Lee Zeldin, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0
The climate crisis is first and foremost a crisis caused by the U.S. denying other nations their sovereignty through imperialist violence, but the U.S. climate movement is more comfortable talking only about emissions.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin has been an absolute menace and major impediment to advancing climate and environmental liberation in the United States. In addition to terminating key EPA departments and staffers, Zeldin’s roll back and undercutting of bedrock environmental laws from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to the Clean Air Act, and the endangerment finding, which previously held that greenhouse gasses including carbon dioxide and methane represent threats to, “public health and welfare of current and future generations,” has rendered the EPA into an agent of fossil fuel corporation cartels and other major polluters. The U.S. climate “movement” has focused much of its time decrying Zeldin’s assaults on environmental protection - its criticism is certainly warranted. That said, the U.S. climate “movement” has neglected to focus its attention on, arguably, President Trump’s most pernicious operative as it pertains to global stability, Secretary of State/Interim National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.
Earlier this year I wrote a piece discussing Rubio’s speech in Germany at the Munich Security Conference. Therein I discussed how during his speech, Rubio’s foreign policy rubicon acted as a mandate for western aggression and imperialism through lenses of white “supremacy” ideology and Euro/Anglo hegemony. Since that speech, Rubio has made it clear that U.S. foreign policy is unapologetically guided and informed by white “supremacy” with no regard, whatsoever, for the self-determination and people(s)-centered human rights (PCHRs) of non-white peoples of the global south and the Middle East.
For instance, since last year the U.S. has indiscriminately used lethal military force against boats allegedly carrying drugs off the coasts of the Bolivarian Republics of Venezuela and Colombia. Rubio asserted these actions as legal and justified given President Trump’s designation of groups who allegedly operated the boats as “narco terrorists” and even boasted that the elimination of these boats would continue while speaking in Mexico City, Mexico last September. However, Numerous organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the International Crisis Group have decried the targeting of these vessels as clear violations of domestic and international law. United Nations (UN). special rapporteur, Ben Saul, for his part accused the U.S. of, “responding with lawless violence that flagrantly violates human rights, in its phony war on so-called narco-terrorism.” Yet it was CCR Senior Attorney, Angelo Guisado, who named the actual intent of the U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats, that it has still not provided evidence to prove, when he named, “These extrajudicial killings were poorly veiled cover to justify the illegal overthrow of the Venezuelan government, as admitted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.” Guisado added, “The administration’s desire to play imperial superpower in the region cannot be a reason to completely displace the foundations of international law.”
The U.S. climate “movement” was largely silent on the murderous actions of the U.S. military against Venezuelan and Colombian boats just as it was following the illegal abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, First Combatant Cillia Flores. The few groups that did opine on the U.S. military intervention of Venezuela mainly, if not solely, focused on the potential seizure of the Bolivarian Republic’s vast oil reserves and what this would mean for climate change emissions. For example, the U.S. based Climate and Community Institute in a bulletin it released entitled, Trump’s Illegal Invasion of Venezuela Forebodes an Environmental Disaster, declared, “Rebuilding the Venezuelan oil sector under the control of US multinationals (likely possible only with massive US federal subsidies) would be an ecological catastrophe that will make virtually everyone in the world less secure by further turbocharging climate change.” And the climate change media outlet Drilled, in its piece, U.S. Invasion of Venezuela Violates International Climate Law Too only briefly raised the self-determination of the Venezuelan people, electing to focus more on how the invasion and seizure of the nation’s oil industry would likely violate the International Court of Justice’s July 2025 ruling that nation states have an obligation to protect the environment from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Since initial reactions to the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, U.S. climate groups have, for the most part, remained silent about the fact that the nation is now essentially being run by Rubio who reportedly controls, “Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government,” and regularly exchanges text messages with the nation’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez. The idea that Rubio now controls Venezuela’s natural resources, its oil deposits specifically, makes the disengagement of the U.S. climate “movement” on this issue contemporaneously curious and problematic, while further demonstrating its lack of understanding that, first and foremost, the climate crisis is a crisis of self-determination and PCHRs. This failure of comprehension likely informs the U.S. climate “movement’s” specious and, frankly, tawdry responses to other instances of U.S. global lawlessness and international gangsterism, including its complicity in the genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other war crimes against the Palestinian people at the hands of the zionist ethnostate of Israel.
As it pertains to the U.S./Israeli war of choice and aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which Rubio has claimed is necessary and has been “won,” the U.S. climate movement’s response has been mixed. The liberal-leaning group, Center for American Progress (CAP) actually released an above average report in April that did focus on the issues beyond the environmental impacts of the war. CAP, for instance, notes, “Public attention in the United States has largely focused on the war’s effects on the economy and household finances at home, but the far more severe consequences for civilian populations across the region must not be overlooked.” CAP continues, “The entire war is unconstitutional on multiple fronts; the United States and Israel failed to account for the reverberating effects of their conduct on civilians, while attacks on infrastructure violate international humanitarian law and should be considered ‘collective punishment.’”
