular progress reports, Labor continues a raft of destructive climate policies. The ALP will continue to support and fund new fossil fuel projects, and with Resources Minister Madeleine King saying things like ‘coal and gas will continue to heat our homes and keep manufacturing going for many years to come’, we can be under no illusion that even they believe they are doing enough to fight climate change. Labor is in lockstep with previous Coalition policy by promoting the expansion of domestic gas supplies and continuing development on major fossil fuel projects in the Beetaloo Basin, Northern Territory (which could drive up Australia’s emissions by 13%), through the Scarborough Gas Project (which could produce 1.6bn tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifecycle), and by offering 47,000 sq km of Australian water to oil and gas exploration. Labor will also continue with many of the Coalition’s controversial carbon offset schemes, where companies buy into carbon offset projects instead of reducing their emissions directly. Such schemes have been shown to be accounting tricks with companies claiming false emissions reductions often for protecting forests that were never going to be cleared, growing trees that were already there or growing forests in places that will never sustain carbon sequestration permanently. It is now clear, if it was ever in doubt, that a Labor government cannot and will not deliver on climate action.
The Greens cannot solve this crisis for us either. Despite the hope many activists place in the party, they have shown their hand early in passing Albanese’s climate bill without opposition. But, this is not an unexpected loss of vision or promise – it is the only available parliamentary strategy left to the Greens, and is only more evidence of the inadequacy of a parliamentary path to climate justice. After 10 years of being hammered for the decision to stand against bad climate policy, the Greens have learned their electoral lesson and taken a conciliatory compromise approach. As is always the case with parliamentary political parties, the only way to placate their rivals and exert influence within the system is through negotiation and compromise. But the climate crisis is uncompromising, and will only demand more radical solutions as time slips away.
A left-wing movement strong enough to force real progress requires a coherent and unified strategy to build power from below. The organised, radical Left has struggled to build effective, stable alliances within the wider climate movement and re-mobilise the crowds of up to eighty thousand people seen at earlier rallies in 2019 and early 2020. Even recent natural disasters like the northern NSW floods have not brought these numbers out onto the streets again. Activists have worked hard to keep the lights on in the climate movement, but we unfortunately find ourselves rehashing the same debates with a limited cohort of socialist organisers, liberal environmental NGOs, small community groups and a few parliamentary representatives.
If we are to truly rebuild the climate movement from below, we cannot just wait for the next disaster. We must seek to agitate for mass direct action in its true sense: workers combatting the authority of capital and the state collectively as part of a coordinated mass movement. It is unrealistic to seek change from above – history shows that lasting and meaningful change does not come from the good will of parliamentary representatives or the negotiation skills of union officials. It is only when workers from every sector are united in defiance on the streets, and united in withdrawing their labour, that we can present a genuine threat to government and capital. It is only with this critical mass that we can avoid the persecution faced by individuals and small groups of blockaders and instead successfully defy the severe repression of the state, and eventually completely dismantle it. We must build a lasting coalition of rank-and-file unionists, students, and communities under this strategic vision, if we are to make any progress towards our goals.
This article lays out our strategic vision for rebuilding the climate movement into one which can not only win major reforms, but ultimately overthrow the system of capitalism which created the climate crisis. This vision centres on two key demands for initial reform: a just transition to a green economy for all workers, and a rapid transition to 100% publicly owned renewable energy.
Just Transition
A core aspect of realising climate justice and climate action in Australia is a just transition for workers who are embedded in the fossil fuel industry. A true just transition can both advance the conditions and class consciousness of workers, and restructure the economy around green energy and strong communities.
To achieve this requires building working-class power through unions, and utilising the only truly effective tool the working class has at its disposal to achieve its goals: strikes. Australia has a rich history of union militancy and successful strikes for both economic and social issues, from Aboriginal land rights with the Wave Hill walk off, to rejecting corporate urban development with the BLF Green Bans. It is essential for the climate movement that workers themselves gain greater bargaining power and militancy, to overcome the conciliatory strategies of union officials and the legal repression cemented by agreements like the Prices and Incomes Accords 1983 and the Fair Work Act 2009.
