FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

We cannot take it anymore.

We have been working tirelessly, with various legal cases against our activists, in alliance with various social movements and diverse organizations. Years have passed, and the scientific consensus on the climate crisis has established itself as a social consensus (92% of Portuguese people), but the system has given up on democracy and has not responded.

The climate crisis is not a technical or abstract problem. Someone killed dozens of people in Pedrogão Grande. Someone destroyed the homes of 155,000 people in Canada, with the 5900 fires that affected 15 million hectares. Someone put 33 million people in Pakistan (since March 2022) to fight against heatwaves, power failures, floods, evacuations, migrations, hunger, rapes, social conflicts, and new heatwaves.

They know what they’re doing. They sleep well.

We know too. We can’t sleep.

We are not just in a global emergency; we are at war. Annually, governments, companies, and institutions created to maintain the appearance of peace kill thousands of people worldwide, in pursuit of profit.

Governments and companies declared war on people and the planet long ago. They are consciously killing us.

In 2021, 37,120,000,000 tons of CO2 were emitted globally. In 2021, 9 million people were sentenced to death. At this rate of emissions, every hour we sentence another thousand people to die. Portugal’s emissions are sentencing 38 people to death per day. Every day that we don’t stop them is a day without peace.

The entire planet has become a gas chamber, and they continue emitting CO2 into the atmosphere to kill us.

Knowing what we know, what are we going to do?

Knowing what you know, what will you do?

We cannot take it anymore.

We have been working tirelessly, with various legal cases against our activists, in alliance with various social movements and diverse organizations. Years have passed, and the scientific consensus on the climate crisis has established itself as a social consensus (92% of Portuguese people), but the system has given up on democracy and has not responded.

The climate crisis is not a technical or abstract problem. Someone killed dozens of people in Pedrogão Grande. Someone destroyed the homes of 155,000 people in Canada, with the 5900 fires that affected 15 million hectares. Someone put 33 million people in Pakistan (since March 2022) to fight against heatwaves, power failures, floods, evacuations, migrations, hunger, rapes, social conflicts, and new heatwaves.

They know what they’re doing. They sleep well.

We know too. We can’t sleep.

We are not just in a global emergency; we are at war. Annually, governments, companies, and institutions created to maintain the appearance of peace kill thousands of people worldwide, in pursuit of profit.

Governments and companies declared war on people and the planet long ago. They are consciously killing us.

In 2021, 37,120,000,000 tons of CO2 were emitted globally. In 2021, 9 million people were sentenced to death. At this rate of emissions, every hour we sentence another thousand people to die. Portugal’s emissions are sentencing 38 people to death per day. Every day that we don’t stop them is a day without peace.

The entire planet has become a gas chamber, and they continue emitting CO2 into the atmosphere to kill us.

Knowing what we know, what are we going to do?

Knowing what you know, what will you do?

Our house is on fire. There are no “other people” or institutions that will stop the fire. We are entering every room, knocking on every door because we have to put out the fire.

Today, every hurricane is a missile that oil companies have launched at cities. Every drought is a theft of farmers’ land by oil companies. Every flood is a bomb knowingly dropped by governments. Every day, we allow them to continue killing us.

We know that you didn’t choose this. That you didn’t want this. Today, everything we love is being destroyed, and we are the last generations who can stop them. We have to face reality and be honest with ourselves.

We, ordinary people, need to make an agreement among ourselves about what we will do. The top priority is to open this public discussion. Ending the war will be an outcome of this public discussion.

What does it mean to live in a war? What was it like to live in Germany in 1937? What is an appropriate response to genocide and ecocide?

Today, there are more climate refugees than refugees from all current conflicts combined. A 2°C global warming would create a billion climate refugees. This is 20 times the number of refugees from World War II, or 200 times those from Ukraine. The climate crisis is a total social collapse, an unprecedented war in the history of humanity.

Dr. Johan Rockström, likely the most esteemed climate scientist in Europe, emphasizes the obvious fact that nature is interconnected. When a part of it falls, the rest follows, and 2°C of warming lead to 3°C, which lead to 4°C, implying that one third of the planet’s currently inhabited surface becomes uninhabitable. A 4°C warming is a sentence for all of us, opening the doors to limitless heating – an unimaginable future.

“Coal trains are death trains – no less horrendous than wagons headed for the crematoriums.“

Dr. James Hansen, while serving as the chief climate scientist at NASA

To stop limitless heating, we urgently need to halt all new weapons of mass destruction, implement a decarbonization and peace plan that serves the people, and not place faith in those who brought us to this point.

What tactics has Climáximo not tried yet? Calling for protests? Talking to the government? Forging large alliances? Visiting most affected areas? Visiting companies? Going to production sites?

We’ve done it all. The problem is that governments and corporate leaders are making conscious and coordinated choices to kill and displace thousands of people, including you and your loved ones. To stop this war, you have to stop consenting to it, and we have to discuss how we will fight for our lives.

“Experts studying social movements not only believe that disruption can be an effective tactic but also consider it the most important factor for the success of a social movement.”
James Özden, Director of the Social Change Lab

Recent studies confirm that more assertive actions do not alienate people. UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that “we need disruption to stop destruction.”

We know none of us chose this. However, right now, our house is on fire. Everyone has to stop what they’re doing, and together, we have to put out the fire.

Leading the greatest failure in human history is not a source of pride. The Portuguese government is, in fact, perfectly aligned with goals that absolutely contradict all science, insisting on insane projects to build new weapons: airports and pipelines that will kill millions of people.

