“The COP29 summit has opened in Azerbaijan as climate change drives weather chaos around the world and people protest against the failure of governments to combat global warming”, National Organiser Judith Cazorla told the Communist Party’s Political Committee yesterday evening (12 November).
She spoke as the death toll during storms and floods in her native province of Valencia, Spain, rose above 200. Demonstrators there have called for the Prime Minister’s resignation, demanding to know why rescue operations were so late and inadequate.
“While the so-called ‘socialist’ and conservative parties in Spain were blaming each other for the disaster, people on the ground were recovering bodies and houses from the mud”, she pointed out. In particular, she contrasted the civil emergency policies in many developed and developing capitalist countries with those in socialist Cuba and People’s China.
“Cuba – a Third World country struggling against the illegal and cruel US economic blockade – has survived Hurricane Rafael without fatalities, unlike Jamaica, Panama and Colombia. As in China, socialist state power invests heavily in civil emergency preparations and mobilises the whole state and society in the fight against climate disasters”, the CP Organiser declared.
Britain’s Communists criticised the Labour government’s recent Budget for not announcing substantial extra investment in emergency planning to deal with floods, coastal erosion and other disasters caused or worsened by global warming.
The CP Political Committee also warned that the likely withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement could sabotage progress towards cutting global emissions by 43% by 2030.
“As the one of the biggest source of greenhouse gases and one of the top emitters per head of population, the US has a special responsibility to cut its own emissions and assist developing countries in their transition to clean energy”, she insisted.
Britain’s Communists also called for the biggest ever turnout on 30 November‘a national demonstration in solidarity with the people of Palestine to end Israel’s genocidal assault and its bombing of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran.
Hadash and Communist Party of Israel (Maki) member of parliament, Ofer Cassif, now banned from speaking in the Knesset, has been invited to address the Party’s Executive Committee at its meeting on 23-24 November.
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