This is why all industrial activity is relevant to the climate movement. Anything that strengthens the will and organisation of workers is something which improves our capacity to collectively withhold our labour, and thus to win our demands, within and beyond the workplace. The drive towards greater union militancy should be led by efforts to encourage greater democratic, grassroots workplace organisation around climate-related issues wherever possible. So long as these committees organise workers at the rank-and-file level, they have potential to strengthen both fronts – advancing the labour movement itself while simultaneously bringing the “muscle” of mass organised labour into the climate movement.
Secondly, a just transition requires a universally accessible and liveable social welfare system, alongside free, well-resourced tertiary education and vocational training. This is the only way to ensure that workers (employed and unemployed) have a secure income and guaranteed access to retraining as the economy rapidly changes. Workers need the time and peace of mind to find new jobs and deal with the effects of climate change that are already substantially impacting us. The severe economic impact of the 2019-2020 bushfires and 2022 floods upon local communities demonstrates the precarity that will accompany increasingly frequent natural disasters, not to mention the impact of pandemics like Covid-19. A just transition which includes liveable welfare and free education would create a baseline of financial security for all workers, shielding communities from the economic impacts of future climate instability and the restructuring required for a transition to public renewables. It also offers workers a vision of the kind of world we wish to create – a hint at the redistribution that could be demanded through continued mass action. This is why we believe the demand for universal and accessible social welfare and education is essential to a just transition.
Publicly Owned Renewable Energy
It is clear that our future depends on a rapid transition to an economy powered entirely by renewable energy sources. The call for 100% publicly owned renewables by 2030 is one of the core demands of the climate movement, but what are we referring to with this demand, and why is it needed?
It is clear the “invisible hand of the market” cannot deliver a renewable economy, especially not within a timeframe which has the ability to change climate outcomes. Our goal is to move towards socialised methods of production, first through public ownership of energy infrastructure and ultimately through direct workers’ self-management of industry. Intentional and coordinated development of renewable energy is the only way to overcome the massive technological, logistical and economic challenges posed by a rapid and urgent transition. As a kind of “united front” against privatisation, the demand for public ownership should be front and centre. However, it is worth developing our own position on what we mean by public ownership in the most ambitious, positive sense, and what comes after this demand should we win it.
Public ownership is essentially a defensive demand against the ongoing privatisation of essential industry by successive neoliberal governments; a means of bringing essential industry and services back into public hands so that their operation is more accountable to the demands of the working class. The current privatised energy system has resulted in issues of instability, poor maintenance, a lack of “future-proofing,” and terrible safety and conditions for workers. As in all other instances, privatisation of the ownership and management of our energy grid has also impacted consumers, increased prices and impacted supply, as seen in the recent NSW energy crisis.
While public ownership is a more benign form of management than private enterprise, it does not change the inherently exploitative nature of the worker-manager relationship.
Where ‘public ownership’ refers simply to nationalisation, it does not inherently challenge or even alter the class system and should therefore be seen as something quite different to ‘common ownership’ or workers’ self-management, which is what will be required to reorganise society along communist lines. To make the ‘publicly owned renewables’ demand positive, proactive, and truly emancipatory, we must be willing to win people over to a more bold, socialist vision of industry and production.
We can point to efforts led by the ETU and MUA to map out offshore wind opportunities as the kind of work we should be supporting. We can also see hints of this vision in community-led energy cooperatives. Unions and communities should be organising together to identify where needs and opportunities are greatest and build strong models of community ownership without the need for management by the state. Such initiatives, however, will not bring us closer to true public ownership unless they are part of a broader strategy of direct action and worker-led disruption, occupation, and reorganisation of workplaces across the country. We should push the climate movement to more explicitly champion this specific vision of public ownership, moving beyond nationalisation towards a socialist strategy of collectivisation.