Even if the government’s most ambitious goals were to be achieved (which is not happening), Portugal would emit its entire CO2 budget for 2100 between 2026 and 2035.

The government’s commitments, particularly those of the Paris Agreement, lead us, at best, to a reality where billions of people are forced to lose everything. You are included in these figures. We are included in these figures. The projects they are leading are projects of death.

Governments and corporations have declared war against people and the entire planet. This is a global war. Some countries have more gas chambers. Some countries have more weapons of mass destruction. Right now, no country has a plan compatible with climate science, meaning they are all killing us.

If you believe it’s more effective to go to China or the United States of America or any other country or city to stop this war, please go and keep us informed so we can coordinate strategies.

Climáximo is part of several international networks.

As long as there are people in Portugal and there are weapons of mass destruction in Portugal, there must be a militant resistance in Portugal as well. Climáximo is one of the main actors in that resistance.

Renewable energy projects don’t cut emissions. Cutting emissions cuts emissions. Until renewable energy projects are associated with a commitment of emission cuts elsewhere, they can only be considered energy expansion serving as green propaganda.

Electric cars don’t cut emissions. “Solutions” aimed at maximizing profit for the companies that started this war are a way to deceive people, and follow the same logic of mass destruction that brought us here. We need free public transportation, energy produced and managed democratically: a peace plan to rebuild a damaged society – not a continuation plan of a futureless normalcy.

Yes, we know we will face repression. We also know that we have less than 5 years to change everything. The current plans of governments and corporations will destroy everything we love. Acting now is the only option.

We are more afraid of what will happen if we don’t act than if we do.

Throughout history, ordinary people have faced legal consequences for fighting for the right to life and justice. From suffragettes to struggles for independence and the end of slavery.

We know that when the Nuremberg trials happen, and CEOs, the ultra-rich, and politicians are on trial, we will be on the right side of history.

We fight for a peace plan. We act for a world where all workers and communities dependent on these weapons have a just transition with full employment to an economy managed with people at the center. This concrete plan exists. The government rejected it.

There are workers and communities dependent on weapons factories. Effectively, it was a worker who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There were workers who ran concentration camps. There are public officials in some countries whose job is to police women’s clothing on the street and kill them if the clothing is not deemed decent by arbitrary criteria. These officials have families depending on their salary.

We need to stop the war. Everyone wants to live. Workers need dignified and socially useful jobs. That is the peace plan we will build together after we stop the war.

The best contribution any worker in any sector can make now is to openly say they don’t want to be complicit in this genocidal system and join civil resistance actions, be they occupations, strikes, blockades, or direct actions.

That’s precisely the problem. Decades of corruption and public subsidies to the industries of this war have crushed alternatives.

Now, we live in a collective crisis that requires collective solutions. From collective public transportation to a railway network cheaper than flying, to products designed not to break and be immediately replaced – we are fighting for an economy with life at its center, not profit.

A private jet trip emits more CO2eq than an average Portuguese family in an entire year. Private jets, short-distance flights, and cruises kill thousands of people each year, for luxury. Should the ultra-rich be free to violate people’s right to life, on a whim? No.

Seriously looking at the reality we live in requires serious answers. Setting priorities in the climate crisis means immediately stopping new weapons, like every luxury flight taking off, or golf courses stealing increasingly scarce fresh water.

At the moment, we don’t know of any political party in Portugal, with or without parliamentary representation, that recognizes we are living through Humanity’s greatest crisis.

We are not aware of any political party or non-governmental organization that is acting in accordance with the state of climate crisis and presenting a program compatible with science and reality.

How long do we have left to stop climate chaos? If we were to win the elections, the un-voted and completely arbitrary rules of financial institutions such as the European Central Bank would not allow for the necessary change.

The only acceptable debates within the “spectrum of the normal and possible” for politicians and companies are about how we will profit from the situation, how we may fight for small improvements within social collapse, or about denying the problem.

This happens because everyone is aware that stopping the climate crisis is not impossible, but requires a large-scale industrial and labor transformation process, with life rather than profit at the center of society. Well, this is a change that requires huge social transformation. Whatever form it takes, it will always be counted as a revolution. This change frightens the 1% of the population that is currently profiting from the destruction of life, and will not be allowed by the institutions that work for them.

The 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution reminds us how big changes can happen in a short period of time when people unite and fight side by side. The change needed to stop the climate crisis will be made by people.

For life.

This means that it doesn’t matter what you decide on March 10, but what you do for the remaining 364 days of the year.

The biggest crisis in Human history will not be solved at the polling stations, but rather in the streets, industries, ports, schools and health centers. Facing reality is frightening, because those who should be protecting us are sentencing us to die. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are ways to stop the current crises, and it’s up to all of us to stop consenting to and normalizing the violence done to us, and to conquer social peace side by side, implementing with our own hands a society with life at its core.

We are telling people that the filter of democracy we live in isn’t going to solve the situation. We are saying that the terms in which these elections are taking place, and the electoral debates, are completely detached from reality.

The Media are not up to speed with the historical moment we are in and refuse to treat the climate crisis as the war that it is, framing elections as if they were normal, and current times as if they were normal.

On the other hand, most political parties, the political arms of the companies that run the country, will turn the electoral campaign into a nasty communication game on smoke and ghosts, openly rejecting to solve the climate crisis and intending only to choose the next generals in this war against society. The remaining parties will not stray too far from the lines of normalcy for fear of losing the popularity contest that elections have become.

People may vote, but they should be under no illusion that it will end the war against society.