Earth Day

For the last 42 years, Earth Day has called attention to some of the world's most pressing environmental and social problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and dwindling natural resources. Yet the problems remain unresolved. It is also just 2 years ago that the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico took place.

Capitalism is a blind process of profit accumulation. Capitalism without growth is impossible, so it’s the capitalist need for profit that is responsible for the poisoning of the planet and its people. The administrators of capitalism serve a supremely ignorant master. For all their hot air on how we can protect the Earth, they are never going to challenge the thing they most believe in. They will still be making speeches while the world fries and dies.

Some 1 billion people worldwide presently experience chronic hunger, and 98 percent of these people live in developing countries. Poor urban households spend from 60 to 80 percent of their income on food, putting them at risk of hunger or malnutrition when food prices rise or their incomes fall. Micronutrient deficiencies, including lack of vitamin A, iodine, and iron, affect 1 billion people worldwide and stem partly from a lack of variety in people’s diets. Roughly a third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year. Each year, more than 29 million acres, or enough land to grow 20 million tons of grain, turn into deserts. A quarter of the world’s known plant species, some 60,000 to 100,000 species. The FAO estimates that 21 percent of the world’s livestock breeds are at risk of extinction. An example, at a more local level, since 1921, Ontario has lost 9 million acres of farmland. In the last two decades, the province lost 25,000 farms through consolidation or transfer to other uses. 75 per cent of established farmers are expected to retire in the next 10 years. The only market that allows the farmer to retire is the housing development market or even larger farmers who can borrow against their own large holdings or quota. Or the land speculators.

Countless companies are co-opting the Earth Day message for good PR and to peddle new products. It has become just another marketing opportunity. The sad truth that "going green" on Earth Day has become another gimmick. What is behind this laudable concern for the environment, and how are they going to achieve their aims? Simple, the only way capitalism can think of doing anything. By making loads of money out of it. Green capitalism's basic idea is that if we just price the environment correctly—creating new markets for new “environmental products” based on monetised measures of environmental health and degradation—then everyone and the environment will win. All that amounts to the economic rationalisation of nature. Stock exchanges, dealing in new environmental ‘products’ have been set up; for example the Climate exchanges in London and Chicago. Carbon credits are the currency representing the emission of carbon. Once these credits enter the international financial system their future value can be speculated on (as with any other currency or commodity, including derivatives) and significant profits can ensue. Capitalist culture has ridden roughshod over biological and cultural diversity and has impoverished both people and the environment. Pricing something is not the same as valuing it. Capitalism is bound to come into conflict with nature. It cannot go green because it cannot change its spots. No company will take action which endangers their profits, just as no government will pass legislation that puts the capitalists whose interests they represent at a disadvantage. True, companies which are more efficient in terms of energy use than their competitors will have lower costs and so are likely to have higher profits. Thus simple economic arithmetic will lead to more sensible uses of energy. And more generally, there is profit to be made in industries which are ecologically-oriented, from the manufacture of reusable energy sources to biofuel companies. It might be argued, too, that international measures have been and can be taken to solve the worst environmental problems, from the banning of the pesticide DDT to the reduced the use of CFCs. However, energy production and global warming are far different, being integrated as closely as they could be in capitalist production in general. Combatting them would not be a mere matter of disrupting the manufacture of aerosols or weedkillers, but of changing something which is part and parcel of the capitalist system and on which all companies depend.

How is it that with the tremendous productive capability associated with capitalism - the amount of food grown is enough to feed the greatly increased population growth - that millions still suffer malnutrition? Why is it that with the accumulated wealth of knowledge and expertise in every field of food production that so much soil is degraded, the health of oceans and prospects for fishing are under threat, and large areas have lost the biodiversity which is so essential to the health of the planet? We need to look not at the technical questions such as how energy is produced and how crops are grown, important though these of course are. Rather, we need to examine the economic basis of society and see the implications of the ways in which production as a whole is organised and of how priorities are considered.

Shouldn’t we be celebrating Earth Day every day? For socialists writing about the environment every day, Earth Day is a bit of a strange concept. Socialists have for years railed at capitalist market production for being on a relentless collision course with the environment. Every day is Earth Day. The destruction wrought on the so-called natural world results from the false division between humans and it. We have this incredible capacity for co-operation that capitalism simply doesn't foster. The change to common ownership and production solely for use could provide the framework to enable the application of scientific and technological knowledge, together with human ingenuity, to the many problems; so that production is sustainable, damaged environment allowed to recover and the food supply ensured for all. The things that make a good community can only be created by the work of the people. We have an abundance of skills and energy. If we were free from having to work for the profits of employers we would be able to work for the needs of everyone.