Climate Justice versus climate barbarism: the struggle for a just green transition

Report

The event touched upon thematics relevant to the climate justice agenda and the main challenges ahead. The European Climate Law, pandemics, and the climate crisis, just transition to the post coal era, citizens’ participation and climate debt concerning the Global South were some of the topics discussed.

Climate barbarism is a term that should be coined to Naomi Klein and serves as the opposite of climate and social justice. With climate barbarism we see the climate crisis in fast forward and without any doubt as most of the speakers pointed out the very structure of our economy leads to deterioration and the diminishing on quality of life and life itself. Climate crisis is a social and inequality crisis. The European Parliament has an important role to play in terms of improving and changing to a more progressive trajectory the European Green Deal which promises to leave no one behind, thus integrating the social dimension. Furthermore, the Climate law is important in many regards because the goals introduced in the Climate Law are binding.

Another important issue raised was the eco-socialist approach to climate action and nature having a right in its own sense. Mainstream media focuses on small lifestyle changes as well as the belief that we need to change capitalism to make it green and not change it completely. We need to “look at the entire system rather than tinkering around the edges”. We can do this thorugh demanding the complete transformation of the energy system, making it efficient to deliver a just transition. This can be achieved by developing universal basic services that meet everyone’s basic needs and not a universal basic income. In addition to that we need to have an agricultural model in the EU that protects farmers and that encourages them to become protectors of nature. On the just transition to the post coal era it was stressed that coal is really carbon intensive and delaying the transition will not make it more just. Still we are we are missing clear principles for what makes up a clear transition and we need to deliver partnership and enforce it.

The way forward:

• Build alliance with progressive political groups and movements on recognising the rights on nature. This can be done by allowing ecosystems to reach out to law, giving nature a voice in the nature’s parliament, and allowing nature to recover at its natural pace.
• Recognition of the ecocide as one of the gravest crimes that should be punished.
• Stepping up the efforts against the replacement of coal from fossil gas by supporting the advocacy and campaigns of the civil society and movements.
• Forming a radical alliance between labour and environmental justice for a restructuring of the economic system to deliver for human needs and not for profit.

Stavros Mavrogenis