Global average temperatures have been at least 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial averages every month for the past twelve months, according to the European Union-run <a>Copernicus Climate Change Service</a>. Every one of those months also set monthly temperature records. 
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement sought to limit global warming to a 1.5 degree threshold, warning that surpassing this could lead to catastrophic runaway warming. If this target is achieved, it will represent a “best case scenario”, according to the agreement. 
What does a “best case scenario” of warming look like? The past twelve months provide the answer.
It looks like record-breaking wildfires in Canada, which burnt over 16.5 million hectares of land. This was more than twice the previous Canadian record. Smoke from the fires blanketed New York and other cities in scenes reminiscent of the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires in Australia. 
It looks like historic heatwaves across the world, from North America to Africa, southern Europe, the Middle East, China and India. Phoenix, Arizona, experienced a record 31 consecutive days of temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) last year. China, Morocco, Albania, Turkey and Brazil all clocked record temperatures, while the town of Jerzu in Italy suffered the highest temperatures ever recorded in Europe. Heatwaves in India this year killed at least 110 people, and in Saudi Arabia at least 1,300 people died from extreme heat during the hajj, according to Saudi Arabia’s health minister. 
It looks like severe rainfall and flooding in China less than a month after recording its hottest day ever, as well as severe tropical storms like <a>Hurricane Beryl</a>—notable for being the earliest recorded category five hurricane in history.
It looks like the hottest day on record (6 July 2023), the hottest month on record (December 2023) and the hottest year on record (2023). 
This is the new normal under the “best case scenario”. But as former NASA scientist James Hansen <a>told the Independent</a>, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is “deader than a doornail”. According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2023 Emissions Gap Report, even if countries implemented all their current commitments under the Paris Agreement, the world would be on track for 2.5 degrees of warming by 2100. 
The reality is likely to be even worse, as greenhouse gas emissions are rising, not falling. For instance, despite Australia’s formal commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, the Albanese government’s <a>Future Gas Strategy</a>, released in May, commits Australia to “continued gas development” and the use of gas “through to 2050 and beyond”. The annual Global Carbon Budget found that carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high of 36.8 billion tonnes in 2023.
Capitalism is unfit to tackle climate change: its rapacious drive for profit above all else has the world teetering on the edge of total climate disaster. It has proven incapable of limiting global warming to anything approaching a “safe” level, and living with the effects of climate change under capitalism will be unbearable for millions, if not billions, of people. 
Mexico and Brazil suffered heatwaves last year, yet only 16 percent of households in those countries have an air conditioner, according to the International Energy Agency. In India that number drops to 5 percent. There’s no prize for guessing whether Indian billionaire Gautam Adani (of the Adani coal mine) belongs to that 5 percent. 
Millions of people will become climate refugees, fleeing rising sea levels and unbearable heat. Yet across the world, governments are imposing ever stricter anti-migrant and anti-refugee measures. 
In Australia, according to the Bureau of Statistics, insurance prices increased 14 percent in the year to May, largely driven by extreme weather events. This has left houses in Lismore virtually uninsurable after two “once in a lifetime” floods in five years. 
Although some degree of adaptation to the effects of climate change may be possible under capitalism, it will fall far short of what is needed. Whilst those who are responsible for and benefit from climate destruction flourish, working people, particularly those in the Global South, suffer. We need to radically reorganise the entire way in which we produce goods, construct cities and interact with the natural environment. This will be impossible while the profit motive reigns supreme.

Ben Lourie

Global average temperatures hit 1.5 degrees and climate devastation ensues

For the past month, textile workers in Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry have been fighting for an increase in the monthly minimum wage from 8,300 taka ($115) to 23,000 taka ($318).
Inflation and a worsening exchange rate have caused living costs in Bangladesh to soar, but the government’s wage board has offered only an increase in the minimum wage to 12,500 taka ($173)—half what the workers are demanding. As Mujahid Ahmed, a sewing machine operator, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231108-bangladesh-garment-worker-shot-dead-as-wage-protests-turn-violent">told France 24</a>, “The wage was low before, and it is still low after the new minimum wage announcement ... It is not enough to meet our basic demands”.
In response, tens of thousands of workers went on strike and took to the streets. They blocked roads and hurled stones at factories. Roughly 600 of the 3,500 garment factories in Bangladesh were closed in what have been the biggest workers’ protests in at least a decade.
For making this stand, workers have been violently assaulted both by thugs hired by the bosses and by the police. Masuma Ahktar, a seamstress, told the Guardian about being beaten with wooden sticks by a group of armed men: “I fell down onto the ground. Even then they wouldn’t stop beating me ... They hit my back, my thighs and my arms repeatedly”.
At least four workers have been killed by police and more than 11,000 have been charged with “violence and vandalism” after participating in the protests. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also condemned the strikers, saying, “They have to work with whatever their salary is increased [to] ... If they take to the streets to protest at someone’s instigation, they will lose their job, lose their work and will have to return to their village”.
It’s no surprise that this would be the government's response, given the garment industry makes up almost 16 percent of Bangladesh’s GDP and approximately 85 percent of exports. The government stands fully behind the local capitalists in using “any means necessary” to bring the disruption caused by the strikes to an end.
Not only do the workers—predominantly young women who migrated to the city from rural areas—receive barely livable wages, but basic safety measures are in many places virtually non-existent too. Many garment factories were built higher than regulations allow on unstable foundations and without ventilation or fire prevention and evacuation systems.
This has led to countless industrial “accidents”, which might more accurately be described as murders. The most high-profile of these were the 2012 Tazreen factory fire in which at least 117 were killed and the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/making-killing-rana-plaza-and-global-garment-industry">Rana Plaza collapse of 2013</a>, which killed 1,127. In both cases, locals suspect the true death toll may have been much higher.
The day before the Rana Plaza collapse, at least one of the support columns in the factory was cracked and splintered. An engineer declared the building in imminent danger of collapse. Yet the very next day, under threat of losing several days’ pay and physical violence, thousands were herded back into the building. It collapsed shortly afterwards.
Despite the global outrage sparked by these events, very little has changed in the years since. The profits enjoyed by those at the top of the global garment industry depend on the super-exploitation of workers in some of the world’s poorest countries, and Bangladesh is among those at the bottom of the pile.
An H&amp;M “Pattern Resort Shirt”, made in a factory in Mirpur—a suburb of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka—sells for up to $25 in Australia. A single worker, sewing in a team in a Bangladeshi garment factory, might make more than $1,000 worth of those shirts every day, while receiving less than $10 in return.
Where does all the extra money go? According to H&amp;M’s <a href="https://hmgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/HM-Group-Annual-and-Sustainability-Report-2022.pdf">Annual Report</a>, the company generated $32 billion in global sales revenue in 2022. It and the other major clothing retailers like Zara, Levi’s, BigW, Kmart and so on are the industry’s biggest winners. A big chunk of the rest of the money the labour of garment workers generates ends up in the pockets of the various local factory owners to whom these companies contract work.
Bangladesh’s garment workers are leading the way in fighting against the highly exploitative heart of the global fashion industry. As Naima Islam, a machine operator, told the Guardian, “They are trying to silence us but we won’t back down”.

