Speech for the ICOR Webinar on the ICOR Environmental Struggle Day on Glasgow

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Dear comrades

my name is G. and I was very happy to be part of the delegation of ICOR, MLPD and Environmental Trade Union in Glasgow on the occasion of the protests against the 26th World Climate Conference. I am glad to see you here for this very important issue! First of all I would like to say that in my opinion ICOR was too weakly represented in Glasgow only with the member organization MLPD. In Paris there were representatives from several countries and we also held our own protest rally at the Eiffel Tower and demonstration and event at that time. Next year the World Climate Conference will take place in Egypt in Sharm el-Sheikh. I suggest to the ICOR to make preparations for this early on and to combine an actual international delegation, activities and awareness-raising work with the promotion of the ICOR for this.

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow ended with a participation of 23,000 conference participants and accompanied by a multitude of mass protests. Government representatives of almost 200 states agreed on a "climate pact" in the extension of two days. The fact that an end to the burning of fossil fuels and a halt to the destruction of forests were negotiated for the first time was hailed as a success. And that even with the most stubborn blockers - the USA, China and India - at least a joint declaration was reached. Behind the huge sums, of over 100 billion dollars a year by 2023, are investments that will ultimately benefit the largest global corporations again. And so RWE boss Krebber also said that there is good money to be made from the results of COP26. The climate conference in Glasgow gives free rein to wanton destruction of the unity of mankind and nature, exacerbates it and is life-threatening for humanity... What is important is how the protest develops and what new things emerge from it for a society-changing environmental movement and tasks for the ICOR.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in more than 300 cities worldwide on Environmental Struggle Day to demonstrate against the wanton destruction of the environment and the growing danger of a global environmental catastrophe. Some 100,000 turned out in Glasgow, Scotland, alone, the site of the 26th UN World Climate Change Conference, and despite the Corona pandemic and numerous bureaucratic restrictions on entry and surveillance.

The demonstration in Glasgow was the culmination of numerous protests during the first week of the climate summit. After protests in front of the Bank of Scotland accusing the banks of being profiteers of environmental destruction, around 15,000 children, parents, grandparents, workers, students, pupils and many others took part in the "Fridays for Future" day of action on the eve of the environmental day of struggle. Greta Thunberg had deliberately invited workers as well. However, we cannot stop at the assessment of the blah, blah, blah of Greta Thunberg, because that trivializes the matter! It is not eternally the same, but the same course is life-threatening in the aggravated situation! About it we must clearly increase the consciousness, so that it comes to a society-changing fight.

The anti-capitalist direction in the environmental movement is growing and was very common with slogans like "Capitalism kills the planet". There is much to clarify here. What was new was that socialism was also part of some banners and slogans. This is very significant! A representative of the Scottish independence movement said in the interview still influenced by the petty-bourgeois nationalist way of thinking he was for localism, 'because locally you can protect the environment better' and 'socialism is the only solution'. The banner of MLPD, member of ICOR "Save the environment from the profit economy - Forward for real socialism" met with great interest.

Indigenous groups demanded their rights and the protection of the Amazon rainforest outraged by the arrogance of the rulers towards their existence. Here it must be clarified that the decisive contradiction is not between the poor and the rich countries, but between imperialism and those oppressed by it in all countries of the world. What is new is that the demonstration in Glasgow was marked by the growing solidarity of the labor and environmental movements. This was also in the interest of our friends of the environmental union. The idea of this self-organization of the unity of the workers' and environmental movement met with great interest. In the block of unions there were many garbage workers, nurses and striking railroad workers. Garbage workers were striking for more money to fight the growing piles of garbage and for a cleaner, greener city. After "Fridays for Future" had declared solidarity with their struggle at the beginning of the week, they already participated in the students' demonstration the Friday before. The whole city of Glasgow was on its feet, even if the counter-activities were co-organized by NGOs, they were based on a great self-organization of the population, there were no anti-communist attempts of exclusion. We were hosted by a Scottish woman who was a volunteer supporting the counter-protests.

We positioned ourselves as ICOR delegation together with the MLPD comrades and also the friends of the environmental trade union at the beginning of the demonstration and let the thousands of demonstrators pass our "hot spot" at first. Well visible, with ICOR and MLPD banner, ICOR flag, we greeted the environmental activists and short speeches were also held in English. It was "best Scottish weather" (cold, windy and again and again heavy rain showers)! This did not dampen the mood, but the use of our leaflets or other material was made much more difficult. Altogether about 1000 ICOR statements on the environmental struggle day were distributed in English. The topics of revolution and socialism met with much approval. There was also great interest in the books of the Revolutionary Way series "The Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology and Anti-Communism" and "Disaster Alert! What to do against the wanton destruction of the unity of man and nature?", which were offered in several languages. On Nov. 7, we did a roundtable discussion at the "Pearce Institute" on the book Catastrophe Alert.

In Germany, the MLPD spread the ICOR call as a leaflet among the broad masses, in the residential areas and in front of the factories. In at least 22 places there were information booths and open-microphone rallies in the city centers, and in Datteln there was the demonstration against the Datteln 4 coal-fired power plant initiated by the environmental trade union.

Datteln IV is one of the largest hard-coal-fired power plants in Europe and leads to additional emissions of 4 million tons of CO2 per year.

Many actions were interspersed with the militant workers' movement of Opel-Arebitern in Darmstadt, Bosch-colleagues in Munich who were in industrial action, in Stuttgart several speakers spoke out against the redundancy plans in the car industry and the mendacious claim that environmental protection is to blame. In Braunschweig, auto workers from VW took part.

The focus of many speeches was criticism of the world climate summit in Glasgow. "Mankind flies to Mars, but should not be able to solve the energy problem?" This question was asked by Gabi Fechtner, party leader of the MLPD in her speech at the rally in Datteln.

It is a matter of developing a society-changing force against the dramatic developments towards a global environmental catastrophe worldwide as part of the preparation of the internationalist revolution. Our delegation was therefore much too small. This does not correspond to the increased worldwide importance of the ICOR. I am looking forward to the discussion and the preparation of the ICOR delegation to the next COP 2022 in Egypt!

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