Unequally responsible for climate change

3rd August 2026

Dear Editor,

Tom Collins (Irish News, July 28th) is correct to argue that placing responsibility for global heating on ‘the climate’, kicking issues down the road, and ignoring the societal roots of heatwaves are serious issues and by ‘labelling the problem as someone else’s (in this case, the climate’s) we only make it easier to deny the problem exists, and to pass responsibility for solving it to someone else’.

However, in stating that the “climate crisis”, is in fact “a human crisis”, he fails to identify that the climate crisis is a capitalist crises and that a small group of people bear disproportionate responsibility for our environmental crises while billions are the victims of climate change and have no responsibility for causing it. For example, according to a recent report by Oxfam, “the investment emissions of … 308 billionaires totalled 586 million tonnes of CO2e in 2024, more than the combined emissions of 118 countries” (Climate Plunder). Oxfam estimates that a person from the richest 0.1% (8.3 million people) produces more carbon pollution in a day than the poorest 50% (4 billion) emit in a year, and emissions generated by the richest 1% (83 million people) in one year alone will cause 1.3 million heat-related deaths by the end of the century.

Evidence from comparatively wealthy European countries also shows similar stark inequalities in relation to heat waves and prolonged cold. For example, research from the journal Nature Health shows that between 2000-2019 extremes of hot and cold “disproportionally affect disadvantaged populations” in 32 European countries. The figures are shocking: the researchers found that an additional 300,000 deaths were “linked to the inability to keep the home warm”, and an additional 180,000 heat-related deaths were linked to income inequality.

To use a phrase coined by F Engels, this is ‘social murder’ on a grand scale and it is shocking but not surprising because the working class and the oppressed always suffer the effects of the capitalist system, in which massive wealth accrues to a tiny population of a few thousand families while the health and wellbeing of the people and the environment suffer. Oxfam argues for redistribution of wealth through an aggressive wealth tax, but for the Workers Party this will not work at a scale or speed required by the crises we face. Only a socialist transformation can ensure that rational planning replaces the chaos of market relations which are at the root of both obscene inequality and the linked climate crises.

Yours sincerely,

Nicola Grant

Northern Regional Chairperson

The Workers Party