The week of the fire, Georgia’s health advisories had recommended nearby populations stay indoors from the evenings to early mornings, until Friday, as the plume has been shifting based on “weather conditions.” How considerate of the giant cloud of toxic gas to abide by our 9-5 work week. Maybe we should take the Nietzschean doomsday sentiment further (no, not the fascism) and accept that not only is God dead and we have killed him, but he’s been replaced by the factory foreman. Expect medical updates from the same sources to be as follows: “Best cure for long covid is unpaid overtime.” 

At best, our public health is a joke — a carnival run by careerist clowns who toss their pies, honk their horns, and make the very notion that we should care about our communities seem silly. At worst, it’s a lure — reassure those who might have otherwise still taken public advisories seriously that it’s safe to lose the mask, cough in coworkers’ mouths, dig trenches through the chlorine miasma, for heaven’s sake, just get back to work! It’s a bit of both, tragedy and farce. For many of the people of Conyers this most recent negligence is hardly a surprise, since when it comes to community-endangering negligence, the company responsible, BioLab, is a repeat offender. This isn’t even their first chlorine gas leak. Most notably, in 2020, a Louisiana BioLab facility leaked waves of hazardous gas over Interstate 10, forcing an evacuation and road closure for 28 hours. The initial cause of that leak? A hurricane, which BioLab refused to prepare for in line with a national extreme weather preparation policy implemented in response to a 2017 leak caused by another hurricane. This most recent, specific plant in Georgia has been “held accountable” five times over the last ten years, five of which are citations on their record, four of which came with fines — amounting to a sum of $29,322 (most of it had been settled for much cheaper than initially charged). This isn’t punishment, or accountability; it’s a business expense, and a paltry one at that, the extent of “justice” under capitalism. This is the new normal in the age of climate catastrophe. All our infrastructure, cheapened and sold off and deregulated for years, caving in on itself, whether under a weak breeze, a derailed train car, or Biblical floods. 

“I been fighting and been saying that that company was gone explode… no one listened. $850 million of our taxes went to this company to kill us.” These are the words of Kenny Johnson, a member of the Rockdale County’s Soil and Water Conservation board, described as an official actually committed to the preservation of life and health in his community. He actually did argue and politic and debate for our rights, in just the way we’re all told this system is supposed to work. A public servant, utilizing a public forum for its supposed intended purpose. He died minutes later, collapsed out in the hall from a respiratory attack. 

Although his death is under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, we won’t imply that there’s someone putting hits out on county soil and water experts. Far more likely, and tragically relevant, is that Kenny Johnson succumbed to a compounding of public health failures, like, for example, repeated infections from COVID-19, a cardiovascular illness; like, for example, the air filled with poison; like, for example, massive health disparities destroying Black people on a cellular level, due to stress, environment — a million closed doors and barbed wire fences to health and opportunity. As stated above, this is how the world ends: not with a bang, a bullet through the window, but a series of cracks, all connecting and overlapping until what separates us from the abyss is fully disintegrated. This is how the capitalist ruling class wants it, they want us tired and sick, if we’re not immediately dead. To those who stuff their wallets with our work, our death is acceptable at any speed, just so long as we die off-site so they don’t have to waste time having our bodies swept.

As we just covered, in 2017 and 2020, this isn’t the first disaster BioLab has caused through negligence and greed. And this is just one of many recent toxic leaks that won’t result in accountability, change, or the recovery of the devastated community. What we saw in East Palestine, Ohio will be repeated in Georgia. This is because what these disasters represent is not a failure of capitalism for its ruling classes, but a success. How far can they push us, how many can they abandon to die? All of society is an experiment social classes perform on their opponents, the classes opposed to them. Just as within dictatorships of socialism, where communists conduct living, mass experiments to chart the path forward to liberation and development, within dictatorships of capitalism our enemies perform mass experiments on all of us to dam progress and restrain the future. They think they can get away with it again, because they have proven, empirically, to do so in the past. 

We must break that pattern and prove them wrong. 

Greenwashing occurs in cycles. In 2002, British Petroleum tried marketing their acronym as “Beyond Petroleum.” The campaign fell apart after the company caused one of the largest oil spills in Alaska’s history in 2006. Four years later, they caused the biggest marine oil spill in history. Fourteen years after Deepwater Horizon, scientists are unsure how B.P.’s catastrophe has affected diversity in the Gulf of Mexico. 

