The Limits of Liberal Environmentalism: Why Environmental Movements Must Be Revolutionary
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,” (though they ran campaigns to deny the existence of climate change for the next several decades).
The approaches that have been taken thus far to mitigate climate change have fallen short, to the detriment of the planet and the working class globally. Politicians handing off the problem of looming ecological collapse to individuals and NGOs, while corporate greenwashing and unenforceable international climate agreements are the best that the ruling class cares to offer, is capitalism working exactly as designed.
In 1970, the first Earth Day was held. While the original Earth Day had hints of intersectional politics, environmental movements — similar to other movements primarily aligned with liberal politics — have largely been isolated from other social movements, preventing them from adopting more revolutionary ideas. The focus of your typical Earth Day rally is often on what actions individual people can take, whether that be riding the bus or recycling. Even worse are the responses to the culprit in corporations: they’ll regurgitate very real data about climate but limit our response to soliciting support from our representatives, who continually fail to ever reign in corporations and their destructive grip on extractive industries. These approaches have kept us in the same sinking boat we’ve been in since the Industrial Revolution; the need for environmental movements to adopt revolutionary ideals and messaging could literally not be more urgent.
The ruling class’ interests are in maintaining the status quo, so that has been what has prevailed for all these decades — no matter which bourgeois party is at the helm, no matter how many people and communities are ravaged by climate disasters, no matter how many species go extinct or habitats are destroyed in the name of profit and power.
The Democrats’ Failure on Climate
Lately, Trump has been brazenly attacking the EPA, rolling back environmental standards, and promising to further environmental degradation, solidifying the sentiment that the climate crisis is not coming, it is already here. However, it is crucial to investigate the ways in which Democrats not only open the door for these things, but also perpetuate them.
For example, there was an uproar among liberals in March 2025 when Trump signed an executive order to increase logging in national forests, which account for one-third of the forested lands in the country. Ironically, last September, the Bureau of Land Management under Biden put up for sale over 3,000 acres of old-growth forests on the Oregon Coast (which sequester more carbon than almost any other forests in the world). This was one of dozens of similar sales in 2024. In a stunning about-face,, Biden signed his own executive order on Earth Day in 2022, vowing to protect these forests. The hypocrisy is astounding and outright deplorable.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. In December 2024, the Biden administration — knowing Trump was soon taking office and had already vowed to increase fossil fuel production — approved a sale of oil and gas leases in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration has already started taking steps to expand this drilling further into the Refuge.
And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the impact that imperialism and war have on climate. The United States spends more on “defense” than the next 9 countries combined, and our military budget increases every year, no matter which party is in office; in 2024, Biden’s military budget reached a record $850 billion. In 2019, research found that, if the US military were its own nation, it would be the world’s 47th-highest greenhouse gas emitter. Along similar lines, a study released in June 2024 estimated that the emissions from the first 4 months of the ongoing Israeli-led genocide of Palestinians in Gaza were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries and territories. (Note: though the aforementioned research represented the climate impact of the first 4 months of the genocide, it has now been 18 months since October 7, 2023, and not only has Israel continued bombing Gaza, but several other countries as well.) One must also keep in mind the massive environmental damage the Israeli army and settlers have done to the agricultural lands, infrastructure, and waterways of Gaza through constant bombing and warfare.
These examples are prime instances of the ways in which liberalism not only fails in taking meaningful action on environmental issues, but also actively harms the environment. The Democratic Party prioritizes the interests of imperialism, war, and corporations at every turn, just as the Republicans do. The only difference between the two, historically, is that the Democrats pose (however half-heartedly) as the progressive option.
Liberal “Wins” on Climate: A Harmful Bare Minimum
While the Democratic Party as a whole is just as harmful on the environment as Republicans, their attempts to paint themselves as caring about climate issues is perhaps even more sinister. It makes everyday people think that what the Democrats are doing is helping the environment, when in reality, the “wins” they achieve are miniscule and ineffectual. This is by design — a feature of bourgeois democracy, not a flaw — in order to not upset the billionaire donors whose interests these politicians have vowed to protect. Environmental regulations in America prioritize the flow of capital over the actual solutions themselves, packaging meager reforms rife with loopholes for capitalists’ interest
An example of a supposed “win” includes the Paris Climate Accord (and other international climate agreements like it). The agreement, adopted in 2015, had a primary goal of keeping global average temperatures well below 2℃ above pre-Industrial temperatures, with efforts to stay below 1.5℃ increase, in particular. Shocking to no one, these goals have not been met in the slightest - in fact, in 2024 (just nine years after the agreement was signed!) the 1.5℃ threshold was surpassed. This is largely because these “binding” UN agreements mean next to nothing. There is nothing holding any country that signed onto the agreement accountable for their actions (or lack thereof) to reduce emissions.
The Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), the conference at which the Paris Climate Accord was authored, is one of a series of conferences known for being entirely tone-deaf and self-congratulatory. For example, the conference makes headlines every year due to the sheer number of attendees — such as Kamala Harris, King Charles, and Jeff Bezos — who fly into the conference on private jets. Overall, these conferences and agreements are designed to serve as an alibi that the ruling class can point to (as entire cities burn and drown, rainforests disappear due to logging, and species continue to go extinct at exponential rates) and say, “Well, we tried!”
