The democratic petty bourgeois, far from desiring to overturn the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarian, strives for a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as endurable and comfortable as possible for him.
— Karl Marx
In three weeks, many in the Gulf South and across the country will commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in over 1,800 deaths and was responsible for over $100 billion in damage (un-adjusted 2005 dollars). At a time when the climate crisis has only been exacerbated as the global capitalist dictatorship’s insatiable appetite for profit is only matched by its insatiable need to extract resources (including people and their labor), the United States, in particular, continues to move in ways that are antithetical to and completely dismissive of the science that tells us we must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transform the way we develop, distribute, and make decisions about energy. While both “major” political parties are complicit in inadequately acting to address the climate crisis at scale and dismantle it, recent actions by the Trump Administration have elucidated the extent to which the U.S. government, under the thumb of corporations and billionaires, prioritizes capital and profits over people and planet.
In the last three weeks the Trump Administration has taken a hatchet to renewable energy development and production and signaled its preference for an increase in fossil fuel exploration, extraction, and emissions. In late July, Trump ordered the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to rescind all of the previously designated Wind Energy Areas (WEAs), which ends a federal designation of over 3.5 million acres of federal waters that were sited for offshore wind development. Two weeks prior, Department of Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, announced a new directive requiring his personal sign off prior to approval of any solar or wind energy project located on federal lands or federal waters. Many believe this move will stifle the rapid development of renewable energy infrastructure and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And Burgum signed another directive last week that compounds the Trump Administration’s assault on renewable energy and all but assures that there will likely be little to no renewable energy projects breaking ground anytime soon in the U.S. On top of all of this, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Lee Zeldin, recently announced that the agency will revoke the “endangerment finding,” which he described as, “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” Doing so essentially ends the federal government’s ability to regulate and reduce toxic emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other major emitters, most situated in Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor communities.
One would think that the Trump Administration’s latest moves would amount to casus belli for the U.S. climate network and a clarion call to build an actual movement furnished with independent social and political power necessary to confront any and all initiatives that increase fossil fuel extraction and emissions and otherwise interdict the development of renewable energy infrastructure. To this end, according to a report prepared by Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, U.S. based nonprofits spend approximately $7.8 to $9.2 billion annually to address climate change, which is more, in some cases significantly, than the gross domestic product (GDP) of entire nations including, but not limited to, Sierra Leone, Fiji, Grenada, and the Marshall Islands.
The Lilly Family School report includes other key findings such as the following: of the total spending amount reported in the study, an estimated 49% went to mitigation efforts, 14% went to adaptation, and 34% was not clearly specified as falling into either of these two categories; the majority (53.7%) of climate change spending by the U.S.-based nonprofits responding to this survey was used for efforts in the U.S. and Canada. An additional 22% focused on climate issues in other parts of the world. Just under 15% was spent on global-level strategies and programs; policy-based approaches were the most common tactic nonprofits employed to support their work on climate change, comprising 30% of reported climate expenditures; and when viewed by sector of focus, survey respondents allocated the largest portion of their spending toward energy, including both energy use (35%) and energy supply (32%). Land-use-centric approaches received a total of 23% of spending.
To put this into perspective, U.S. nonprofits spent between approximately $2.3 and $2.8 billion in 2022 when the Biden administration ratified the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that many liberal climate and environmental groups heralded as a “historic climate bill,” with one group even characterizing it as one of the most “ambitious environmental laws in U.S. history.” This despite the fact that the IRA includes provisions that fossil fuel cartels and other polluters support because they allow them to continue slashing, drilling, and burning relatively unabated and, in many cases, being paid by U.S. tax dollars to continue polluting public air, land, and water. In fact, these are among the only IRA provisions that survived Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. When it comes to the expansion rather than reduction of fossil fuel dominance, it’s less that the Trump Administration is rescinding and more that it’s building off environmental and climate policies of the former Biden administration and the Democrat Party—policies U.S. nonprofits spent as much as almost $3 billion to get passed. Why U.S. nonprofits would spend this much money to support status quo climate policy that, even if left fully intact, would never have adequately addressed the climate crisis is a question of who is providing the funding and what they are actually funding.
