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We have less than 25 years to stop climate change from displacing 1.2 billion people and wiping out $41 trillion dollars of the economy. But that's not even our biggest problem, because right now the current solutions to climate change, to mass starvation, and to inequality aren't working. This is why we need socialism. But I don't mean the socialism you're probably thinking of. Today we're going to lay out why we need to build ecosocialism right now. Not just to prevent the worst of climate change, but to build a world where you, sitting at home, don't have to work your ass off
just to put food on the table. I want to build a world where you can instead actually live a joyful, fulfilling life. But to get there, there are so many obstacles. Later, we'll explore the many tendencies and philosophies of ecosocialism, the failures and wins of actually existing ecosocialism of the USSR and Venezuela, and how we can actually start building an ecosocialist world right now. But for right now we need to understand how we got into this mess in the first place. Because understanding is always step one. And if you want to dive even deeper into ecosocialism,
I'm releasing a ton of patreon-exlusive resources every month to help you (and me) learn theory and take action. This month, I created a companion video to this one all about China's Ecological Civilization model, I wrote up detailed book notes on Salvatore Engels DiMauro's book Ecosocialism: An Introduction, and if you want to see my face working through some of the key points of that book, I have a 20 minute breakdown of the key points of his book. Not to mention, you can also watch the next Our Changing Climate video a month early. That's four brand new pieces
of OCC media that hopefully help you grow in your ecosocialist learning journey, alongside a backlog of over 20 exclusive videos, interviews, and access to a patreon only discord server. If you want to check that all out, support Our Changing Climate and join a leftist learning community that cares about climate action, consider joining OCC patreon at patreon.com/ourchangingclimate. Capitalism ain't cutting it. 2.8 to 3.2C. That's how much the global temperature will change by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels. But that's if all countries meet their stated goals. [That's the goal now] And thanks to the
stranglehold fossil capital has on the economy, countries across the world are already backsliding on those commitments. The United States, for example, has pulled out of the paris agreement, repealed many of its measly renewable and electrification deployment subsidies under Trump, but even under Biden, emissions reductions were still well below where they needed to be according to Carbon Brief. Well above 2.5C seems to be the current fate of our capitalist mode of production. And that trajectory means catastrophe. Irreversible tipping points like the
Greenland ice sheet collapsing will trigger dire sea level rise, displacing millions; pandemics, heat waves, and wildfires will become more and more frequent. Island communities and desert cities will become barely liveable. Smoke from wildfires will make summer days unbreathable, and billions will be on the move trying to find a place untouched by the ravages of a hotter world, but no such place will exist by the end of the century. And this is just a middle-ground scenario of the climate crisis. As the endless production and endless accumulation of capitalism
push us into old-growth forests and intensify factory farming, pandemics at the scale of COVID-19 will only become more likely. Not to mention, the relentless desire for trees and fresh pasture will continue to push forests like the Amazon to the brink of collapse. This is not some fluke of human nature nor overpopulation. We can clearly see that before the rise of industrial capitalism, the toll on nature was minimal. ["look at this graph"]. We will see later on in the video why exactly this happens, but for now, one thing is clear:
Capitalism wrenches us from the natural world and rends the environments around us for profit and the enrichment of those that own the means of production: the capitalists. This is not simply a problem that can be solved by buying better commodities or choosing the right ethical product. We can never shop our way out climate change. As ecosocialist author Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro writes, "the primary objective [of capitalism] is profitability, the accumulation of capital. Even if cars and cleaning products were made through ecologically sustainable activities and raw materials, the pressure to constantly raise
the number of sales will make for ecologically unsustainable endless resource use and waste generation." Or as marxist Hadas Thier explains ["all capitalists whether they're particularly psychopathic like elon musk or their attempting caring capitalism like ben and jerry are compelled to compete for ever greater market share or be left behind and face bankruptcy"] What this means is that these crises are social. It's not your individual buying decisions or how much gas you use that is fueling these catastrophes, but instead the way in which we've constructed our economies and social relations. We live under a global capitalist
order. One that is predicated on forcing the vast majority to produce an endless and ever-increasing amount of goods for corporations and business owners so that those few can maintain their rate of profit. Although this system seems, on its surface, democratic and egalitarian, it's not. Just a few capitalists hold vast amounts of power as they control supply chains, influence politics, and spew massive amounts of emissions into the air. It's failed for over 200 years it's existed in its modern industrial form to distribute and feed the just under 800 million
people that are starving day in and day out. Its chaotic market strategy leaves millions without a roof over their head, while speculators and real estate investors hoard land and luxury condos. Capitalism cannot be reformed. So-called "green" capitalism has not worked. The U.S., a paragon of late capitalism, is woefully behind where it needs to be in terms of emissions as it tries to tinker around the edges of the market. Trying to nudge renewable construction during one administration, and then sliding into fossil fascism in the next. Nor can concepts like steady-state economies or
degrowth happen within a capitalist system, because ultimately, these are the antitheses of capitalism. Businesses must grow and constantly produce else their competitors will capture their markets, sell more than them at a lower price, and smother them into bankruptcy. Capitalism will not only not deliver us out of climate destruction, but it will continue to dig us deeper into our own grave. A grave built on exploitation, inequality, plunder, and imperialist violence. So, we must march towards ecosocialism.
