Amazon Fires and Fake Tears from Pigs at the Trough at the G7
| revcom.us
Way too many people are sitting around, waiting and hoping that the more reasonable-sounding, liberal wing of the capitalist-imperialist ruling classes—people like Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel in Europe and Obama and the Democrats in the U.S.—can be pressured to take real action on the global climate crisis which threatens humanity’s very existence.
Well, let’s look at what happened at the recent G7 summit meeting, an annual gathering of the biggest imperialist powers on the planet.
A war of words broke out between the liberal French President Macron and the fascist Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. The G7 was happening as over 40,000 fires raged in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil. Posturing as big defenders of the environment, Macron and the G7 heads (except for Trump) warned that the Amazon fires were a grave threat and demanded that Bolsonaro take action to stop them. And they offered to help with funds.
But what’s the real story?
- The G7 countries collectively account for 45 percent of the greenhouse gases ever emitted around the world. But they have yet to meet the pledges to cut down greenhouse gas emissions that they signed as part of the Paris climate agreement three years ago—limits which were seriously inadequate to begin with.
- The European Union is a major trading partner of Brazil and one of the largest importers of beef from the Amazon—and cattle ranching and the export of beef are major drivers of the Amazon fires.
- The $22 million pledged by G7 toward fighting the fires is a piddling amount from seven countries whose combined net wealth is over $300 trillion.
- Macron and other G7 leaders spent the summit carefully not saying a word that might offend Trump, the biggest climate criminal on the planet as head of a fascist regime that has thrown out even any pretense of acting on climate change.1
In the face of the actual reality, it is self-delusion and irresponsible bullshit to count on the representatives of this planet-killing system to suddenly come to the rescue!
1. Trump sat out the meeting that the other G7 members held to discuss climate change and refused to contribute to the $22 million fund unless it was done with the consent of Bolsonaro—who turned down the funds anyway. [back]
One of more than 40,000 fires that were raging in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil during the G7. Photo: AP
"Not fit caretakers of the earth"
A clip from Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian given in 2003. Watch the whole talk at revolutiontalk.net.
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