Humans live in the realm of nature, they are constantly surrounded by it and interact with it. Man is constantly aware of the influence of nature in the form of the air breathed, the water drank, and the food eaten. Human history offers any number of examples of how environmental conditions and the relief of our planet have promoted or retarded human development. Environmental calamities and catastrophes are now facts of life. Doom and gloom hangs over any speculation about the future of the world today like a prophetic apocalypse. All this conjures up a sense of deep pessimism and despair in many who see no alternative to the present system. We all confront the threat of environmental disaster on a scale we can scarcely imagine. Most people recognise the seriousness. Most too recognise the culpability of the big corporations and governments in creating the problems and failing effectively to tackle them. Most accept that we are heading towards a capitalist hell.
In September, world leaders are coming to New York City for a UN summit on the climate crisis and on the 21st possibly the largest climate march in history may draw over a hundred thousand people. More than 1,000 organizations have pledged support including the World Wildlife Fund. No longer just an environmental issue, the demonstration has drawn support from labor unions such as the SEIU and CWA, schools and colleges, NGOs, social justice groups and public health bodies. The march is described as "an invitation to change everything." Yet those who are also sponsoring the march happen to be BP, China Mobile, Dow Chemical Co., Duke Energy, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, fossil fuel corporations and their financiers! Global subsidies for renewable energy are around $88 billion, while they were $523 billion for fossil fuels. Real solutions require reality which unfortunately is lacking in the environmentalists understanding of how the world works. Corporations rule our world with an unyielding iron fist. Play by the corporation rules and we lose.
The root of the problem is an economic system that exploits people and the planet for profit. It is a system that requires constant growth and accumulation, exploitation and oppression, militarism, racism and nationalism, plus poverty and environmental degradation to function. Many environmentalists sadly suffer from the delusions that politicians can make reforms for the benefit of humanity and that capitalists have the capability to exert control over their system. The mistake of the environmental activists is the assumption that the problem is merely one of how world capitalism is managed, or rather mismanaged. Reformers hold a belief that there is a rational side to the capitalist system that can be influenced by reasoned arguments and won over but which leads to a fatal trust in the power of government and the corporations to act in the interests of the planet. Some campaigners expect that the ruling class to realise they are the billionaires on the Titanic and use their enormous wealth and power to change course. It is an illusion is to assume that corporations and rich countries will change their behaviour but the ruling class would sooner destroy life on Earth than surrender their position, power and privilege. People and the planet will continue to be treated by them as commodities. Capitalism can’t stop itself, it needs to be ended.
When socialists protest, we also propose. Climate change changes everything: everything about how we organize society, how we conduct politics, and what we think of progress. Socialists know very well what we’re fighting for. We can collectively alter our way of life. We can replace the present capitalist system with a cooperative one. Our revolution can set everybody free. We possess all the knowledge required to make all this possible. If we do not succeed, there may not be any future generations to follow. We are at a turning point and require to bring some urgency to the necessary creation of a new economy.
In a re-assessment of the predictions of the 1970 Club of Rome report on the limits of growth researchers Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander in regards to resource use, population growth, industrial output and other factors of the world’s economy and ecosystems found it to be basically accurate despite various errors. If the predictions are correct, what happens next? Turner and Alexander quote from the original report:
“ To feed the continued growth in industrial output there must be ever-increasing use of resources. But resources become more expensive to obtain as they are used up. As more and more capital goes towards resource extraction, industrial output per capita starts to fall – in the book, from about 2015. As pollution mounts and industrial input into agriculture falls, food production per capita falls. Health and education services are cut back, and that combines to bring about a rise in the death rate from about 2020. Global population begins to fall from about 2030, by about half a billion people per decade. Living conditions fall to levels similar to the early 1900s...If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.”
The researchers point to the world financial collapse of 2007-08 and the subsequent economic trouble as suggestions that the first stages of decline may have already begun. Turner and Alexander do not say worldwide economic, environmental and population collapse is a certainty. Nor do they claim the future will unfold exactly as the “Limits to Growth” predicted. A growing number of reputable and qualified writers are documenting the very outcomes predicted by the Club of Rome.
We know what we needed to do to avert collapse, but we don't do it. We know what we need to do to set things right, but we aren't doing it. The reason is because capitalists are in the saddle, and are riding mankind. Chris Hedges, the political commentator, writes:
“Capitalism, as Karl Marx pointed out, is not merely a system of economic exploitation. It justifies itself by hijacking the ruling political and economic ideologies—ideologies that buttress capitalism’s ceaseless expansion and commodification of the natural world and human beings. “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,” Marx wrote, “the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.” And this makes our struggle a battle for ideas as well as a battle for power...resistance will be effective only when we refuse to do what we are told, when we turn from a liberal agenda of reform to embrace a radical agenda of revolt.”
The Climate March commences at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 21, at Columbus Circle on the south end of Central Park, ending at 34th Street, 38th Street and 11th Avenue, near the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center via 59th Street, 6th Avenue, 42nd Street and 11th Avenue.
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