Thirty nine years ago, on this day, February 5th, 1986 President of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara dropped some truth bombs in Paris.
This struggle to defend the trees and Forests is above all a struggle against imperialism. . Imperialism is the arsonist of our forests and savannas,”
Shttps://www.marxists.org/archive/sankara/1986/february/05.htm
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Thomas Sankara was a throwback to the 1960s and 70s, military fatigue, fiery language. And here we have fiery languages, 100% accurate.
What I think we can learn from this is that people on the pointy end of capitalism, imperialism, and expropriation don’t need textbooks or PhDs to explain to them that they are getting shafted and that the planet is getting shafted. They just need their eyes. And they have them.
What happened next Sankara was killed in a bloody military coup the following year. And that kind of rhetoric about imperialism and expropriation, exploitation, devastation was not really apparent in the Brundtland Commission. Oddly enough.
For more on Sankara, see this 2020 piece on Verso’s blog.