Catastrophic flooding from capitalist global warming has devastated the working class in Nepal and Tibet, with nearly 1,400 confirmed deaths, over 5,000 missing, and more than 84,000 left homeless. Globally, this past August was the hottest in 132 years, at an average of 1.65 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (copernicus.eu). The capitalist bosses’ ruthless grow-or-die imperative demands ever more energy, most of it from heat-trapping fossil fuels. Each day is pushing us closer to a global tipping point where whole regions may become inhabitable.
Historically, two forms of capitalist crisis have opened the door to communist revolution: economic depression and imperialist war. If communists can once again lead the working class to throw off its chains, the climate crisis too will create revolutionary opportunities. The mass heroism shown by workers in Nepal, risking life and limb to rescue flood victims from buried tunnels, is a glimpse of the working-class solidarity that will change the world. The selflessness of these workers, even under capitalist leadership, is the raw material of a communist future. The international working class is the only force powerful enough to defeat climate change. It will be fully unleashed in the great battle to smash capitalism.
No help from bosses
The flood began with a one-square-kilometer collapse of glacial ice and rock on the slopes of the Himalayas on the Chinese-Nepali border. The resulting avalanche into a mountain valley generated a magnitude 5.2 earthquake and triggered a torrent of water and debris that tore through villages at a speed of over 100 miles per hour. The port of Gyirong had only seven minutes to respond. Other districts had essentially no advance warning, despite more than a decade of flood risk alerts from scientists.
The fake communists and political misleaders who rule Nepal have subjected workers to years of austerity amid rising fuel and food prices. Last year, “Gen Z protests” erupted when the government punished internet providers for tax evasion, essentially banning social media in a time of record youth unemployment. Masses of young workers live in poverty or are forced to migrate. One-third of Nepal’s gross domestic product comes from remittances from migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.
Since 2017, the Chinese ruling class has eroded Nepal’s historic dependence on India by investing in ports, energy and transportation improvements across the country. China funds hydropower dams, Kathmandu’s Pokhara Airport, and the Trans-Himalayan Railway linking Tibet to Kathmandu. But as an “upstream superpower,” China is reluctant to share its hydrological data (Lowy Institute, 5/9/23), and Nepal’s scientists have accused it of deliberately withholding critical early warning information (Climate Home News, 8/22/24). The border between the two countries is heavily militarized for “security,” a capitalist inefficiency that slows responses to emergencies.
Capitalism feeds climate crisis
Worldwide, over 1.5 billion people live in low-lying coastal areas and river deltas susceptible to sudden flooding (copernicus.eu). The Himalayas, like other high-altitude climates, are hypersensitive to global warming. Their vulnerable masses largely reside in a dense band from China’s Pearl River Delta through parts of Indonesia and South East Asia to India (The Changing Function of River Deltas, Manning, 2025). Like most victims of climate change, they are among the least responsible for their plight.
The capitalist bosses have created a dangerously warming planet because they are wedded to short-term maximum profits from fossil fuels, despite a growing abundance of affordable solar, wind, and battery-powered clean energy. The biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, and now the largest exporter of oil and “natural” gas, is the U.S. The biggest emitter today—and the leading exporter of coal—is inter-imperialist rival China. The difference is that China has also made massive investments in clean energy and EVs, seizing what appears to be an insurmountable lead in those industries of the future.
Meanwhile, three of four cars sold globally are still powered by gasoline. Gas and coal still run most of the world’s power grid. Conventional steel and concrete, both of them huge polluters, remain the bosses’ building materials of choice. Around 30 percent of food produced under capitalism goes to waste, pouring more billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Ditto for fast fashion and the latest smartphones, where capitalists create demand through planned obsolescence. And according to the UN, up to 7 percent of carbon emissions worldwide stem from military activity, including the wars in Iran and Ukraine (ET EnergyWorld, 4/25). Besides endangering the polar ice shelves, the permafrost, and the ocean currents, carbon pollution kills five million people a year (Guardian, 11/29/23).
A “green” future is red
All of capitalism’s glaring failures are correctable. Each one is a reason to fight for communism. Our task is to build a mass Progressive Labor Party that can overthrow this mass-murdering, planet-destroying profit system. We saw a glimpse of our communist future when teachers and staff at a school in the Nuwakot district saved 900 students from drowning. We saw another when a school bus driver rescued 50 children from the floodwaters (CNN, 9/1). In town after town, the working class rose to the occasion in the face of disaster. When we embrace the heroic spirit of these workers and add internationalist, anti-racist, working-class consciousness, no bosses’ military can defeat us.
Unbound by the constraints of nation and profit, communist society will stop and reverse global warming and the unnatural disasters of capitalism. When mobilized by communist ideas, the working class has achieved victories that seemed impossible, from the defeat of German and Japanese fascism in World War II to the eradication of syphilis and malaria in China. Dare to struggle, dare to win!