INCITE-LA’s landmark book, “The Revolution will Not be Funded” discusses the state of the U.S Left that is largely sustained by a philanthropic cabal with no interest in revolutionary or transformative initiatives that would challenge and upend the capitalist dictatorship through establishing independent social and political power. The authors indicate, “If anything, this [political] culture [of the U.S. Left] is generally disciplined and ruled by the fundamental imperative to preserve the integrity and coherence of U.S. white civil society, and the “ruling class” of philanthropic organizations and foundations may, at times, almost unilaterally determine whether certain activist commitments and practices are appropriate to their consensus vision of American “democracy.” This is important as the Lilly Family School report also indicates that, “Philanthropic sources, including foundations, individual donors, and corporations, provided the majority (approximately 88%) of the funding nonprofits spent [in 2021],” which in itself provides firm evidence on what these sources are actually investing in.
Controlled opposition refers to a tactic where an established power structure, like a government or organization, creates or co-opts an opposition group to appear as if there is genuine dissent or alternative viewpoints, while in reality, they are manipulating the situation to maintain their control. This often involves allowing limited, superficial challenges to the status quo while ensuring that the core power structure remains unchallenged. There are numerous examples of how the U.S. climate network has, for some time but more recently than not, been an instrument of controlled opposition, which has rendered it into agents of climate inaction. This is demonstrated by the policies the U.S climate network advocates for, the issues it prioritizes and supports and the issues it chooses to be silent on (like an ongoing genocide in Palestine despite its clear nexus with climate change and environmental racism), the candidates and lawmakers it supports, and the political party (the Democrats) it’s most associated with.
Many of the policies, candidates/lawmakers, and the Democrat party itself, supported by the U.S. climate network have too often been more likely to exacerbate climate impacts than reduce them and limit their damage to people and property alike. For instance, one “leading” environmental organization once referred to fracked (natural) gas as a “bridge fuel” and conceded that it will continue to be a major driver of the U.S. economy. Additionally, another global environmental group that advocates for the commodification of the sky to reduce emissions through carbon market schemes that have proven to be both ineffective and actually worsening global warming. These two examples demonstrate that the U.S. climate movement hasn’t recently become controlled opposition but has been so for some time. Worse yet, even well intentioned actors and institutions within the climate and environmental justice (CEJ) sector have been inculcated by philanthropists, lawmakers, and elements of the petty bourgeois into a culture of controlled opposition in ways that mimic conditions discussed by Robert L. Allen in his book, “Black Awakening in Capitalist America,” where he notes,
In these machinations there is no intention of effecting a transfer or real power…The intent is to create the impression of real movement while actual movement is too limited to be significant.
As we observe some actors/institutions of the CEJ sector support extractive policies like the IRA and extractive political entities like the Democrat Party, it both vindicates Allen’s analysis while also proving that even well meaning people can be manipulated into becoming controlled opposition by forces who have no concern for the material conditions of those most impacted by the climate crisis. And like far too many within the larger U.S. climate network, elements of the CEJ sector have also been seduced by the promise of achieving and maintaining petty bourgeois status through sustained philanthropy and political “access” under condition of protecting the status quo and marginalizing, if not altogether ostracizing, more radical movements and formations. But political “access” without independent political power is akin to having an automobile without wheels and tires. You can sit in it, take and send pictures of it in emails to demonstrate “success” and “influence”, but in the end it can’t deliver you or anyone anywhere—only act as a symbol of status and an illusion of action. Or, in the context of the climate crisis, a symbol and illusion of climate and environmental liberation.