What is ecosocialism? But wait, what exactly does that mean? [meme]. The amorphous nature of the terms "communism" and "socialism" let alone "ecosocialism" makes discussing their importance and merits quite difficult. So before we go any further, let's understand the various tendencies of ecosocialism and properly define what we mean when we say socialism and ecosocialism. [so it begins] The ecosocialism I'm talking about is rooted in the Marxist tradition of scientific socialism. A socialism that distances itself from utopianism and instead looks critically at the past and the
present to understand how we might best build a liberatory future. Scientific socialism is as much theory as it is practice. For Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxembourg, and so many others in what's known as Marxism-Leninism or for others, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, socialism is the next mode of production that places maximum power into the hands of the people. Through planned worker and peasant control of the forces of production, socialist politics seek to eliminate the chaotic disasters of capitalism and instead build a world of deep and real democracy,
where everyday people have agency in every aspect of their lives. The way in which this is achieved, through full worker control of the state as a transitional stage to eventually dissolve that state and capitalist class relations and embrace a world where everyones needs are met, is what separates Marxists from other political ideologies under the socialist umbrella like Anarchists who seek the immediate and simultaneous abolition of the state and capitalism as the only way to usher in a stateless classless society. Ecosocialism builds on this political ideology and worldview, but crucially it repositions
the natural world as a foundational piece to economic, social, and political relations. [meme of confusion]. Okay, that was super vague, so to put that in much plainer language: ecosocialism at its basic form, is a system that rejects the capitalist model of private ownership of production and capital accumulation and instead seeks a worldwide economy and social system that meets everyone's basic needs, establishes social equity, and crucially does so within ecological limits. But it's here where everything explodes into a variety of different
ecosocialist tendencies that lead to academic bickering and sectarianism. There are countless definitions of ecosocialism. Ecosocialist author Ian Angus describes esocialism as: ["not a new theory or a new brand of socialism. It is socialism with Marx's important its insights on ecology restored socialism that's committed to the fight against ecological destruction. eco-socialism is not a separate organization, it's a movement to win existing red and green groups and individuals to an eco-socialist perspective it is socialism that recognizes… that there can be no true ecological revolution that is not socialist and no true socialist revolution that is not ecological.]
