Greenland, Climate Change, and Class

by Richie Venton

ONE OF SEVERAL overlapping factors behind Donald Trump’s threat to seize control of Greenland is accelerating climate change and its consequences. Global warming has led to vast areas of ice sheets and glaciers in the polar regions melting, currently at seven times the rate seen in the 1990s, with fears that the North Pole could be ice free by 2050.

But for the capitalist class, every crisis is an opportunity. As I wrote in the SSP book, Socialist Change not Climate Change: “Contrary to talk of ‘humanity’ in general being responsible for the catastrophe we face, just 100 companies have emitted two-thirds of all greenhouse gases since the mid-19th century.” Capitalist elites devastate the planet for profit, then seek to exploit the consequences of melting glaciers by opening new shipping routes and gaining access to Greenland’s rare earth metals — vital for modern technologies such as mobile phones and AI data centres.

Just as Venezuela and large parts of the Middle East have been “cursed” by abundant oil reserves — inviting imperialist aggression from the US and, previously, Britain, France, and other powers — so too the 60,000 people of Greenland now face the destruction of their traditional ways of life.

That threat comes whether through the less likely scenario of a US ground invasion or, more plausibly, through big-power bullying to force the transfer of mineral rights to Trump-linked corporations and other US firms.

The rich cause climate change

Against this backdrop, new figures on the drivers of climate breakdown underline the urgency of socialist change, rather than the lazy blaming of humanity as a whole.

Research by Oxfam shows that to stay below the critical 1.5°C threshold, the world’s richest 1% would need to slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 97% by 2030. The likelihood of that happening under capitalism is vanishingly small. The same research shows that the richest 1% of the world’s population used up their annual “fair share” of carbon emissions just 10 days into 2026.

The richest 0.1% exhausted their annual carbon budget in only three days.

The UK is no outlier. Here, the richest 1% produced more CO2 emissions in eight days than the poorest half of Britain’s population generated in an entire year.

Climate is a class issue

Unsurprisingly, the wealthiest individuals are also those most heavily invested in the corporations driving pollution and global warming, profiting from environmental destruction while working-class and poor communities suffer the consequences.

On average, a billionaire has investments in companies responsible for 1.9 million tonnes of CO emissions per year — equivalent to the pollution generated by 400,000 petrol cars over the same period.

We need socialist change – urgently

The climate crisis is fundamentally a class issue. Only mass movements of working-class and young people have the social power needed to confront the capitalists responsible for environmental destruction, with concrete socialist solutions based on democratic public ownership and planned production for human need.

The same movements are required to resist figures like Trump as he roams what he regards as “his” hemisphere — and beyond — in search of greater profits through the plunder of the Earth and its peoples. We need socialist change — not climate chaos, imperialist plunder, and wars without end.