What Do You Do When Avoiding the Climate Crisis Isn't On the Ballot?

In the last weeks Climáximo, a climate justice collective in Portugal, carried out actions related to the Portuguese elections: gluing messages to the billboards of all major political parties to point out the lack of plans to stop the climate crisis; interrupting the big television debate between parties with parliamentary seats to say that "stopping the climate crisis is not on the polling station;" and painting the building where the right-wing party (that narrowly won the election) was celebrating, to say that "there is no victory in guaranteeing climate chaos."

The actions were different and had different reactions, but one thing was common: They sought to bring the climate crisis to the center of debate. The defensive and diverting reactions to them failed to deny that no party had a plan to halt the collapse of civilization.

2023 was the hottest year on record and the year with the highest global emissions. By now, all parties that believe in the existence of climate change know that the only way to stay below 1.5ºC to 2ºC of warming is to cut global emissions in half by 2030. All Portuguese parties that recognize principles of global justice know that Portugal must cut at least 85% of its emissions by 2030. However, in the run up to the elections, which elect a government to run the country until 2028—a year in which Portugal must already be very close to achieving carbon neutrality, if we care about the future—no party presented a plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

Regardless of who you vote for, what are you going to do to stop the climate crisis and achieve climate justice when all political parties have demonstrated that they won't?

If you know there is a climate crisis and you look at reality and see that no party has targets compatible with the emissions cuts necessary to safeguard the basic living conditions of millions of people, you can decide to discuss whether Climáximo's actions were proportionate to the seriousness of the situation—climatic and political—in which we find ourselves. In the light of analysing the reality we find ourselves in, it is easy to rebuke any criticism.

No, the portuguese political parties are not all the same. Yet, the plans of all parties lead to climate collapse. There are parties that admit that climate change exists, and others that don't. Within the parties that admit there is climate change, there are parties proposing more measures to reduce the asymmetry of the consequences of the climate crisis on the population. Some have plans for 4°C of warming by 2100, and others have plans for perhaps 3°C of warming. However, no party has a plan that is compatible with staying below 1.5°C to 2°C of warming. Factually, no party proposes a programme adequate to the task of avoiding climate collapse, none proposes the necessary emissions cuts, none avoids current and new projects that will lead to increases in emissions, none manages to tell us that if we vote for them we will comply with what the climate crisis demands of us.

The shocking thing here is not that Climáximo made this reality visible, the shocking thing is that this is the reality we are in. In particular, it's shocking that parties that claim to defend the interests of the population ignore science and climate, social and global justice, thus giving up the fight for the basic conditions of life without which the struggles for housing, workers' rights, equality, dignity, and so many others are impossible. The parties that should be pushing ahead with the most ambitious measures to confront the current system that is leading us towards climate chaos refuse to face up to the greatest challenge humanity ever met: to stop increasing emissions and end fossil fuels by 2030 through a just transition. Is all this necessary? Yes, if we want to avoid climate collapse and if we believe that Portugal must cut emissions more than Mozambique. And is that difficult? Yes. Is it incompatible with capitalism? Yes. Is it impossible? No. Should it be an obstacle for anticapitalist parties to put forward measures that involve doing away with capitalism? No.

However, while the level of ambition should increase because we are running out of time, the left-wing parties refused to take on this historic task, presenting plans that are less and less ambitious and closer to the status quo. This happened, according to them, to prevent the rise of the far right. How are we going to stop the far right in a context of worsening economic conditions? How are we going to stop the far right in a context of worsening migratory crises, drought, fires, or crop failures that we are already experiencing today? If stopping the climate crisis isn't on the table, neither is stopping the collapse of civilization as we know it. And certainly not stopping the rise of the far right.

Climáximo did not call on people not to vote. The question Climáximo asked to society as a whole was: regardless of who you vote for, what are you going to do to stop the climate crisis and achieve climate justice when all political parties have demonstrated that they won't? This was not a call to give up on democracy, quite the opposite. It was a call for everyone to fight for their right—and that of others—to thrive on a viable planet. It was a call for radical democracy via public disruption. Fighting for democracy—both in Portugal and in the other countries from which Portuguese companies continue to extract fossil fuels—means refusing new projects that increase emissions and cutting 85% of emissions through a just transition, even if that option was not up for debate and not on the ballots.

Whether before or after the elections, the fight for climate justice will always be legitimate, relevant, and indispensable. When faced with the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, inaction and complacency are illegitimate, undemocratic, and incomprehensible. Every day—especially during the days that should be decisive in dictating what any country's next four years will be like—we urgently need to show that another world is possible.

In the end, despite the moderation of left-wing parties, the far right had 18%, over a million votes, when six years ago it had zero, and the right-wing party won by a slim margin.

Regardless of the results of these elections, we face two options: The next four years could go down in history as the period in which everyone knew for decades about the existence of the climate crisis, and the associated social collapse, and still decided to continue heading towards climate hell; or as the turning point years in which society had the courage—that current politicians still lack—to accept the historic responsibility that falls to those alive in 2024: to resist the collapse of civilisation as we know it and fight for our lives and those of the next generations. That has nothing to do with electoral cycles and everything to do with revolutionary action. Knowing what you know about the climate crisis, and knowing that probably there will be an election in your country this year, what are you going to do?