While Salvatore Engel-DiMauro claims that "Ecosocialism, in other words, stands for the development of biophysically sustainable egalitarian (classless) communities worldwide." My working definition of ecosocialism sees capitalism as the root cause of current ecological and social struggles. As a result, ecosocialism seeks to completely eradicate the systems of private property and profit motive that drive our current capitalist economy, and in their stead build an economy and social system built on ownership of the state and the means of
production, the factories, the farms, by workers, communities, and peasants. This system seeks not only the equality of all people everywhere, but the flattening of class, and with a guiding path of ecological sustainability. The ultimate goal of ecosocialism is to transition to a stateless, classless, ecologically harmonious world, which operates on the maxim: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." But if you disagree with that characterization of ecosocialism, go ahead and fight me in the comments. But let me be clear [Obama let me be clear]: ecosocialism is not a monolith. There are various currents and offshoots that run through ecosocialism,
differing both in the question of how we get there, and why we need to get there. The main currents: Among the many visions of an ecological socialism, Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro parses out two main currents in his remarkably thorough introductory textbook on ecosocialism. Those currents are eco-marxism and eco-femisinism, which splinter off into even more granular differences. Eco-marxism is best explained as an ecosocialism that wields Marxists analysis to reveal that capitalism is not just the root of so many social ills, but also at the core of our environmental problems. Eco-marxists, often academics like John
Bellamy Foster or John O'Connor, have argued for the idea of the metabolic rift as one of the core contradictions of capitalism. O'Connor explains that alongside the first core contradiction of capitalism found in the exploitation of laborers and capitalists laid out by Marx, there is a second contradiction that separates humans from nature by concentrating work and the means of production together into cities and then siphoning and rending the countryside of all of its resources. In doing so, capitalism lays the groundwork for its ecological demise.
As a result, in the view of many eco-marxists, nothing short of replacing capitalism and the capitalist state with a socialist one seeking communism can fully address our deep-rooted environmentalism. In short as Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro explains, eco-marxists "tend to advocate for some sort of state involvement or takeover, and/or some sort of wide social movement that is not necessarily averse to state intervention." Essentially adhering to Lenin's arguments within the State and Revolution that to topple capitalism we need some form of revolutionary vanguard party. Of course, the eco-Marxist interpretation of that ranges from
direct worker and peasant armed seizure of the state all the way to the democratic ecosocialism strategy of the electoral politics route and attempting to reform and take power through pre-existing power structures. But eco-marxists aren't alone under the ecosocialist umbrella. Ecofeminism, although born out of Marxist tendencies, advocates for a different analysis of the root of capitalist and environmental destruction. Critiquing and building off of eco-marxist analysis, socialist ecofeminists argue that a struggle against gender oppression
is woefully lacking in eco-marxist politics. As Ecosocialist Ecofeminist Mary Mellor explains, "socialism that does not challenge the economic and sexual domination of women by men will never achieve an egalitarian society, nor one which is ecologically sustainable" In turn, ecofeminists have developed various approaches to understanding the root causes of our ecological crisis. One prominent ecofeminist, Ariel Salleh argues that the destruction of nature is not just through class contradictions, but also simultaneously through gender contradictions.
As Salleh notes, ["The domination and exploitation of women and women's bodies under a capitalist patriarchal civilization is identical and interlinked with the domination and exploitation of nature support women and nature are treated as resources socialism feminism indigenous decolonial struggles ecology a single issue"] But of course there are so many other currents and visions that depart and converge in the river of Ecosocialism. Like Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese's Half-Earth Socialism, which leans on utopian socialist aesthetics to envision a centrally planned, plant-based
ecosocialist economy by [expanding democracy into the economy so having uh Democratic control over you know parts of the economy that are currently governed by the market]. If you want to watch the full-length interview with Drew and Troy by the way, it's exclusively on Means TV and Patreon. Or Max Ajl's anti-imperialist People's Green New Deal, which leans into an agrarian internationalist politics. He argues that any anticapitalist or ecosocialist politics needs to focus on [climate debt repayments, world food sovereignty, national control over farming systems, national control over technology uh the
basically the elimination of world militaries the respect for national sovereignty in the south uh and in fact a wide-ranging transition in the entire world system recognizing that the climate crisis is not separable from the world imperialist capitalist system]. But there's also Indigenous socialism, a sort of parallel politics that interweaves with many of the tenets of ecosocialism, exemplified in projects like Red Nation's book The Red Deal. [we're very serious about you know a revolutionary struggle and what it means to build a political
