This essay traces the history of the REDD-Plus initiative within a broader understanding of the changes within the international division of labour in world capitalism. It shows that the reconfiguration of nature is an important feature of resolving the crisis of accumulation within capitalism. Seen from this perspective, it is not surprising that political and economic domination is a driver of uneven development in the reordering of world capitalism itself.

Today we are faced with two main strategies for solving the problem of climate change. In the first, (symptomatic) measures are applied within the capitalist system, which tend towards "energy transformation" and alleviate symptoms, rather than addressing the causes. Examples of such policies in action abound in many countries: broadly similar, they defer to the interests of capital. This may be termed the hegemonic climate politics. The second strategy is that of anti-capitalist climate politics of the people as exploited workers and oppressed segments of society. The two policies differ not only in terms of solutions, but primarily in terms of their grasp of the causes of the climate question. Unlike the first, the second acknowledges that the climate has changed due to the functional laws  of capitalism

The left sees that capitalism is responsible for climate change. It recognizes the urgency of the situation. But instead of building its capacity to seize the state, it advocates small-scale, local, decentralized solutions and more protests and democracy. If we really are on the verge of catastrophe, shouldn’t we building a revolutionary party able to respond to the disaster and push forward an egalitarian alternative?

Hegemonic climate politics conceals that capitalism’s structural contradictions cause climate change, either articulating itself without confronting such contradictions or offers solutions which bring new equally sharp contradictions to the fore instead. I elaborate on the following contradictions throughout the article: capital and nature; capital and labor; time of capital and time of nature/climate; time of capital and time of labor; the necessity of effective climate policies and the demands of capital; the urgency of climate measures and postponement of targets to 2050; the climate commitments which pin its faith upon the order of capitalist economy and upon market mechanisms and emission reduction targets and the actual climate policies under operation; mitigation policies and application tools that do not have a feature for mitigation.

By pointing to the intersection of capitalism with patriarchy, racism and speciesism on the world scale, socialist ecofeminism allows to see ecological transition as an intersection of different struggles for ‘system change’. Taking this vision seriously could help socialist organizations to free themselves from their inherited obsession with the forces of production and GDP growth – the capitalist/industrial version of modernity – and envision a true ecological revolution.