It is also worth noting that these reforms still allow for the people and the environment of the global south to continue to be exploited in countless ways. A prime example of this is the mining of cobalt for electric vehicles (EVs). Even five years ago, EVs were heralded as some kind of miracle for the environment. Underneath all of the hype, however, it has become clear that EVs are a climate “solution” conceived of and approved by capitalists that fundamentally ensures Americans’ continued dependence on cars. The production of the core mechanism of these electric vehicles — their batteries — is reliant on exploited Congolese workers, children included, laboring in the horrific conditions of cobalt mines. Ironically enough, although EVs are touted as eco-friendly, these cobalt mines cause massive environmental degradation in the Congo (as well as disease, poverty, birth defects, and miscarriages).
Meager accomplishments such as these are unsuccessful at creating any meaningful change because they don’t challenge the status quo; they are born of capitalist ideas and allow capitalism to continue unfettered. These reforms have depressingly been the best that our systems of governance have had to offer in response to the climate and ecological crises, with the other options being passive inaction or even actively rolling back environmental promises. Under Biden, a culmination of all of the above led to what we are seeing now: doors left wide open by the liberals for Trump’s administration to barrel through, working quickly to throw climate and environmental protections out entirely.
Individual Action Will Not Save Us
It is in the interests of capitalism to paint a picture of the climate crisis as needing to be solved by individuals through such actions as recycling, composting, conserving water, and reducing our carbon footprints.
Starting with the concept of a carbon footprint, the term was initially coined by fossil fuel giant British Petroleum (BP) as part of a marketing campaign in the early 2000s to place the onus of being environmentally-conscious onto working class people. Slogans of that campaign included “It’s time to go on a low-carbon diet” — an ironic statement to make considering BP’s own “carbon diet” increased by 5% between 2023 and 2024 to 33 million tons of CO2. At this point, BP’s yearly carbon emissions are over 1.5 million times the average Americans’ (and, it’s worth noting, the average Americans’ is three times that of the average person in the global south).
Campaigns that only push everyday people to “do what they can” for the environment — while simultaneously disregarding the systemic nature of natural resource and labor exploitation, habitat loss, pollution, and ever-growing fossil fuel emissions under capitalism — inherently serve the ruling class, whether well-intentioned (such as in the case of environmental nonprofits encouraging people to conserve water) or not (such as in the case of BP’s “carbon footprint” campaign).
Another flaw with an individualistic approach to environmentalism is that capitalism actively strips away our ability to choose to live more sustainably. Take, for example, driving. People are well aware that taking public transit or bicycling are more sustainable choices. However, car and fossil fuel lobbies fight tooth and nail to ensure that public transit is underfunded. Simultaneously, as more people who live in dense, walkable city neighborhoods are priced out due to gentrification and rent hikes, they end up forced to move to lower-density areas that are unsafe for pedestrians and that transit cannot reach.
This is not to say that choosing more sustainable alternatives in day-to-day life isn’t valuable or worthwhile, if someone is in a position with the privilege to do so. Capitalism inundates people, especially in the imperial core, with messaging that they have to constantly be purchasing items they don’t need and keeping up with trends in order to be happy or have a meaningful life. This mindset even bleeds into how people approach actions that, at face value, would be a more “sustainable” act, such as how the recent trend of collecting Stanley water bottles directly goes against the very purpose of a reusable water bottle. In the long run, this messaging breeds a culture of mindlessness about the labor and resources that went into the items we purchase — from fashion to food — that the planet simply cannot sustain. Taking steps to combat that culture on an individual and community level is not at all a bad thing!
This is to say, however, that even if every individual were taking these actions and living as “sustainably” as possible under a capitalist system (which still inherently relies on consumption and exploitation at some point in the supply chain), that would still never outweigh the tremendous harm that the ruling class does to our planet through resource exploitation, imperialist wars, and the reckless pursuit of perpetual profit. The energy of environmental movements must focus on attacking these perpetrators — and capitalism as a whole — rather than simply encouraging working class people to buy reusable items, grow their own food, drive less, or sign an occasional petition.
Why Environmentalism Must be Revolutionary
At the end of the day, capitalism is the root of everything that is unsustainable. Capitalism is a cancer: seeking growth for the sake of growth. That ethos goes against the very foundation of what environmental sustainability stands for. Capitalism is what got us into this situation. Any programs, reforms, or “wins” accomplished under the system of capitalism that do not actively challenge and work to dismantle it will get us nowhere. Those accomplishments are frail — at the whim of corporate interests or whichever presidential administration comes next. It is an age-old tale, but the planet literally cannot afford for us to watch this doomed cycle play out any longer without waking up to the reality of the situation.
Environmental movements cannot be siloed from other movements, particularly those of labor rights and human rights. These issues are intrinsically woven to one another — pulling a thread to unravel the knot in one of these areas while ignoring the others only tightens the knots elsewhere. Only proletarian internationalism and socialist revolution that lead to working class ownership of the means of production and central systems of planning can prevent environmental collapse (beyond what has already been set in motion). These changes will not be won by petitions and individual actions and international climate agreements, but by mass organizing and revolutionary action.