Future on Fire: A Review

David Camfield, Future on Fire: Capitalism and the Politics of Climate Change (Oakland: PM Press, 2023)

Published on East Bay Syndicalists, 22 December 2025

David Camfield’s Future on Fire is a clarion call for the application of an “emergency brake” to the uncontrolled global warming produced by the capitalist system (15). While the greenhouse effect was identified at least as early as 1824 by the mathematician Joseph Fourier, and the physicist Svante Arrhenius predicted in 1896 that carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emissions would greatly worsen this effect, the ineffectual Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been farcically meeting on an annual basis now for three decades. The COP began convening in the wake of the mainstream scientific acceptance of the risks posed by global heating, following climatologist James Hansen’s public testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1988.

Yet, in reality, little to no progress has been made to date, given that CO₂ emissions are at record highs. As Dharna Noor notes in the foreword to Future on Fire, despite incontestable evidence of the risks that climate breakdown poses to humanity and many other species, “state actors have largely avoided imposing even moderate regulations” on greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG’s) (xiii).

In this slim volume, Camfield traces the fatal dance between fossil-fuel interests and governments, whereby mega-capitalists from the hydrocarbon industry either capture the State directly or make it bend to their will by threatening disinvestment and capital strike. The bosses act this way, so that they can preempt national legislation aimed at curbing GHG’s and lobby against binding international climate treaties—even if such profit-maximizing strategies jeopardize the very future of humanity (8–13, 28–9). Environmental sociologist Allan Schnaiberg outlined this fatal dynamic back in 1980 through his proposed model of the “treadmill of production.”

Such sober and critically realistic analysis leads Camfield to conclude that only mass-movements can deliver a just transition away from fossil-fuel-driven climate chaos in the short timeframe that we appear to have left before runaway global warming takes effect (31–3). In this sense, the author acknowledges that “climate justice politics should be fundamentally extraparliamentary,” not directed toward electoral politics. At best, this reconstructive alternative would be based on egalitarianism, internationalism, and the self-emancipation of the working classes (44–59). Camfield discusses the survival of Indigenous peoples, including Palestinians, as providing possible inspiration for future human survival under scenarios in which GHG emissions are not mitigated (62–6).

The author concludes his book with a short chapter extolling eco-socialism, which he defines as “a self-governing society with a nondestructive relationship to the rest of nature” (67). He proposes a shift toward democratic workplaces as part of a devolution of power from the capitalists to the workers on the path to the “ecologically rational cooperative commonwealth” (72–4). Short of this, the author controversially affirms the relevance of eco-socialist politics even as harm reduction and palliative care (56, 74–5), assuming the bourgeoisie does “ruin the world” irreparably, in the knowing words of Spanish anarcho-syndicalist Buenaventura Durruti.

Conclusion

In closing, we highly recommend Future on Fire. Like the cause of green syndicalism, Camfield confronts the urgency of the climate crisis head-on, proposing radical mass-movements as the proper remedy. While brief, this book will hopefully serve as an important catalyst for conversations and organizing campaigns aimed at fighting global warming, resisting capitalist authoritarianism, and bringing about the much-needed cooperative commonwealth.

COP30 Press Release: Stop the Farce!

Originally posted on the Industrial Workers of the World Environmental Union Caucus, 11 November 2025

As delegations of numerous State representatives gather in Belém, Brazil, for the Thirtieth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), known as COP30, the Industrial Workers of the World Environmental Union Caucus (IWW EUC) would like to pause and reflect on this critical moment. After three decades of annual meetings, the COP and UNFCCC have utterly failed in their objective of reducing the grave risks posed by global warming to humanity and the rest of nature. Such failures are clear: carbon-dioxide emissions are now at an all-time high, and 2023, 2024, and 2025 have been the hottest on record… so far.

Ahead of the COP30 meeting, UN Secretary General António Guterres conceded that the world has officially missed the +1.5°C target in increased average global temperatures (relative to pre-industrial levels) that the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement had identified as the goal for controlling global warming.

The Trump regime—in line with its atrocious authorization of oil and gas extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency, mandating the violation of the Endangered Species Act via the clear-cutting of vast old-growth forests, withdrawing yet again from the Paris Agreement, resurrecting coal energy, and wrecking numerous renewable-energy projects—isn’t even bothering to send a delegation to COP30, although it still remains a COP member.

In parallel to the climate-denialist U.S. government and armies of fossil-fuel lobbyists that have stymied action to curb global warming for three decades, petro-despotic States like Russia and such OPEC members as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will presumably continue to block any and all international agreements that might mandate meaningful reductions in worldwide carbon emissions at COP30, even without the U.S. officially present.

The IWW EUC emphasizes that the entire COP process is a farce, and that capitalism—together with all other authoritarian economic and governmental systems—must be dismantled to protect humanity and planet Earth against the climate and environmental crises. This is so, given that capitalism mandates the subordination of the working classes to the whims of the managers and owners, who are committed above all to maximizing profit and increasing market share, even and especially when their directives degrade and destroy the environment and the possibility of a livable future. (Consider the classic example of the oil executive who imperils the health and safety of his offspring by ordering the expansion of fossil-fuel production.) As a caucus, we assert that only a post-capitalist future based on ecologically sustainable worker- and community-controlled alternatives will allow for real mitigation of global warming and restoration of ecological balance.

We applaud the front-line community-led non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), Indigenous groups, unions, and nation-States that demand accountability from COP member states, especially those of the Global North. That being said, we certainly do challenge the mistreatment of workers, front-line communities, and Indigenous peoples at the hands of all States, whether they be more or less powerful.

Collectively, we support the statement and call to action in “Weaving Paths from Colonial Apocalypse to Ecological Revolution.”

Lastly: Abolish wage slavery, and live in harmony with the Earth!