“Net zero by 2050” is the latest greenwashing fraud. On one hand, these plans would be too little, too late in averting a scenario in which millions of people are killed by climate-induced famine, natural disasters, and war. On the other hand, there is every reason to believe “Net Zero by 2050” is nothing more than a pipedream; a slogan to buy time and maximize profits. 2030 was supposed to be an interim deadline on the path to Net Zero by 2050. They haven’t enacted a single step, yet they expect us to believe a stairway to heaven is arriving any day now…  

B.P. announced in 2020 that it would cut oil and gas production by 35-40% in just 10 years. Shareholders, feeling this would impede short term betting on the gears of capital, moved shares into B.P. competitors like Chevron and ExxonMobil. Their stock prices increased by 46% and 57%, while B.P.’s fell 10% by December 2022. B.P. knelt in shame and begged investors for forgiveness by watering down the target from 40% to 20-30%. That was in 2023. One and a half years later, they are abandoning the project entirely. As reports of their capitulation emerge, the plan which connects the 2030 deadline to “Net-Zero by 2050” sits in embarrassment on B.P’s website. Investors prefer the straight talking social murderers at Shell, who pledged to increase gas output and keep oil production consistent. Investors will continue to prefer this direct commitment to fossil fuels as long as they make for higher profits than renewable energy, which will be the case as long as all our machines and weapons depend on hydrocarbon production. Clearly, the free market solution to climate change is a sham. Producing oil is simply more profitable than saving the planet. 

The free market can offer nothing except climate fascism; maximized corporate profits in the face of an existential societal crisis. Deteriorating public entities replaced by a continuous investment into the empire-encompassing Cop City. The federal government’s responses — if they can be called that — to hurricanes Helene and Milton give us a hint of a taste into what lies ahead. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, but it requires us to crawl just a little further. For there is a specter haunting American energy; the specter of communism. 

America has lost the “war” for renewable energy to China. As America renews its commitment to fossil fuels, the Communist Party of China has asserted itself as the world leader in renewable energy. It is silly to phrase what should be a collaborative, global effort in terms of conflict, but this is the only language America understands. The empire is incapable of cooperating on climate change because the capitalists running the show will never permit a foreign country to compete with American interests. To be clear, “American interests” do not include the shared desire to live on a habitable planet. As we observed, only short term speculation has a seat at this table. When the transition to renewable energy is conceived in fighting words, the losing population resolves to suffocate on car exhaust.

China has made historic advancements in renewable energy implementation. While B.P. was abandoning its 2030 environmental commitments, China surpassed its 2030 target for wind and solar installations by six years. Today, fossil fuels make up less than half of China’s installed power capacity. One decade ago, that fraction was two thirds. Whereas America is restricted from this transition by the undead hand of the stock market, China controls its state-owned oil companies in the interests of the Chinese people. American propaganda against China used to focus on air quality in Chinese urban centers, depicting masked workers traipsing through a yellow haze. Since Xi Jinping took office in 2012, air quality has improved considerably in Chinese cities. American attempts to blame China for the climate crisis have never sounded more hollow, especially as the regime does everything it can to prevent Chinese technology from entering the market. For example, nothing scares the American auto industry more than the thought of affordable, electric, Chinese vehicles on American roads. They make Elon Musk look like the coddled charlatan that he is. This soiling of pants extends to all vehicle manufacturers, and even the oil barons. An affordable, electric vehicle would resemble a death knell for our fossilized transportation system. They want your car to produce toxic chemicals because it makes them money. This is why the regime just announced a 100% tariff rate on Chinese electric vehicles. They use typical “national security” concerns to cover for industry. Ever eager to please its master, the European Union followed suit. They are all terrified of the communist economic system. They should be. 

China is not going to liberate the imperial core from climate fascism. Their plate is full, so to speak, with liberating the oppressed regions of the world from Western economic bondage. Even when China releases planet-saving technology to the Western world, America and its lackeys use tariffs to block the masses from sharing in this collective human achievement. Organizing in the imperial core has always been difficult due to a relatively high standard of living enjoyed by the American masses. Climate change throws a wrench into previous calculations where comfort was always chosen over morals. Traditional bribes are less compelling when they come with a miserable existence under climate fascism. Even for those in the Core who would sacrifice the international masses for their own comfort, climate fascists will not save them. Let it be known: Communism or Extinction is the only reasonable policy. No fantasies, no stairways to Heaven. Climate fascism has arrived, and only a hammer of organization will bring it to its knees. Organize like your life depends on it, because it actually does.