Environmentalism Is Class War : You Can’t Recycle Capitalism

By now, we all know the planet is burning. Floods, droughts, collapsing ecosystems—climate change is no longer a looming threat, it's the daily news. We’ve spent decades talking about rising temperatures, melting glaciers, and vanishing species. But what we don’t talk about nearly enough is this: climate change is a direct result of how power and profit shape our world. The truth is, the environment isn’t just collapsing because we’ve all been irresponsible. It’s collapsing because a tiny group of people controls what gets produced, how it’s produced, and who benefits from it. It’s a crisis of capitalism. And more importantly, it’s a class war.

The air we breathe and the temperature of the planet are being determined by people who own factories, oil rigs, agribusinesses, and data centers—not by the people working in them. In capitalism, those who own the means of production get to decide how the world works. The rest of us are along for the ride—until we’re not.

Production Is Power

Changing how energy is made, how food is grown, how cities are built—these are not personal lifestyle choices. These are decisions about production, and production is political power. Who gets to decide whether we burn oil or build solar? Whether we grow cash crops or food for local communities? Whether we expand highways or lay rail?

Not the working class.

In a capitalist economy, those decisions are made by capitalists—owners of companies, land, patents, and infrastructure—whose only real obligation is to profit, not people. And when they greenwash their portfolios or trade carbon credits like baseball cards, they’re not saving the planet. They’re hedging bets on a dying one.

Class Struggle Is the Only Way Forward

Recycling, riding a bike, using less plastic—these things might help ease your conscience. But they won’t stop oil companies from drilling. They won’t shut down coal plants. They won’t challenge the billionaires flying private jets to climate conferences.

Real change starts when people fight back—when they organize at work, strike, protest, demand better. Every effort to take control of production away from the few and put it in the hands of the many is part of the class struggle. And whether it comes in the form of unionizing, passing bold climate laws, or pushing for public ownership of resources, it’s the only route that leads us out of this mess.

Individual Action Isn’t Enough

We’re told over and over again that if we just change our personal habits, things will get better. But the scale of the crisis goes far beyond what any one person—or even a group of well-meaning people—can fix through behavior alone.

While ordinary people are sorting trash and switching to cloth bags, the wealthiest corporations in the world are pumping out emissions by the ton. Massive agribusinesses are wrecking the soil. Fossil fuel giants are poisoning the air. None of this will stop unless we take power away from the people responsible.

What We Really Need

To seriously confront the climate crisis, we need more than green slogans or lifestyle trends. We need an economy where decisions about production and infrastructure are made by those who actually have to live with the consequences.

In short, it means recognizing that climate justice and class struggle are the same fight.

So yes, care about the planet. But also recognize that gardening your way through collapse isn’t resistance—it’s retreat. The fight against climate change is a fight against the system that caused it. And if we’re not taking on that system, we’re not really trying to win.