This is not to say that everyone within the U.S climate network is, in the words of the band Fugazi, “In on the Kill Taker.” Nonetheless, it still must be held that any semblance of controlled opposition within the U.S. climate network climate spaces is dangerous and deadly, and must be deracinated if we are to prevent a massive die off of people, species, and the necessary resources to sustain both. This will be a difficult but requisite task. Amilcar Cabral referred to this as, “the struggle against our own weakness,” which he describes as a “battle against ourselves” that he contends is, “the most difficult of all, whether for the present or the future or our peoples.” What steps must be taken in order to take on this struggle and transform the U.S. climate network such that it shifts from a praxis of controlled opposition and climate inaction and becomes a transformative force that addresses the climate crisis at scale?
First and foremost the U.S. climate network must decide, and quickly, if it will take the necessary step of becoming an independent social and political formation, or sets of formations, that prioritizes the people over any political party. As the North South Project founder Ajamu Baraka recently remarked to me, “the saying is Power to the People, not Power to the Party.” And this will require understanding and exercising what Lenin meant when he stipulated, “People always have been and they always will be the stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics, until they learn behind every kind of moral, religious, political, social phrase, declaration and promise to seek out the interests of this or that class or classes.” Moreover, the U.S. climate network would also have to comprehend the solution to this tartufferous trend, which Lenin notes includes not being fooled by “defenders of the old regime.” This, he suggests, requires an understanding that every old institution that upholds the status quo,
is sustained by the forces of this or that dominant class or classes.
Independent social and political power is the only way that the U.S. climate network will ever be in a position to advance an ecosocialist framework that includes full public control and democratization of the U.S. energy sector, which is necessary to facilitate the rapid phase out of fossil fuels and rapid development of renewable energy infrastructure as we have seen in intentionally underdeveloped nations like Uruguay that was running on 98 percent renewable energy in 2019. It’s clear that no transformation like this can occur in the U.S. without independent political power. Both Democrats and Republicans continue to accept financial largesse from polluters (albeit the Republicans receive a higher percentage of these payouts) that expect massive returns on their political investments in the form of deregulation, federal subsidies, and federal contracts to continue extracting and emitting in an effort to maintain the capitalist dictatorship.
Breaking from these political parties, the duopoly is a requisite step for establishing, building, and maintaining independent social and political power. Moreover, the U.S. climate network will never be fully independent until it eviscerates all elements of its elitism and petty bourgeois tendencies. Karl Marx reminds us that there can be no controlled opposition without the willing participation, knowingly and, in some cases, unknowingly of the petty bourgeois. While addressing the Communist League in 1850 he proclaimed, “The democratic petty bourgeois, far from desiring to overturn the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarian, strives for a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as endurable and comfortable as possible for him.” Far too many in the U.S. climate network still believe that we can tinker with capitalism and sprinkle some reforms here and there without any sacrifice of the petty bourgeois lifestyle —in short there is no desire to give up a perceived level of class status which they believe places them proximate to the ruling class. But this perceived comfort and proximity cannot endure in the epoch of the climate crisis that has the entire planet on a fast tracked trajectory of climate barbarism where more draconian immigration policies and human rights violations are possible and likely due to disputes over who deserves access to rapidly dwindling resources such as freshwater, that are necessary to sustain life and entire ecosystems.
Building and sustaining independent social and political power will also require shifting the focus of the U.S. climate network to the needs and demands of the masses and the methods necessary to improve their material conditions. Moreover, independent social and political power is the only way to fend off agents of controlled opposition who will undoubtedly attempt to co-opt principled movements that are directly accountable to the people. Allen reminds us that sustaining independent social and political power is dependent on strategies designed to counter anticipated responses of opposition forces, admonishing,
Any strategy that does not meet this condition-no matter how militant, nationalist, or revolutionary it may be-is almost certainly doomed to failure.
At this moment it’s clear the U.S. climate network is not prepared to take the steps to remove itself from forces and actors that render it into more of a successful tool for controlled opposition than a force for climate and environmental liberation. To this end, before moving away from these forces can even commence the U.S. climate network must first answer a salient question —independent social and political power or climate barbarism?
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.