Opening speech Ecosocialism Conference 2024 – Simon Hannah

Speech to Ecosocialism conference opening session

We are living in a world on fire. We are also living in a world that is flooding; in which deserts grow, species die off and the oceans become acidic. Extreme weather events are becoming the norm. The UK just suffered its second worst harvest on record. In 2023, certain carbon sinks worldwide – forests, plants and soil –  stopped absorbing carbon. Other carbon sinks, like the ocean, are also struggling. It was confirmed that planetary warming in 2024 has already breached the 1.5C barrier that we were meant to prevent before 2030. 

A world where the demand for energy is rapacious and growing, where rampant consumption sits alongside endless want.  A capitalist system where it seems countries can only develop at huge environmental cost. Most of us have microplastics, and all of us have Teflon inside our bodies. We are being poisoned from the inside by an economy driven only by profit.

The COP process – which we will hear more about from Asad Rehman who was at the conference in Azerbaijan, totters on the brink of collapse. With thousands of fossil fuel industry lobbyists in attendance, heads of petro-states using the event for more carbon fuels trade deals, and huge reticence from the richer countries to pay for the cost of the climate crisis – it is unclear what the future of COP is. The world we live in is one that is dominated by imperialism, competing nation states, financial entanglements and power relations that go beyond the scope of any UN backed process. 

Meanwhile in country after country the far-right is gathering strength.

The re-election of climate change denier in chief Donald Trump is a blow to any efforts to stay within planetary boundaries. But his victory is not an aberration. Around the world authoritarian right wing parties and movements are taking power off the back of discontent, racism, fear and insecurity.

The twin crises of environment and authoritarianism are not separate, they are intertwined. The authoritarian right wants to protect capitalism and the capitalist class from having to deal with the consequences of two centuries of carbon pollution and environmental degradation. There is a cost for the capitalist system to deal with climate change and it is in the trillions of dollars. They don’t want to pay it, instead they want to inflict that cost on us. The exploited workers, the poor, marginalised communities, indigenous people, women,  disabled people and racialised groups.  

For now the far-right mostly advocate some form of climate denialism, encouraging people to drive SUVs, consume with relish and ignore any climate targets. It is a permissive sigh of relief to not worry about the future, to luxuriate in the capitalist system as it is, for those that can anyway. Easier to blame migrants and the supposed woke left for your problems than the people in power making the decisions.  But there is a growing far-right wing who advocate eco-fascism as a response, to batten down the hatches, militarise the borders, destroy the progressive left, protect their narrow interests and to hell with everyone else.  

We have to be clear – it is not that the system is broken, the system is functioning exactly how it was intended. It enriches a tiny minority at the expense of everyone else, regardless of the ecocide being inflicted as a consequence. There can be no return to an imagined “golden age of capitalism”, where everyone had good jobs, strong unions, social housing and democratic civil engagement. The post war years when this seemed possible were an aberration within the lifetime of capitalism, a temporary compromise by the ruling class to sustain their system. But now the gloves are off, and the capitalists are in no mood for compromise, concessions or reforms. Decades of neoliberalism and austerity and racial divisions alongside systemic misogyny stoked by those in power alongside reactionary grifters have left this world more wretched, undermined collective struggles and empathy, and have narrowed people’s horizons of what is possible.  

From Gaza to Ukraine – and even the attempted military coup in South Korea just this last week – the growing threat or reality of war and military coups points to the inherent barbarism of the current world order. We are confronting the question of violence and the use of force – who has power and to what end are they using it are fundamental questions of our age. The destruction of Gaza and the ecocide inflicted there, as well as the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine are clear examples that war does not just destroy life — it destroys the basis of life as well. 

All these crises are caused by capitalism and the terrible ideologies such a system promotes. But it cannot continue as it has been going.  Capitalism is eating away at the basis of its own social reproduction and hollowing out its own institutions, At the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci said ‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.’ 

So this conference and the people at it have plenty to discuss, not just today but in the months and years ahead.  

This is the second Ecosocialist Conference that this organising committee has put together, and we are pleased that this one is much larger than the first one in December of last year. 

We are committed to hosting regular events to help people network together, to deepen our knowledge and understanding, to critically evaluate and to contribute positively to building a mass ecosocialist movement. Such a movement doesn’t only help resist the crises caused by constant capital accumulation and profit seeking with the inevitable barbaric impact on people and planet, but also points to radically transformative proposals for how society can be organised differently. 

So we have a range of workshops and discussions today to help us develop our methods of organising, learning from successes, and about what needs to be improved. It is a chance to think about the bigger picture as well as the local campaigns. We want to create a space where we don’t just focus on the increasingly dangerous antagonisms of late stage capitalism, but we talk about the possibility of radical, even revolutionary change.

I will end on this note before introducing the other speakers. There is a lot of talk of the constant struggle between hope and hopelessness at the moment. This is understandable – I feel it too, we all do. But one thing we want to fight for is to move beyond fleeting emotions and to concentrate on organisation. In the words of Malcolm X “We are not outnumbered. We are out-organised”. There are millions, billions of people on this planet that don’t want the future that the capitalists and their far right foot-soldiers are creating for us. The question is how to find, how to speak to and how to organise with and alongside as many people as possible, to unite the struggles over wages, housing, against racist borders and wars with the fight against climate crisis and ecocide. The protests in different parts of Britain  on 16 November are a good example of uniting the climate movement with the Palestinian cause and those connections together.   

Ecosocialism is the defining project of the age because it identifies the systemic nature of the climate crisis as the product of the same system that is having such a damaging impact on people’s day to day lives but it points towards a better world, one based on social ownership of the economy, participatory democracy and a good life for all within sustainable planetary limits. This is the future we fight for, the world that we can build, not a question of hoping for it, but hope comes from organisation, it comes from the struggles of people, fighting alongside each other in common cause and unity. 

In the words of Naomi Klein at the And Still We Rise Conference in February of this year “All of what is going on makes it difficult to deliver that speech filled with hope. What I can muster, what I feel more deeply than ever, is resolve. Commitment. Commitment to the movements that this gathering represents. Movements for true equality, and justice — social, racial, gender, economic and ecological justice. Movements that exist in every country. Movements that have grown with tremendous speed over these past terrible months. Grown not only in the size of marches and blockades but in the depth of their analysis. Grown in their willingness to make connections across movements and issues, and in their willingness to name underlying systems.” 

I would also add the point made by Sally Rooney, who had an excellent article in the Irish Times on Friday. It isn’t about hope or hopeless, it is about courage, finding the courage to and commitment to fight for that better world that is where we can find that future worthy of humanity.