The world is not a commodity

Humanity is constantly aware of the influence of nature in the form of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the energy we use. History offers any number of examples of how environmental conditions promoted or retarded human development. People have not been passive dwellers in nature but have endeavoured to transform it. Where once nature frightened us and made us tremble with her mysterious vastness and the uncontrollable energy of its elements, it now frightens us with its limitations, its fragility and delicacy. We are faced with the problem of how to stop the destructive effect of technology on nature. Human actions which violate the laws of nature and the harmony of the biosphere, threaten to bring disaster and this disaster may turn out to be universal and apocalyptic. The land and the water are turning into toxic graveyards. Catastrophic pollution prevails everywhere. At present it is difficult to be anything but pessimistic about the future.
Brazil is under pressure to convert the Amazon forests to produce crops and provide pasture for cattle. But the forests' natural ecosystems sustain wild food production, maintain water and other resources, regulate climate and air quality and ameliorate the impact of infectious diseases. Expanding agriculture in the Amazon rainforest could have climate effects that cut food production. Large-scale expansion of agriculture at the expense of the forest could entail the loss of almost two-thirds of the Amazon's terrestrial biomass by later this century, according to an analysis by Brazilian and U.S. scientists. It will cause a decrease the productivity of pasture and soybeans – the reason advanced for felling the trees in the first place.

Today’s environmental problems spring from capitalism’s reckless pursuit of accumulation without regard for human welfare or natural limitations. The drive for profit has created ecological havoc from one end of the world to the other. The over-population argument is blame-the people, not the system, simple scape-goating and scare-mongering. The idea is to blame the people for breeding too much, for consuming too much, for polluting the environment and take the responsibility off the ruling class, preserving their position in society. The environment is a class issue. “Humanity” is the workers of the world and their interests and those of the capitalist class are set apart. The core of the socialists’ argument is simple enough. It is that the roots of the threat to the environment, to the future of the planet and the people who live on it, lie in the capitalist system itself and that the environmental threats we face today are not some aberration which can easily solved within the capitalist system.

Socialists aspire to a world which in Engels words people will “not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature”. The future of society, and the environment, depends on a fight, one in which the global working class wrests control of society and production from those who control it now. If we do not succeed in doing that the future is bleak indeed.