A reading (beginning 00:57 ) and discussion (beginning (11:20 ) of the latest Challenge editorial.

On September 17, in a desperate campaign to stop global warming, thousands of climate activists, business leaders, government officials, and “civil society representatives” will converge upon New York City for the fifteenth annual Climate Week. Co-sponsored by the United Nations, an organization born in 1945 to serve U.S. imperialism and the postwar liberal world order, the event has a bold slogan: “We Can. We Will.”

In reality, the reformists can’t—and the capitalist bosses won’t. After a summer of lethal heat waves, biblical floods, hot tub oceans, runaway wildfires, and toxic orange skies, liberal reforms cannot prevent wholesale catastrophe from climate change. Climate action has hit a wall. Greenhouse gas emissions set an all-time high in 2022, and will do so again in 2023. The rulers are wedded to heat-trapping fossil fuels for two fundamental reasons: maximum profit and inter-imperialist rivalry. From China to the United States, their system is falling into crisis. With fascism rising and World War III on the horizon, capitalism has no answers for perpetual war, massive poverty, or resurgent infectious diseases. It surely has none for the vast challenge of climate change and the racist horrors we are witnessing in real time.