program for that type of revolution] That's Melanie Yazzie, co-author of the Red Deal, she goes on to add ["and as indigenous people we think that our environmental justice struggles and our struggles for climate justice must also be responsive to the demands for abolition that are coming historically right from the black lives matter movement"] Her co-author Nick Estes, explains that and Indigenous socialist politics is for [the decolonization of the atmos atmosphere through the reduction and absorbs absorption of first world emissions primarily the united
states, a technology transfer… we also advocate for paying the climate debt] What we can glean from all of this is that ecosocialism is a system that seeks the dissolution of capitalism, whether through building parallel power or directly seizing the state, to then build a mode of production that is ecological, anti-imperialist, decolonial, democtratically planned by workers and peasants from the local to the international level. And in order to get there, we need to move first through the revolutionary toppling of capitalist states by organizing workers, peasants, and dispossessed people everwhere, in order to
then establish an ecosocialist state wherein the people- the workers, the farmers, those that have been ravaged by centuries of setter colonialism and imperialism control and decide what is produced and distributed based on use and not exchange or profit. This could look like the early moments of the USSR where worker-run soviets came together to decide on central plans. It could look like Drew-Pendergrass's vision of an ecosocialist federalism [so we kind of Imagine a little federalism where we set broad course goals at a large level and then figure out in detail what that looks like as you go towards the more local level]
Or it could look like the socioeconomic and political structure of the Haudenosaunee. [The Haudenosaunee have the oldest continuous democracy anywhere in the world. In addition to that, we are matrilineal.] That's Michelle Schenandoah of the Oneida Nation Wolf Clan, she explains that amongst the Haudenosaunee confederacy, the matriarchs of the clan act as representatives in sort of federalism: [the clan mothers are the ones who are there for the people, they're there for the communities, they listen to the voice of the people and they take that then what, you know, the people want,
and they take that then to the chiefs… You have clan mothers who are really the decision makers for the people. They are the ones who inform the chiefs,"This is what you're going to say. This is the interest you're going to represent when you go to represent us in council."] There are so many beautiful alternatives to structuring our society and economy, but crucially as many revolutionary ecosocialists point out, the construction of an ecosocialist worker and peasant state must be seen as a transitional phase towards the greater
goal of eco-communism. A stateless, classless society wherein all humans, regardless of race, gender, ability, live a harmoniously ecological life by adhering to the maxim, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their means." At the end of the day, however, these are all just words. If we are truly to embrace a scientific ecosocialism, we must move past what constitutes ecosocialism, and look at what has actually worked in the real world. Actually existing ecosocialism: The beautiful visions of solarpunk excite me and drive me forward in my work of achieving a stateless, classless society where everyones
needs are met in an ecologically sustainable way. But there's just one problem, these pieces of art, although useful in helping reveal potential futures, don't reveal the present. To build those beautiful futures we need to grapple with the messy and muddy facts of reality. We need to stare down the brutal truths and the promising developments of actually existing socialism. Because we are not starting from scratch, and if we're gonna be real with ourselves, toppling capitalism and building out ecosocialism needs to happen quickly to avoid the worst of
climate crisis, so we need to learn where we went wrong and what worked in past socialist states. Often when you put environmentalism and state socialism together, however, the screams of Chernobyl [metal music] Aral Sea, productivist socialism surround you on all sides. But if you actually look at the numbers, the plain fact is that state socialism has fostered more environmentally sustainable enconomies than both capitalist and socialist governments with
capitalist economy models. In his book Socialist States and the Environment Engel Di-Mauro meticulously weeds through the environmental record of socialist and capitalist states to understand the historical impact of these modes of production. Tracking 26 socialist states and their histories, and comparing them to socialist governments with capitalist economies as well as fulling capitalist states, DiMauro reveals that socialist states on the whole actually had a better track record than capitalist states. And this is despite constantly being under siege from
capitalist states like the United States and also raising most well-being metrics across the board. Take the USSR for example. Often criticized by environmentalists for being productivist and ecologically destryctive, the USSR's state socialist project from 1917 to 1989 was comparably much more environmentally friendly than its capitalist contemporaries. If you're judging the USSR on its environmental disasters, then yes Chernobyl was catastrophic, and the draining of the Aral Sea was devastating, but if we're grading a mode of production's