However, CAP then goes on to promote U.S. imperialism under the guise of “leadership” and deny the self-determination of the Iranian people as part of their recommended solutions to the humanitarian crises associated with the war suggesting, “The conflict may have inadvertently set back prospects for internal reform within Iran by compelling the population to rally around the regime in the face of external aggression,” and warning, “Furthermore, this collapse of U.S. leadership has created an opening for China to assume an expanded role in humanitarian coordination, further weakening America’s reputation on the world stage.” On the one hand CAP appears to decry the U.S. war machine and its impacts on human rights, but in the same report, the organization which is known to partner with and be funded, in part, by the zionist industrial complex, evokes the idea of the necessity of U.S. global hegemony. It should be noted that the environmental group Greenpeace International (which does not operate similarly to or in full alignment with Greenpeace U.S.) did release a statement describing the war against Iran as “illegal” with the potential to exacerbate humanitarian and environmental crises across the Middle East.
Cuba represents another construct of Rubio’s Rubicon of full-spectrum white supremacist dominance. The illegal siege of the island nation has engendered a humanitarian crisis that can only be described as a war crime against, and collective punishment of the Cuban people. During an interview with Break Through News, People’s Forum Executive Director, Manolo De Los Santos, accurately described Rubio’s actions against Cuba as, “a kink of his because he seems to get off on torturing the Cuban people.” Where is the U.S. climate “movement” on this issue that includes forced starvation, denial of medical care, and the removal of basic human needs like water happening 40 miles from the U.S.? The answer is, it’s largely nowhere to be found, which further implicates the U.S. climate “movement” as a white supremacist and pro-imperialist entity in itself if you hold one of Martin Luther King’s more famous quotes, “In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” to be veracious.
The livestreamed genocide against the Palestinian people should have been an easy entry point for the U.S. climate “movement” in embracing an authentic anti war and anti imperialist stance. And while Rubio is not considered to be an architect of Israel’s genocide, the inconsistent responses to it of groups that make up the U.S. climate “movement” gives us clues as to why it does not hold a consistent anti war/anti imperialist position nor focus enough on Rubio’s role in exacerbating the climate crisis. Take 350.org, the climate group co-founded by renowned activist and author Bill McKibben. When interviewed about Palestine, the organization’s head of public engagement, Namrata Chowdhary, remarked, “We’ve been very deliberate about taking a slower, more cautious approach, and speaking where it seems appropriate for us to do so in solidarity.” In that same Guardian piece where Chowdhary was quoted, it is also noted that when it comes to war and militarism, for many climate groups, “...the shift in focus has been an unwelcome distraction,” adding, “Activists are also having to reckon with the risk of striking the wrong tone and losing support from the people and politicians they are trying to reach.” This represents not only a strategic failure, but also the moral bankruptcy of far too many climate groups in the U.S. who seem far more concerned with increasing philanthropic dollars than increasing global peace and stability.
Where the historically white-led U.S. climate “movement” has demonstrated an unwillingness to embrace an ant-war and anti-imperialist ethos this has not been the case for the environmental justice (EJ) movement. In fact, as far back as 1991, as part of the Principles of Environmental Justice, the EJ movement affirmed an opposition to, “military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms,” while also calling for, “the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination of all peoples.” These principles form the foundation of the Black Alliance for Peace’s (BAP) Climate, Environment, and Militarism initiative that calls for the need to embrace a basis for climate and environmental liberation as part of calling for a requisite intervention that centers the role that imperialism and war play in destabilizing the planet and the ability for colonized people, domestically and globally, from realizing self-determination and PCHRs.
BAP for its part has called out the fascism of Marco Rubio for some time, including back in 2025 when it denounced his visit to the Dominican Republic. But BAP and other groups, Black, Brown, and Indigenous-led, that make up the EJ movement cannot be the only ones that are establishing and elucidating the axiomatic nexus between Rubio’s rubicon, climate change, militarism and imperialism. The U.S. climate “movement” will need to step up in big ways, which requires it to eviscerate its own internalized and pronounced elements of white “supremacy” and colonialism that prevent it from understanding how pernicious Marco Rubio is as part of confronting and dismantling the climate crisis efficaciously.
Lenin was clear in his characterization of imperialism - a maturation of capitalism in which free competition is replaced by monopolies that, in turn, push nations like the U.S. to seize, extract, and exploit natural resources and labor to generate and maintain profit through colonization and militarism. As the climate issue continues to decrease as a major issue for United Statesian and the relevancy of the U.S. climate “movement” in concert, it is imperative that it becomes an anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-imperialist movement. Doing so would better position the U.S. climate “movement” to focus its attention on Rubio and his malevolent machinations that form an iniquitous intersection of climate catastrophe, war/militarism, and imperialism that advances one of the root causes of the climate crisis, white “supremacy” ideology, colonization, and patriarchal violence, while increasing not just its relevance in the process, but also a requisite morality that is a critical component for any and all entities that purport to struggle for collective social justice.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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