The ecological collapse caused by capitalism cannot be solved with more capitalism.<\/b><\/p>\n
Marcus Kollbrunner, Liberdade, Socialismo e Revolu\u00e7\u00e3o (ISA in Brazil)<\/p>\n
(This article was first published on 17 November 2025 in Portuguese)<\/p>\n
\u201cOur nature is not a commodity\u201d was one of the slogans heard at the large \u201cGlobal Climate March\u201d that brought together 70,000 participants in Bel\u00e9m, Brazil, on Saturday 15 November. The demonstration saw a large turnout from indigenous peoples in the Amazon region, who are fighting against deforestation, mining that poisons the water, fossil fuel extraction, the privatisation of rivers and large construction projects that threaten their lives, territories and the climate.<\/p>\n
The march was organised by the \u201cPeople\u2019s Summit\u201d, which took place from 12 to 16 November, parallel to the official UN Climate Change Conference COP30, and brought together 25,000 participants from over 1,000 organisations from 65 countries.<\/p>\n
For the first time since 2021, the UN Climate Change Conference is being held in a country where protests are allowed, and there is strong criticism that negotiations are being conducted over the heads of indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n
\u201cCOP is a negotiation, and what they are negotiating is our territories. You can\u2019t talk about the climate without listening to us\u201d, said Auric\u00e9lia Arapiun, an indigenous leader from Tapaj\u00f3s, at a protest on 12 November, when demonstrators entered COP30\u2019s Blue Zone. On 14 November, the entrance to the summit was temporarily blocked by the Munduruku indigenous people.<\/p>\n
The protests were directed at various projects by Lula\u2019s government that threaten the Amazon region. The government recently issued a decree threatening to privatize access to three rivers in the Amazon for use as waterways for transporting goods. In addition, new railways are being built through the rainforest to transport soy, corn and other goods for export. The government has also been pressuring environmental authorities to grant permits for test drilling for oil in the sea off the mouth of the Amazon River, where it hopes to find new large oil deposits. Those permits were granted recently. All these projects show how hypocritical all the talk about protecting the environment at the official COP meeting is.<\/p>\n
As it says in the final statement from the People\u2019s Summit: \u201cEnvironmental crimes and extreme weather events that cause death and destruction are becoming increasingly common. This demonstrates the failure of countless global conferences and meetings that promised to solve these problems but never addressed their structural causes.\u201d<\/p>\n
No capitalist solutions<\/b><\/p>\n
According to the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition, 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have registered to participate in COP30, the highest number to date. And they are being heard.<\/p>\n
While Brazilian President Lula talks about the need to develop a \u201croadmap\u201d for phasing out the use of fossil fuels, new oil fields are being sought for drilling. Norway, which prides itself on being a major financier of environmental projects, is expanding oil production in the Arctic.<\/p>\n
\u201cHumanity has missed the 1.5-degree target,\u201d said UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres recently. \u201cEven if countries live up to their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions \u2013 and that\u2019s a big \u2018if\u2019 \u2013 the world will warm by 2.3\u00b0C to 2.5\u00b0C by the end of the century\u201d, writes the UN Environment Programme. The fact is that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.<\/p>\n
The tone from governments and the establishment has also changed. Although most governments have not embraced Trump\u2019s climate denial outright and still pay lip service to the need to combat climate change, the emphasis is more on adapting to climate change than on preventing it. A clear example of this is billionaire Bill Gates, who has written an essay arguing that it is too expensive to stop climate change and that we should instead invest in cheap programmes such as vaccinating children. As if the problem were a lack of resources, at a time when trillions are being spent on weapons and data centres, which contribute to environmental destruction.<\/p>\n
At the same time, governments are trying to find false \u201csolutions\u201d that will appeal to the \u201cmarket\u201d. Lula is now trying to gain support for the launch of an investment fund to save the rainforests, the \u201cTropical Forest Forever Facility\u201d (TFFF), a proposal that originally came from the World Bank. The proposal is for governments and private investors to invest $125 billion into a fund with an estimated return of 7%, with 4% going to investors and the rest going to pay $4 per hectare of protected forest. The indigenous peoples gave the right answer in their protests: \u2018stop treating our forests as commodities\u2019.<\/p>\n
An appeal from more than 170 environmental organisations and social movements entitled \u2018NO to TFFF, YES to forest rights\u2019 rightly stated: \u201cTFFF incorrectly and misleadingly views deforestation as a market failure that can be solved by putting a price on tropical forest ecosystem services to attract private investment. The ecological collapse caused by capitalism cannot be solved with more capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Climate protests have been at a lower level since their peak in 2019, but the protests in Bel\u00e9m show that there is potential to resume the struggle and link it with other burning issues in a fight against the root cause of all these problems, the capitalist system.<\/p>\n
The People\u2019s Summit statement contains important contributions in this direction. It states that \u201cThe capitalist mode of production is the main cause of the growing climate crisis\u201d and highlights the need to \u201ccounter false market solutions. Air, forests, water, land, minerals and energy sources must not remain private property or be appropriated, as they are common assets belonging to all peoples.\u201d The statement also highlights the struggle against all forms of oppression, for trade union rights and against imperialism and war.<\/p>\n
We need an environmental movement that is independent of governments that are trying to sell us the illusion of \u2018green capitalism\u2019. For this, it is necessary to fight for a socialist alternative, where large corporations, banks and wealth are taken over by workers around the world and used through democratic planning to satisfy real social needs and restore the environment, not to generate profits for a small elite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ecological collapse caused by capitalism cannot be solved with more capitalism. Marcus Kollbrunner, Liberdade, Socialismo e Revolu\u00e7\u00e3o (ISA in Brazil) (This article was first published on 17 November 2025 in Portuguese) \u201cOur nature is not a commodity\u201d was one of the slogans heard at the large \u201cGlobal Climate March\u201d that brought together 70,000 participants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":48702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[148,124],"tags":[37264,38508,36870],"class_list":{"0":"post-48706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international","8":"category-news","9":"tag-climate-crisis-2","10":"tag-cop30","11":"tag-social-protests"},"yoast_head":"\n