As global heating continues, wildfires of unprecedented scope and devastation are blazing in many countries. In Greece, 140,000 acres have burned in the last ten days. In Turkey, at least eight people have died in the last week from fires that ravaged the southern coast. In Sicily and Sardinia, Italy, fires continue to rage, forcing hundreds of families to evacuate. In Siberia, massive fires have already destroyed 3.7 million acres of forest. Even after the dispatching of emergency firefighting units, the fires continue to spread, prompting citizens to join auxiliary fire brigades. And in the United States, 14 states have been hit by fires, including California’s Dixie Fire – the largest single fire in the state’s history.
These fires are a direct consequence of the climate emergency we are in, which is itself another disastrous product of capitalism. The corporations that dominate the global economy are all dependent in one way or another on the petroleum industry, or Big Oil. The stranglehold of the petroleum giants on the world’s energy, transportation, plastics, and agriculture industries, together with the capitalist drive for endless growth and overproduction, have caused the output of carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the Sun’s energy. This leads to global heating, which is driving humanity to the brink of extinction. The resulting wildfires around the world are a deadly warning of what’s in store for us if we do not dismantle the capitalist system.