Bangladesh garment workers fight for a living wage

Give me an Australian university and I’ll give you at least one right-wing think tank or a partnership with an environment-destroying mining company, a weapons manufacturer or some other heinous entity. 
The University of Sydney? At the end of last year, it extended <a href="https://honisoit.com/2023/01/the-university-of-sydney-extends-partnership-with-thales-australia/">a partnership with Thales</a>, one of the world’s biggest weapons manufacturers, which “aims to accelerate national security outcomes, embedding staff within each other’s organisation”. 
The University of Western Australia? It is partnered with Woodside and BHP, two of Australia’s major fossil fuel companies, which sponsor the <a href="https://www.uwa.edu.au/facilities/ezone">E-Zone building</a> on campus. <a href="https://www.monash.edu/woodside">Woodside is also partnered with Monash University</a>, where it co-runs the FutureLab on campus. The FutureLab doesn’t advertise what the future of the planet will look like if Woodside keeps making billions from fossil fuel extraction. 
The University of Melbourne? This is home to the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/robert-menzies-institute-must-be-stopped">Robert Menzies Institute</a>, a $7 million propaganda centre run by right-wing culture warriors such as Peta Credlin, a Sky News host and former chief of staff for conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott. 
Why do universities have such ties? To understand this, we need to understand the role that universities play within capitalism. 
Capitalism is a system built on intense competition between rival businesses to make as much money as possible. Whichever is most successful can drive out their rivals. One of the main ways this is done is by developing newer, more efficient ways of doing business. When a company employs new technology to automate part of the production process, it can cut jobs, reduce prices and undercut its competition.
Companies often have their own research and development wings. But it can be more cost effective for the capitalist class to gain state subsidies and pool resources. Universities provide an ideal avenue for this. For example, the Australian coal industry has its own research program, ACARP, which, according to its <a href="https://www.acarp.com.au/Media/ACARP%202022%20Report.pdf">2022 annual report</a>, oversaw more than $91 million of investments across 277 research projects—171 of them in partnership with fifteen Australian universities.
At its most extreme, competition between capitalists takes the form of military competition between states. Universities are vital here too. For instance, <a href="https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2023/03/19/university-aukus-to-drive-skills-and-jobs/">Flinders University recently signed a partnership</a> with universities in the UK and US to help “hundreds of South Australians [begin] to learn the skills required to operate nuclear-powered submarines”. 
Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the majority of the population—the working class—by a minority. The capitalists need the means to secure their position at the top. One way is to spread ideas that justify the status quo, either through promoting it as positive, or at the very least as the best we can hope for. Universities, and the education system more generally, fulfil this role.
They are also important for training the people to run the system. Hence every major university boasts a faculty of economics that teaches nothing but neoclassical theory, and a business school and MBA (master of business administration) program for executives and prospective executives.
Further, universities are managed by a council, whose members often come from corporate backgrounds. Take, for instance, <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/about-us/governance-and-structure/governance/chancellor.html">University of Sydney Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson</a>. She is currently chair of the Australian subsidiary of Thales and a Qantas board member. She was previously a director at Telstra, Coles Myer, Energy Australia and AGL. 
The person most directly in charge of the university is the vice-chancellor. <a href="https://honisoit.com/2022/08/a-crisis-in-university-governance-every-vice-chancellors-salary-ranked/">In 2021, fourteen </a>vice-chan<a href="https://honisoit.com/2022/08/a-crisis-in-university-governance-every-vice-chancellors-salary-ranked/">cellors were paid more than $1 million</a>, putting them well within the top 1 percent of income earners. They are part of the ruling class—well-connected with big business, handsomely compensated and in charge of some of the biggest workplaces in Australia.
Another factor is that universities secure their funding from the government and through partnerships with businesses. They direct their resources where the ruling class most values it precisely to get partnerships with companies and industries. 
So if we want to stop universities being used as bases of research and support for destructive industries, we can’t appeal to the good nature of those in charge of the institutions; they are part of the problem. 
Instead, we need a radical movement of students and staff, who are at the heart of the universities, to force managers to cut these terrible ties. Ultimately, we need to get rid of capitalism.

Global average temperatures hit 1.5 degrees and climate devastation ensues

Bangladesh garment workers fight for a living wage

The terrible ties of our universities

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