A World To Win, A Planet To Save

The polar ice caps are melting, hurricanes and droughts ravish the planet, and the earth's population is threatened by catastrophic climate change. Many now say we are living through the sixth mass extinction in planetary history. And we will be one of the casualties. The only real debate is the time frame. Human activity drives 200 species of life (birds, animals, fish, insects) to extinction each day and 80% of the world's forests and over 90% of the large fish in the ocean are already gone. Perhaps human extinction will not occur this century but the next human extinction is now a distinct possibility and a reasonable assumption. Human extinction is the most likely outcome because we are inflicting too many insults on the planetary environment.

CLICK READ MORE FOR FULL ARTICLE

 In a new report, the Environment America Research and Policy Center seeks to visualize and quantify this potential as it pertains to the United States. The report argues that the U.S. "has the potential to produce more than 100 times as much electricity from solar PV and concentrating solar power (CSP) installations as the nation consumes each year." It adds that every single state could generate more solar electricity than its residents currently consume. The report also suggests that 35 million homes and businesses could potentially install solar on their roofs. It is not that all of this solar potential will necessarily ever be exploited. But then again, we only need to exploit some of it. "It’s technically achievable, and we only have to capture a fraction of it, one hundredth of it to get all of our current electricity needs," says Environment America's energy program director Rob Sargent.

“It’s an ambitious goal, but achievable” said Ken Johnson, the vice president of communication at the Solar Energy Industries Association

While we can envision more sustainable forms of technology that would solve much of these environmental problem, the development and implementation of these technologies is blocked by the mode of production - by capitalism and capitalists. Large corporations make the major decisions about the technology we use, and arrive at their decisions solely profitability. Businessmen and politicians don’t act to stop climate change because the changes needed are directly contrary to the needs of capital. The only reason for using money to buy stock, launch a corporation, build a factory or drill an oil well is to get more money back than you invested. The drive for profit, to make capital grow, is a defining feature of capitalism. Without it, the system would rapidly collapse. Under capitalism, the only measure of success is how much is sold every day, every week, every year. It doesn’t matter that the sales include vast quantities of products that are directly harmful to both humans and nature, or that many commodities cannot be produced without spreading disease, destroying the forests that produce the oxygen we breathe, demolishing ecosystems, and treating our water, air and soil as sewers for the disposal of industrial waste. It all contributes to profits, and thus to the growth of capital – and that’s what counts. Pollution is not an accident, and it is not a “market failure.” It is the way the system works. Capitalism combines an irresistible drive to grow, with an irresistible drive to create waste and pollution. If nothing stops it, capitalism will expand both those processes infinitely. No matter how carefully the scheme is developed, no matter how many loopholes are identified and plugged, and no matter how sincere the implementers and administrators may be, capitalism’s fundamental nature will always prevail.

One of the greatest weaknesses of the mainstream environmental movement has been its failure or refusal to identify capitalism as the root problem. Indeed, many Green Parties are openly committed to maintaining the profit system. The capitalists are waiting for a time when renewables are more profitable than fossil fuels. In the meantime, they demand that public authorities pay them to develop renewables. They lobby governments to over-allocate free emissions allowances that they can sell on the market. In short, capitalists seek to determine the rhythm and the direction of the struggle against climate change, tying both to their need for profit — and the governments go along with the tacit approval of some greenwash environmentalists. Lobbying the elites to change their behaviour in the direction of environmental sustainability (or world peace and social justice, for that matter) is a complete waste of time. But as capitalist destruction accelerates, and as capitalist politicians continue to stall, or to introduce measures that only benefit the fossil fuel companies, we can expect that many of the most sincere and dedicated greens will begin to question the system itself. Climate change is not simply an environmental question but also a major human and social issue that anti-capitalist currents must respond to. The capitalist system has already inflicted untold damage on the environment in its pursuit of quick profits. There is no reason to assume that the capitalists are capable of implementing the changes that are necessary; even a “radically restructured” capitalism would still run on the profit motive with its attendant waste of resources and destruction of everything which has no exchange value (of which the atmosphere is the most obvious).

