“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”

-Alanis Obomsawin

In the midst of a heatwave that peaked at almost 40 degrees, on 4 August, the Guardian revealed a staggering statistic – eight oil companies made 93 billion dollars in the second quarter of the year. These same companies are presently asking for more than their already asinine 17.5 billion pounds in subsidies, for more drilling licenses to “lower prices”. The very same companies that insist that they must not have the undue burden of a windfall tax upon them or else they would not have the money to vampirically continue their parasitism upon the common man and our planet.  Yes they made 93 billion dollars in three months. 

But do not fret, we use paper straws!

Hypocrisy

Nobody will be surprised by the abject hypocrisy of governments. In the world of capitalism, this odious individualism has led to perhaps one of the gravest sins of capitalism. It pushes the burden of repairing the damage done to the environment by capital onto the shoulders of the people, of the poor, of the prolific philanthropist, to protect the purity of the planet.

Of the world’s carbon emissions, half of them come from just 32 companies, and this number is from an analysis completed in 2024. But for many of these companies, there is never enough. 

These billions, which sit in stock options and Swiss bank accounts are trophies of man’s greed. They are like the medals from a tournament won by no man other than Hades himself, part of a wicked dragon’s horde. Bur they are still not enough. These corporations and those that head them demand yet more! As Marx said, the logic of capitalism is to “accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”

Increasingly, we have reached the consolidation of the business of global destruction. ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco and Shell do not find this to be enough. They continue to spend their ill-gotten gains on the pursuit of further deregulation. So more coral reefs will be shattered into a million pieces at the altar of profit. To hand even a fragment of this – £1.5 billion a year to build flood defences, is still too much to ask.

If we don’t shift to low-carbon energy systems more quickly, then (according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC)) the UK will need gross capital investment of £26 billion each year up to 2050 to successfully mitigate climate change and reach its net-zero target.

But do not fret, we use paper straws!

In the time it has taken you to read this, eight oil companies – Aramco, BP, Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, Chevron and ExxonMobil have made $2.1 million of profit. With just these three minutes of profit, 45 secondary schools could have been built in Cameroon.

Fossil fuel makes killer heatwaves

The treatment for the disease of fossil capitalism is ecosocialism.

Some capitalists add a token renewable investment to soothe their consciences. Others still seem to blatently embrace it – as Peter Thiel and his ilk have demonstrated, a shadowy cabal of billionaires does not merely profit from the destruction of the world, but actively embraces it. A death cult to man’s hubris.

The fact that these profits are being announced in the middle of a heatwave the likes of which we have never experienced before shows you what is at stake. In the two months of May and June, 2700 people died of heat in the UK. This number is likely far higher, accounting for wildfire smoke and skin cancer. In a single week, in Europe, a heatwave caused ten thousand excess deaths. Farmers have warned that the heat and lack of rain have led to mass crop failures, and this year we are facing food shortages and much higher prices for basics, like bread. 

Next year, the El Niño event will almost certainly make this even worse. This is not a mere unfortunate accident – this was a conscious choice on the part of capital to sacrifice human lives for profit.

In the 70s, Exxon did research into the effects of its actions. They discovered the damage it would cause, and rather than cease their destruction, they spent billions to silence critics and manufacture propaganda to cover up the truth of greenhouse gas emissions. This is nothing less than conscious corporate mass murder.

But do not fret! We use paper straws!

Capital can only expand

Of course, this is only a symptom. The first commandment of capitalism is expansion. To the cold eyes of capital, a forest is timber awaiting extraction, a river the coolant for a new data centre, an ocean simply untapped oil. The liberal view is that you can reason with the Cerberus of capital. The three-headed beast of imperialism, capitalism and environmental destruction – three heads, and yet one body. Today, we live in a society where the Jevons paradox operates – that is, that when efficiency increases, total demand does as well.

The liberal asks us to regulate, to appeal to the better angels of these executives and shareholders. But no chief executive can just fold whilst competitors continue. The system disciplines those who try to act even with an iota of compassion – even self-preservation – simply witness what occurred to BP. But these capitalists merely seek more time to exploit. Capital only has one imperative: accumulate. There is no compromise to be had.

Capital is playing its last card – individual virtue. Plastic straws are replaced whilst a hundred thousand tonne container ship carries sweatshop bags across oceans. You are told to turn off your lights, whilst data centres use a trillion times more. You are told to sort your recycling for 79% of it to go to landfill or the ocean (9% is recycled, 12% is incinerated), and for nine per cent to be shipped away on those same container ships to be sorted by child labour, so you can feel good when your shampoo bottle is labelled as only having been made of 50% fossil fuel.

Ecosocialism is the solution

Because we want to remove the capitalist class from power, eco-socialism is accused of being an enemy of freedom by the malicious media of the right and of the far-right agitators. These are the same people being funded by the same billionaires, single-mindedly fighting to defend their death cult capitalism, whilst claiming the mantle of the workers’ warrior. It is not. We have a simple understanding – democratic planning is not the enemy of freedom, the blind anarchy of the markets is. 

Ecosocialism is not just, as some liberals wearing the green cloak may claim, adding environmental regulations to capitalism. It is daring to abolish the system of capitalism, which subordinates humanity to the corporate balance sheet. 

We demand the socialisation of the fossil fuel industry under democratic ownership and a rapid plan to phase fossil fuels out of our economy and redeploy workers from those industries into other equally well-paid roles – this is a must. Scientists at the UN have said that to reach our targets, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% from 2010 levels around the world – this is a necessity for the survival of humanity. They have also said we need to radically restructure our economy away from profit – we agree!

So long as the profit motive exists, there can be no successful environmental movement – we say this clearly, profit and sustainability are mutually exclusive. We, as Marxists, understand this. We understand that this ecological disaster is not an unfortunate consequence of capital, but the logical endpoint of the material relations fostered by capitalism.

There is a sombre warning within all this. 

Capitalism will end one day. The only question is if it will take humanity with it. We are not just saving the world, really, we are saving ourselves from a barbaric future designated to us by these capitalists that wish to play king of the ashes.