For World Environment Day

Climate change due to global warming is perhaps the greatest danger facing humanity as a whole at the moment. Some environmentalists imply that socialists are jumping on the bandwagon. For the record, socialists have been warning about the dangers capitalist production methods pose the environment for nearly 150 years.

In 1875, in Dialectics of Nature, Fred Engels had this to say:

“At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing over nature – but that we, with flesh and blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. We are gradually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more remote social effects of our productive activity, and so are afforded the opportunity to control and regulate these effects well. This regulation, however, requires a complete revolution in our existing mode of production…in our whole contemporary social order”

Socialists are no different from others in desiring an environment in which the safety of all animal and plant species is ensured. Where we differ from environmentalist activists is in recognising that their demands have to be set against a well-entrenched economic and social system, based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding law of profits first.

The Socialist Party priority remains the same – abolition of the profit system and the establishment of a system of society where the earth’s natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled.

It has long been our case for socialism that human needs can be satisfied without recourse to production methods that adversely effect the natural environment, which is exactly why we advocate the establishment of a system of society in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit. We are not talking about nationalisation or any other tinkering with the present system, but rather its entire abolition and replacement with a global system in which the earth’s natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled; a society in which each production processes takes into consideration not only human need but any likely effect upon the environment.

Once the Earth’s natural and industrial resources have been wrested from the master class and become the common heritage of all humanity, then production can be geared to meeting needs in an ecologically acceptable way, instead of making profits without consideration for the environment. This the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature and to at last begin to reverse the degradation of the environment caused by the profit system. The only effective strategy for achieving a free and democratic society and, moreover, one that is in harmony with nature, is to build up a movement which has the achievement of such a society as its objective.

"Climate change" according to Sir Nicholas Stern,  is the greatest ever market failure, but the answer is not to replace markets. Instead, we need to price pollution into markets and extend market mechanisms so that they work more effectively".

In other words, the market has failed, so Long Live the Market! The Socialist Party take a different view. We say: the market has failed, so let's replace it with something better that doesn't produce problems like global over-warming.

The "carbon trading" and "green taxes" favoured by some eco-activists are just tampering with the market system, whereas if carbon emissions are to be stabilised and the consequences of global warming tackled effectively it is the whole market system of competitive production for profit that must go.

Its replacement would be a world without frontiers where the Earth's natural and industrial resources have become the common heritage of all humanity. Only then will a world body capable of taking the necessary co-ordinated global action exist. Only then can the Earth's resources be used to satisfy people's needs not to make a profit for those who own and exploit them. The buying and selling of the market system would be replaced by giving and taking in accordance with the principle "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs". 

The threat of climate change is clearly a global problem that can only be dealt with by co-ordinated action at world level. But this is not going to happen under capitalism. As a system involving competition between profit-seeking corporations backed up by their protecting states, it is inherently incapable of world-wide cooperation. There never has been such cooperation. Just the opposite, in fact. The inevitable clashing interests between different states, each seeking to pursue the interests of its profit-seeking corporations, breeds war rather than cooperation. So it’s not going to happen under capitalism. There is not going to be any coordinated world action to deal with global warming as long as capitalism is allowed to continue.

Something will be done but it is bound to be too little, too late. It’s certainly going to be too little. These days, when private corporations have governments under their thumb, what is being proposed is not even state intervention to force carbon-polluting corporations to limit their emissions in the overall capitalist interest. It’s to try to use the mechanisms of the market to solve the problem: fiddling about with the tax system to make investment in anti-pollution measures more profitable; establishing an artificial world market and price for carbon. Anybody can see that this is not going to work.

Green activists are also proposing that individuals play their part, as if individuals rather than the system were to blame. They want us to drive electric cars, turn off the lights when we leave a room, don't leave our TV on standby, and not fly to our holiday destination. That’s all very well but unless they want us to reduce our standard of living that will just mean we would have money to spend on something else. As the capitalist class are always wanting us to reduce our standard of living since this means more for them as profits - and provoke strikes and impose austerity to try to do so - socialists are naturally suspicious of the motives behind the propaganda here. In any event since the great bulk of carbon emissions come from energy generated for industry, offices and commercial transport, as well as from deforestation, even if we did all the things they want - and we’re not saying we shouldn’t, that’s an individual life-style choice - it wouldn’t make much difference. Changing life-styles is no more a solution to climate change than letting the invisible hand of the market have a go.

Having said that, individuals do have some responsibility in the matter. Capitalism - the cause of the problem - only continues because people put up with it. Most people don’t see any alternative to working for wages, producing for profit, using money, the world divided into states, the existence of armies. These attitudes both reflect and sustain capitalism. And every time people get a chance to vote, a majority back politicians committed to maintaining the capitalist system as the way of organising the production and distribution of wealth. So capitalism continues. As do its problems, including the threat of global over-warming. Maybe as this gets nearer people will be driven to consider an alternative.

Carbon emissions can only be reduced by global action. And effective global action will only be possible within the framework of a united world. A united world is only possible on the basis of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources being the common heritage of all humanity.

Many people believe Earth Summits has made almost no difference to the future of the planet and will not achieve anything tangible. If previous climate conferences are anything to go by, few hold out for anything worth celebrating. With growing concern now about the destruction wrought on of the planet's life-support system, the bumbling negotiations that are supposed to map out a plan for protecting our eco-systems. There was little or nothing to applaud but there’s profits to be had. Where there are profits to be made, and wherever these profits will come into conflict with environmental and human rights issues, any CEO or board of directors not seen to have profits forefront in their minds will be shown the door pretty damned quick. This is actually capitalism functioning efficiently. The focus is always profit and the process is capital accumulation which is not sustainable development. Capitalism cannot be trusted to run the world in the interests of humanity; that governments serve the interests of profit first and that if we are ever to take control of this planet and run it in the real interests of its inhabitants, then we must do so ourselves, without leaders and with a view to establishing a global system of society in which production is freed from the constraints of profit and in which each person will have free access to the benefits of civilisation

If capitalism is presently incapable of solving the more pressing problems faced by humanity, we can well ponder what a difficult time ahead we face in a world in which we are increasingly at the mercy of the elements.

If past experience is to go by, then we can fully expect future rounds of talks to be yet another waste of time whilst providing us with further evidence that capitalism has long out-lived its usefulness and that it is time to hand over control of the world to those who could best decide its future – a worldwide socialist majority. That Wall St and the City of London can get excited about the profits to be made from trading in pollution credits – whilst the planet we inhabit faces environmental catastrophe from pollution – says much about the insanity of the system we live in and very much begs the question: are you with us or against us?