United and Militant Climate Movement
The decisions made and actions taken in the next few years have on them the weight of the world. Our future depends on the ability of climate activists to force real change within this decade, and any delay raises the stakes. If a working-class climate movement can cohere around a clear political and strategic platform for systemic reform, we can build the kind of popular power that truly threatens capital and the state – a power often discussed at protests, but which has not been seen or felt for decades. To take hold of this moment requires building a united and militant climate movement.
The climate movement in Sydney has made good progress in recent years by settling on several key demands. Though they have been modified slightly for different protest actions and in response to new disasters, the four demands of the Climate Justice Alliance, which formed in late-2019 as a broad coalition of activists from across the movement, have been established as a widely accepted slate to cohere around. These demands are often formulated as follows:
- First nations justice. No mining or fracking on Indigenous lands. Funding for Indigenous-led land management with jobs on Country.
- Shut down the fossil fuel industry. No new fossil fuel or nuclear projects.
- 100% publicly owned renewable energy by 2030
- Support communities: a just transition to green jobs, including liveable welfare and funding for essential workers.
Whilst we believe it is essential to have an open and inclusive climate movement, we must also make sure the politics of the movement are not softened for the sake of popularity or false unity. The rise of environmental NGOs and climate independents such as the Teals has seen the rise of liberal individualist and market driven “solutions” for the climate crisis such as the push for ethical banking or superannuation investment, and shareholder activism. As anarchist climate activists, we instead argue for the demands outlined above, which have the potential to threaten capital and the state.
To win its chosen demands, this united climate movement must be militant in its strategy. We believe that the only truly emancipatory strategy is one based in the mass direct action of workers, organised from the ground up. This is not an idealistic or dogmatic position, but one which emerges from the demands and realities of the movement. If we are to fundamentally reorganise the economy, or even hold governments accountable over the course of an extended transition period, we must have the enthusiastic participation of a significant proportion of workers. A small cabal of revolutionary socialists will not alone spark a dormant mass movement into life; this movement must be grounded in deep rank-and-file organising and a culture of popular resistance built through repeated, escalating mass direct action.
We must denounce any call to simply vote change into existence or wait for the market to deliver climate action, and instead push for a defiant movement that poses a genuine threat to the system we currently endure. We cannot put our trust in individuals or organisations who do not believe in mass politics and working-class power, and we must seek to pull the left-wing base of the Greens and Labor parties away from these ideas and towards an explicitly socialist platform.
While liberal reformism is clearly unfeasible, so too is the insurrectionary individualism advocated by certain environmentalists who aim to block ports or disrupt industry for small periods of time. Individual acts of disruption, often confusingly referred to as “direct action,” are not a sustainable method of achieving change. While the courage of these activists is commendable and we condemn their repression by the state wholeheartedly, these acts cannot build a mass climate movement, and they neglect the working class’s most potent power in the strike.
If we are to sustain a coherent and effective climate justice struggle we must build a united front of working-class and revolutionary organisations based on a truly socialist strategic and political platform. We are not waiting for the Greens or the ALP to deliver mediocre reforms, we are building a revolutionary movement of workers, organised to seize control of industry and demand substantial reforms, and ultimately, the self-management of their workplaces, industries, and the economy. We must win the broader layers of the climate movement to this vision through both action and argument; building mass rallies with coordinated, rank-and-file contingents from our unions, campuses, and communities.
We argue that a truly ‘pragmatic’ climate movement is not one which celebrates the work of parliamentarians and environmental NGOs (because that’s where most people place their faith), or which relies on disasters to turn out thousands to the streets. Pragmatism is acknowledging just how far we are from the revolutionary united front that we seek. Rather than looking for shortcuts to it in parliament, sporadic coalitions, or spontaneous, isolated outbursts of radicalist anger, we must begin establishing the long-term structures of radical political organisation that we need. Open coalitions and alliances must be politically grounded in the demands outlined above, and built on the involvement of rank-and-file union committees, student collectives, community groups, and the left-wing base of the Greens and Labor parties. These groups must be strategically oriented towards mass protest and agitation within trade unions for further militant action, if we are to build the kind of struggle that achieves our demands.