As the climate emergency and extinction crises deepen, more activists are realising that the capitalist system is the main barrier to the urgent changes needed.

All the warnings from the overwhelming majority of scientists and appeals to reason are coming up against a roadblock: the capitalist pursuit of profit.

The cost of renewable energy has been lower than fossil fuels for years and it continues to fall.

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Yet since the Paris Agreement on climate was adopted in 2016, the world’s 60 biggest banks have committed US$6.9 trillion ($10.4 trillion) to the fossil fuel industry.

The reason they continue to fund fossil fuels is because they can still make huge profits by doing this, even though it comes at a terrible ecological and social cost.

Research by Climate Analytics shows that, in the three decades to 2018, 25 biggest emitting oil and gas companies in the world made US$30 trillion in profit while a partial accounting of damages linked to their products was US$20 trillion.

On this calculation, these companies could have paid for the climate damage they caused........

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