There is no copyright on the word socialism but we can say that those who use the term eco-socialism do not intend to be a new theory or brand of socialism or a new kind of socialism.  It is socialism with its important insights on ecology emphasised. Ecosocialism is not a separate movement, it is to win existing green groups and individuals to a socialist perspective. Why not just say ‘socialism’, then? Using the term eco-socialism is to signal loud and clear that we view environmental destruction not as just as another stick to bash capitalism with, but as one of the principal problems facing humanity. We have a choice: to carry on down the road of capitalism and towards chaos, or to start taking a new path of harmony with nature and respect for life. The only way forward is socialism which will give top priority to the restoration of ecosystems that capitalism has destroyed, to the reestablishment of agriculture and industry on ecologically sound principles and mending what Marx called the metabolic rift, the destructive divide that capitalism has created between humanity and nature.

The fate of the ecological struggle is closely tied to the fortunes of the class struggle as a whole. If the struggle against climate change means more austerity, lower wages, more flexibility for the bosses, more job losses, more unfair taxes, etc, then the workers will resist, and they will be right to do so. Our task is to fight alongside the ecological movement and the labour movement for a socialist response to the environmental crisis. Socialism only makes sense if the new power of associated producers — another classic definition of socialism — steadily but radically replaces the capitalist production apparatus with a totally different one, based on a different energy system. This means different systems based on other technologies for food production, transportation, land management, etc. So eco-socialism is much more than a new label, or a revamping of an old perspective: it is a new project for the emancipation of humanity.

All socialists agree that the ecological crises facing the world today are caused by capitalism, and the only real solution is socialism. But that is only a starting point — as Marx wrote, while many people have explained the world, the real task is to change it. To do that we have to build an actual movement.  Socialists are committed to democracy, to radical egalitarianism, and to social justice and socialism will be based on common ownership of the means of production to eliminate exploitation, profit and accumulation as the driving forces of our economy And it will be based on the best ecological principles, giving top priority to stopping anti-environmental practices, to restoring damaged ecosystems, and to reestablishing agriculture and industry on ecologically sound principles.

The specific solutions to the environment’s problems can’t all be detailed with certainty here. This limit on our current vision comes in part from the limits that the profit system has put on investigation and even on our ways of thinking. The limit also comes from the squandering of ordinary people’s abilities to contribute to solutions because they are weighed down with poverty and over-work. Freeing the minds of billions of people from the stress and degradation of unrelenting poverty and malnutrition will allow those minds to contribute productively to societal questions, facilitating a gigantic unleashing of human potential. The ideas and creativity of several billion human brains actively and productively set to work represents an enormously expanded pool of collective knowledge and experience. A socialist revolution cannot be made by a minority. It cannot be imposed by politicians and bureaucrats, no matter how well meaning they might be. It will require the active participation of the great majority of the people. The required necessary changes cannot be carried through, and will not be long-lasting, unless they are actively supported, created and implemented, by the broadest possible range of people. The socialist revolution is not inevitable. It will only happen if people consciously decide that is necessary, and take the steps needed to bring it about. Only majority support and involvement can possibly overcome the opponents of change. We don’t want violence, and we will be pleased if the transition to socialism is entirely peaceful. Unfortunately what happens in a revolution isn’t entirely up to us.

When we talk of socialist revolution, we are talking about a profound change in the way humans relate to the earth, in how we produce and reproduce, in almost everything humans do and how we do it. Every part of manufacturing and transportation will require complete structural re-organisation. What we’re aiming for is not just a reorganization of capitalism, and not just changes in formal legal ownership. A socialist system will foster a culture of cooperation, sharing, reciprocity, and responsibility to neighbours and community, making possible the full development of human potential, and promoting truly democratic political and economic decision making for local, regional, and multi-regional needs.

