Declaration of a State of Climate Emergency - 2023

4 years ago, we declared a climate emergency within Climáximo. At that time, we already knew that governments and companies were not going to stop the crisis they created, and that we were the ones we were waiting for. But during those years, some part of us wanted to believe that it wouldn’t come to that: that maybe the perfect time would still come for us to revolt, that maybe other people would come to help us, that maybe we wouldn’t have to risk everything.

We have reached the summer of 2023, and the memory that stays with us from the year gone by are brutal catastrophes and thousands of deaths that even we at Climáximo have to strive not to turn banal: the sentencing – either to prison or to death – of dozens of our fellow comrades across the world who have risen up against the genocide and ecocide of capitalism; the news that the 1.5°C barrier of warming for which millions have fought, could be surpassed in just a few years; and what was the hottest week ever, and which will soon be no longer.

We are not just in a global emergency, we are at war. Every year, the governments, companies and institutions that set out to maintain the appearance of peace, kill at least hundreds of thousands of people around the world for profit. At the moment, every attempt to increase emissions amounts to a non-negotiable attempt to build a new concentration camp. Every year that passes without cutting global emissions by 10% is a year in which millions of people die in concentration camps.

Every day we do not stop them and destroy their weapons of annihilation is another day without peace. For too long they – governments, companies and institutions – have declared war on people. They have been killing us for too long. They have long shown they have no intention of stopping. It is their crimes that have now brought us to the brink of a point of no return. It is their foot on the accelerator to climate hell.

But what about us who see this happening and don’t do everything to stop the killings? Every day that the climate crisis is not at the top of the public agenda, that we don’t do everything in our power to stop them, is a day that we are being complicit with genocide and ecocide and letting their crimes go unchecked. The state of false social peace we are in is due to their efforts to keep us dissonant from the catastrophic reality we live in. We need to break this false sense of peace and make it visible that they have long since declared war on humanity.

It is also everything we in Climáximo have and have not done to stop them that makes us realize that nothing we have done makes sense anymore. What the climate emergency demands of us in 2023 is a complete break with what Climáximo has been to date and a total transformation of who we are.

2023 is the year we make a commitment to:

1. Accept that the government and companies are at war with society and the planet.
2. Build resistance and fight back despite the personal and organizational risks we may face.
3. Create the international coordination that will implement Climate Justice, within the timelines set by science.We will do it with courage, because it is our only chance to stop the collapse of civilization and implement peace.

We will do it with courage, because it is our only chance of stopping the collapse of civilization and implement peace.

In December, we will once again evaluate the commitments we made to stop this war, and realize what transformations we must continue to make.