“It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.”

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

Climate change is not a novel idea. The hypothesis that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be correlated to rising global temperatures was documented by scientists as far back as the 1930s. In 1965, Lyndon B Johnson was the first American president warned of climate change by scientists. As early as the late 1950s, the oil industry began to understand the impact of fossil fuels on climate; internal memos from Exxon in the late 70’s showed that the company was well aware that their products would have “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.”

Since 2020, there’s been a battle between the Cincinnati Parks Board and Clifton citizens over plans to convert 8,800 square feet of Burnet Woods into a dog park. In that amount of time, the Cincinnati Parks Board has been inundated by at least a thousand emails and messages from opponents of the project. However, no matter how much negative feedback the project receives, the Park Board trudges on with plans to construct the dog park, highlighting how easy it is for bourgeois political powers to outright ignore the will of the people.

The 2024 US presidential election highlights the limits of electoral politics under capitalism.