ecological performance on disasters, then surely capitalism takes the cake. The worst oil spill ever was under capitalism. The BP oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, the shrinking of Lake Chad, and the Centralia coal fire in Pennsylvania that has been burning for 64 years, all outstrip the worst of the USSR's disasters. So, as Professor Adnan Hussein explains on the Guerilla History podcast, using an absolutist method of pointing individual disasters as metonyms for comparing modes of production is useless. ["If you're only looking at these absolutist modes of analysis you can come up
with any sort of data that you want. You can say Chernobyl is the biggest nuclear disaster of all time, therefore state socialism, therefore state socialism is the worst thing for the environment of all time."] Instead, if we compare socialist states and capitalist during the same time period, as Salvatore Engel-DiMauro did in his book, we begin to see a clearer picture. On the whole socialist states outperform their capitalist contemporaries. And finally, the nail in the coffin comes when we look at socialist states backsliding into fully capitalist modes or socialist governments with capitalist economies. By the early 1990s, as the
USSR, and many other socialist states dissolved, emissions and environemntal degradation increased, in large part thanks to China- as it slipped deeper and deeper into in a capitalist mode of production, soaking up the manufacturing waste and pollution of the imperial core. But of course China is full of contradictions. Even as it slipped back into a capitalist economy in the late 20th century, in the beginning of 21st century, its socialist government has steered the country towards stricter environmental standards and ecological production. This
"ecological civilization" could potentially and is already altering our future ecological path. But I deal with that more in depth in the exclusive bonus video on Means TV and patreon. At the end of the day, socialist states reveal that socialism, not capitalism, must be the path forward if we are to truly address climate change at the root. How do we build ecosocialism? But It's easy to sit behind a computer and claim that ecosocialism is the path forward, but how do we actually build it? Luckily we already have
glimpses of potential models functioning across the world that we can borrow bits and pieces of, like Venezuela's ministry for ecosocialism, which has worked with local communal councils to build a more egalitarian sustainability within a capitalist economy. Or Thomas Sankara's socialist revolution in Burkina Faso in 1983, where for four years before he was assassinated, the people of Burkina Faso spearheaded substantial environmental education, water reservoir building, and reforestation efforts among many other ecosocialist initiatives while raising well-being. But the reality is that both of these countries have been deeply
sieged by the forces of capital for decades and are forced into brutal economic choices thanks to economic sanctions, warmongering, and, in the case of Venezuela, kidnappings. So we must organize and build revolutionary ecosocialist power wherever we can. Because for ecosocialism to truly thrive, capitalism can't exist- every time a socialist threat has risen, capitalists have sought to violently exterminate it. The revolution will most likely come from the margins inward, but that's not to say we in the imperial core cannot and should not organize. Whether that means joining and agitating within
your union to build worker power or joining up with your local DSA chapter and bringing it closer to a revolutionary vanguard party for ecosocialism. But this is only part of the struggle. The reality is that we must also reduce the harm of the climate crisis and capitalism right now, and perhaps along the way, build power from those harm reduction strategies. This means building networks of mutual aid, creating disaster preparedness programs in your community, winning revolutionary reforms, or even sabotaging pipelines.
We need to look towards all of these methods and more to build ecosocialism. We must use every tool in our tool kit, because everything is at stake. And one of the tools is education. So if you want to dive even deeper on ecosocialism or other topics on the climate left, I've released hours of videos and interviews with authors and activists that I've never released on YouTube over on Patreon. In fact, I just put out 4 brand new exclusive learning tools to dive deeper into your ecosocialist education. I just published my detailed notes on Salvatore Engel DiMauro's book Ecosocialism: An Introduction, a companion video to those notes highlighting my take aways, an exclusive
bonus video on China's Ecological Civilization, and next month's YouTube video a month early. Each month, I'll be publishing bonus videos, book notes, and a video book report, and my main video a month early and perhaps, if people are interested, we could do a little discord book club. I'm trying to make a the OCC Patreon a educational space for the climate left, so let me know what would help you on your climate action path. So if you want to join in and learn about our world and how we can make it better head over to patreon.com/ourchangingclimate or click the link in the description and say hello on the discord or in the Patreon comments! I'd love hear your thoughts!
