The COP29 Summit in Azerbaijan is taking place as climate change is driving weather chaos around the world. The death toll during the storms and floods in Valencia, Spain, have risen above 200.Demonstrators there have called for the prime minister’s resignation, demanding to know why rescue operations were so late and inadequate. 

　　The people of my home province of Valencia are the latest to protest against the failure of government to combat global warming. 

　　While the so-called “socialist”and conservative parties were blaming each other for the disaster, people on the ground were recovering bodies and houses from the mud.People in Spain and elsewhere contrast the civil emergency policies in many developed and developing capitalist countries with those in socialist Cuba and People’s China. 

　　Cuba- a Third World country struggling against the illegal US economic blockade- ha.survived Hurricane Rafael without fatalities.unlike Jamaica, Panama and Colombia. As in China, socialist state power invests heavily in civil emergency preparations and mobilises the whole state and society in the fight against climate disasters. 

　　Britain's Communists criticise the Labour government’s recent Budget for failing to announce substantial extra investment in emergency planning to deal with floods.coastal erosion and other disasters caused or worsened by global warming.With Trump elected the likely withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement could sabotage progress towards cutting global emissions by 43 percent by 2030.As the second biggest source of greenhouse gases and one of the top emitters per head of population, the US has a special responsibility to cut its own emissions and assist developing countries in their transition to clean energy. 

　　Big business lobbying at COP29 brings the threat of a decision in favour of carbon markets. The real need is for climate finance to allow the nations and people most affected by climate change to mitigate its effects 

　　Communists agree with Lise Masson of Friends of the Earth International when she said:‘Decisions at COP29 threaten to open the floodgates for a global carbon market that would have devastating impacts on communities in the Global South. On Indigenous Peoples, and on small peasant farmers first and foremost.Carbon markets farmers are not climate finance, and we cannot accept these neocolonial schemes to be propped up as a success of COP29’. 

　　There are no capitalist market solutions to the climate crisis. The deceptive language of carbon capture, meaningless net zero pledges that never materialise, illusory offsets and the intensive lobbying by oil and gas profiteers threaten the credibility of the entire process.  

　　Communist argue that combatting global warming demands decisive action by the main capitalist states with an historic obligation to mitigate the climate emergency both for the sake of the planet and to enable countries of the Global South-who did not create this crisis- to tackle its effects. 

　　COP29 highlights the need for rich countries to commit at $5 trillion annually to the Global South through public finance mechanisms to repair the climate debt owed to developing countries.This means an intense campaign that will be met by a great deal of resistance from the rich and which increasingly raises the question: ls there a solution to the climate crisis under capitalism? 

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  LiuTingting 

　　From:Workers of all lands, unite! November 2024