Achieving such a change is absolutely essential – but we should not delude ourselves that it will happen simply or quickly. We cannot make these changes as individuals. Some changes could be carried out in a relatively short period of time. Other changes will take more planning and a longer time period to implement. When socialists talk of abundance, we mean an abundance of use values, not of exchange values. It is not necessary for there to be millions of cars in the world (many of them parked up in drive-ways) for everyone to be able to use one when they need to. All that is required is a change in patterns of ownership and control (such as car-pools as like with library books) and changes in the way we organize our commuting, shopping, leisure activities etc., so that we do not need to resort to the use of cars in the way that we do now.

It is the economic system that dictates that non-sustainability is rational. Take away the dog-eat-dog, economic imperative of capitalism and socialist production for use, unlike production for profit, would allow for a calculation of the true costs of creating use­ful things and bringing them to the people who need them. To re-align regions for growing different kinds of crops based on geographical and climate suitability is an extension of the idea that industry should be situated where it’s needed, not wher­ever makes the most profit. We advocate a steady-state society which means to stop growing when basic human needs are satisfied. Enough will be enough. It will not be a society to not entice people to consume more and more. Socialism has always been understood as a society aimed at reversing the relations of exploitation of capitalism and removing the manifold social evils to which these relations have given rise. This requires the abolition of private property in the means of production, a high degree of equality in all things, replacement of the blind forces of the market by planning by the associated producers in accordance with genuine social needs, and the elimination to whatever extent possible of invidious distinctions associated with the division of town and country, mental and manual labor, race divisions, gender divisions, etc. We need to initiate and join struggles and need to participate, not as sideline critics, but as activists while at the same time, we need to find the best ways to explain how those struggles relate to the larger fight to save the world from capitalist eco-cide. The environment has a central place in the activity of the socialist movement. There was a time in the past when some could make a case that the damage to the environment, though serious, was no more critical than any of capitalism’s other crimes. That time is long past. Major ecological collapse isn’t just possible but probable, and that will put civilisation, if not human existence itself, at risk. It is time for a real green revolution. One could become quite depressed and dis-spirited by the worsening climate crisis and the apparent political inaction to stop climate change. Hopefully, humanity will reach one specific “tipping point” – the moment that revolutionary action will begin to be taken. Naomi Klein notes the next time “societies suddenly decide they have had enough, defying all experts and forecasters…It must be the catalyst to actually build the world that will keep us all safe. The stakes are simply too high, and the time too short, to settle for anything less”.

Driven by the need to make short-term profits, capital, through its organisation of production, and distribution has exceeded planetary limits, undermined natural cycles and now threatens human beings with extinction by means of climate change. Capital has become a force capable of ending human and nonhuman life. It is wired into a system of ecocide and is incapable of solving the climate crisis. At the heart of this is its addiction to growth, premised on the assumption of unlimited accumulation. Capitalists with their mastery of science and technology, have convinced themselves that they are the conquerors of nature as well as its master, seeking to reduce nature to being a commodity market-based techno-fixes of capital, such as carbon trading or geo-engineering. Hence, with the imperatives of capital prevailing over the UN climate talks, we are heading for the fast death of our future. It’s time to act now because to act later will be too late. It is now time to build a society based on co-operation and sharing to sustain all forms of life. We need to mobilize whole of society, all to-together. A wide variety of scientists, scholars, and activists agree: the only response that can save civilization is if we mobilise, all together. Climate change is a crisis, and it requires a crisis response. A wide variety of scientists, scholars, and activists agree: the only response that can save civilization is an all-out effort, for if we lose, we may lose everything. Humans contain a great capacity to help each other, to dutifully respond to the needs of others, and to improve the world around us. When it is clear there is an emergency, we respond vigorously. Climate change is a crisis that demands a massive collective response and the only way it can be solved is by a change of economic system.

“Earth provides enough for every person's need but not for every person's greed.” Gandhi