The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warning that we have about 12 years — until 2030 — before global warming reaches a catastrophic level. The report concludes, that the world can’t allow global temperatures to warm past 1.5 degrees Celsius, or there will be serious consequences to pay unless we take drastic action, but we’re already all set to get there.
The IPCC predicts an increased risk of devastating climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food, water, security, and economic growth. As sea levels and global temperatures rise, low-lying communities will disappear and heat-related deaths will increase, along with diseases like dengue fever and malaria. Areas that cease to be inhabitable by humans will fuel an accelerated refugee crisis, while resources like agriculture and crops will be decimated in key areas impacted by climate change.
There’s a message of hope: We do have a little bit of time to save the planet. And it’s going to take all of us to do it. We now desperately need a system change. The Paris Climate Agreement isn’t going to be enough — we need massive, mobilization of people and resources. We need a socialism. Its establishment will mean we get a living, healthy planet.
The possible destruction of the world is a grim reality unless the social system of capitalism is abolished and replaced by socialism, the society of all the people. Let them understand that when climate scientists talk about the destruction of the world, they are not joking at all. The urgency of the global warming crisis makes the environmental movement a crucial arena for the Socialist Party. Environmentalists are mistaken to believe they can ignore the socialist analysis of capitalism. To be unaware of the relationship between production, the expansion of the market and accumulation of capital and the logic of profit dooms the ecology movement to failure. Too often they have accused corporations of being irrational in their policies but not understand that businesses are following the rationality of the capitalist system, with its shortsightedness of maximising profit while minimising costs which is inherent within commodity production. It would be fruitless to seek capitalism to replace its own reason for being. Without a clear understanding of capitalism and socialism, the environmental movement can not bring about the fundamental solutions needed to resolve the enormity of climate change. We face enormous threats of environmental destruction and we can only shape our own destiny by embracing socialism, a cooperative commonwealth of associated producers. To paraphrase, ecologists have only interpreted the world, it is for us all to change it. The capitalist system is in direct conflict with the laws of Nature. Capitalism, first of all, is based on the principle of private property of privileged few "owning" the earth for the purpose of exploiting it for profit and their gain.
Some eco-warriors are genuinely critical of capitalism and its destruction of the environment and are seeking an alternative to the dominant economic theories and models used to justify it. However, many of these critics of capitalism within the ecological movement share a dismissive and misguided attitude towards socialism. They fail to appreciate how the Socialist Party’s arguments about a future society gels with ecological ideas of sustainable development. Our technology is so developed that we can create new society where we can all share in the fruits of the planet with future harvests assured. The Socialist Party has never opposed the tremendous achievements that science and technology have contributed to society. But under capitalism, it has been used and developed in an irrational and unplanned manner which has resulted in many catastrophes.
According to socialist economic ideas, profit is extracted from workers’ labour when the capitalists pay them less than the value of what they produce. The portion of the value of the product that the capitalist keeps is called surplus value. The amount of surplus value that the capitalist can keep varies with the level of organisation of the workers, and with their level of privilege within the world labour pool. But the working class can never be paid the full value of their labour under capitalism, because the capitalist class exists by extracting surplus value from their labour. But part of the value of a product comes not just from the labour put into it, but also from the natural resources used to make the product and which is extracted from the planet.
If mankind’s production and consumption is done within the natural limits of the earth’s bounty, then the supply is indeed endless. But this cannot happen under capitalism, because the capitalist class exists by extracting profit not only from the workers but also from the Earth with no purpose other than to make profits. In other words, this system cannot be reformed. It is based on the destruction of the earth and the exploitation of the people. There is no such thing as green capitalism. This is why all activists within the environmental movement must also be socialists. The purpose of the socialist revolution is to create a more efficient and egalitarian way to produce and distribute wealth. One of the principles of socialism is "production for use, not for profit." Socialism means organising society in a manner that is in harmony with the way that nature is organised.
A socialist movement in the hands of working people can bring fundamental change to the capitalist system for it is working people who have their hands on both the machinery of government and manufacture. This system cannot be halted by violence. It is ruthless beyond the capacity of any to resist by force. The only way stopping it is through understanding and knowledge culminating in political action. Those in the ecology movement must begin placing their actions in the larger context of social revolution, not green reformism The destruction of the environment has now reached calamitous proportions. The ‘Greenhouse Effect’, and the wanton destruction of forests is inevitable in a society dominated by blind market forces. The inherent contradictions, antagonisms and the competition of national and business interests make capitalism absolutely incapable of developing the immense renewable energy sources that exist or even introduce adequate safeguards against the harmful effects of pollution. Only a socialist society, a society without classes, without war, without competition, without unemployment, and without poverty can properly utilise the harnessing of sustainable non-polluting power.
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