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The global economy, despite all of the bumps in the road, is
delivering aggregate annual growth of 3-4%, leading to a doubling of output
every generation. Yet the global economy is not delivering sustainable growth
in two basic senses. In many parts of the world, growth has been deeply skewed
in favor of the rich; and it has been environmentally destructive – indeed,
life-threatening. Climate change is the greatest of these environmental
threats. Given the current trajectory of global fossil-fuel use, the planet’s
temperature is likely to rise by 4-6 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial
level, an increase that would be catastrophic for food production, human
health, and biodiversity; indeed, in many parts of the world, it would threaten
communities’ survival. Governments have already agreed to keep warming below 2ยบ
Celsius but have yet to take decisive action toward creating a low-carbon
energy system.
Capitalism has inflicted incalculable harm on the
inhabitants of the earth. Tragically, the future could be even worse for a
simple reason: capitalism’s destructive power, driven by its inner logic to
expand, is doing irreversible damage to life in all its forms all around the
planet. Rosa Luxemburg famously said that humanity had a choice, “socialism or
barbarism.” In these days of climate change, her warning has even more meaning.
Almost daily we hear of species extinction, global warming, resource depletion,
deforestation, desertification, and on and on to the point where we are nearly
accustomed to this gathering catastrophe. Our planet cannot indefinitely absorb
the impact of profit-driven, growth-without-limits capitalism. Unless we
radically change our methods of production and pattern of consumption, we will
reach the point where the harmful effects to the environment will become
irreversible. Even the most modest measures of environmental reform are
resisted by sections of the capitalist class. This makes the establishment of a
socialist society all the more imperative.
At one time the environmentalist was all about conserving a
unique spot of nature or protecting this
or that rare animal. Now, they are activists against the extractive industries,
campaigners against the consumer culture and increasingly protesters against
the profit system. They are fighting for the planet. People may not care much
about a few islands disappearing. But untold millions of people will face the
need to escape cities worldwide that will not be able to cope with and survive
many feet of higher oceans flooding their infrastructure, streets and housing.
Where will those millions of people go? How will such deep economic disaster be
managed by governments? Scientists are unanimous in warning us that unless we
very rapidly reduce CO2 emissions, we risk passing a tipping point beyond which
we will be powerless to prevent uncontrollable global warming. We risk a
human-produced extinction event. Before irreversible climatic feed-back loops
take over, making human action useless, we must replace fossil fuels completely
by renewable energy. This is by no means a hopeless task. The technology needed
is already in place. The main obstacle to be overcome are the fossil fuel
industries. They will use any method, fair or foul, to cash in on the vast
deposits of fossil fuels which they own.
“If you want parents to make the choice to reduce their
number of offspring, there’s no better way than making sure those offspring
survive,” said Joel Cohen, author of the magisterial book How Many People Can
the Earth Support? “There’s no example of decline in fertility that has not
been preceded by a decline in child mortality that I know of.” There is
abundant evidence of this pattern all over the world, regardless of religion.
Where children die and women are repressed, population booms. Where children thrive,
and women are empowered, population growth stops.
Sustainable agriculture expert Gordon Conway writes in his
book, One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World?:
“A popular misconception is that providing the developing
countries with more food will serve to increase populations; in other words, it
is a self-defeating policy. The more food women have, the more children they
will have and the greater will be their children’s survival, leading to
population growth, so goes the argument. However, the experience of the
demographic transition described above suggests the opposite. As people become
more prosperous, which includes being better fed and having lower child
mortality, the fewer children women want. Providing they then have access to
family planning methods, the fertility rates will drop and the population will
cease to grow.”
The key factor connecting child mortality and lack of
women’s rights is poverty. Therefore, environmentists have to do is, first and
foremost, campaign for social justice. If ending all poverty were as simple as
producing enough food to feed everyone, our work would be done. Farms already
grow enough food for every person on the planet — 2,800 calories a day, if it
were divvied up equally. But we have never shared resources equally.
Clearly there’s tremendous room for improvement, and
increasing yields. In Sub-Saharan Africa, farmers get a little over a ton of
grain per hectare in an average year — about what farmers in Europe were
getting during the Roman Empire. During the Green Revolution, the push to
increase yields was focused on large farmers, and sometimes smaller farmers did
not benefit. There’s a huge amount of conflicting literature on this point. As
Conway writes, “A review of over three hundred studies found that for 80
percent of the studies inequality had worsened.” In addition, the heavy use of
pesticides and fertilizer during the Green Revolution caused all sorts of
environmental problems.
The current jargon is “sustainable intensification,” which —
as happens with jargon — is taken to mean everything and nothing. Sustainable
intensification includes a panoply of agroecological techniques. Farmers are
planting nitrogen-fixing trees, which shelter crops, prevent erosion, and
provide fertilizer. There’s the push-pull strategy, where farmer push bugs away
from grain by growing insect-repellent plants along the rows, while also
pulling pests away from the crops by planting an attractive plants outside the
fields. Aquaculture is on the rise, creating an opportunity for more fish
polyculture. Farm technology isn’t a war between good and evil — it’s a quest
for whatever works. Small farmers have proven that they can use tools of
industrial ag in a non-industrial way. They use high-tech hybrid seeds to get
record-breaking yields with an alternative cropping technique. In Niger,
farmers developed a method of using Big Ag fertilizer on a tiny scale: by
filling a soda-cap with a mix of phosphorus and nitrogen, and dumping this
micro-dose in with each seed.
Many people worry that giving poor farmers industrial
technology will lock them into an industrial path. There’s no doubt that is
true, as far as it goes. If it’s easy to get nitrogen, you may not want to do
all the work, and develop the skills needed, to nurture nitrogen-fixing trees
to maturity. GMOs, because they are politicized, are especially controversial.
Genetic engineering is not a silver bullet. At the same time, the goal of
helping small farmers improve their lives gets a lot harder if they are held to
an impossibly high standard, and we keep rejecting the tools that they’d like
to use. Small farmers are already taking a middle path — it’s not as if use of
some modern technology will forever corrupt them. In Ghana, farmers trained by
4-H in agroecological techniques abandon them when they actually have to manage
their own land and make a living. And an organic farmer training people in
Malawi has found that teaching small farmers how to use a little bit of
synthetic fertilizer and herbicide is much more likely to work than the
all-natural alternatives. As the U.N.’s former special rapporteur on the right
to food, Olivier De Schutter, put it, “While investment in organic fertilizing
techniques should be a priority, this should not exclude the use of other
fertilizers.”
A wider issue is the lack of infrastructure, the lack of
good transport. Roads and railways are terrible for the environment when built
through undeveloped wilderness, but great for the environment when built
through poverty-stricken rural regions.
One way or another, the coming decades will be decisive for
the fate of human civilisation. Unless greenhouse emissions are swiftly and
drastically curbed the result will be environmental catastrophe on an almost
unimaginable scale, threatening the survival of all life on the planet. The
reality of climate change is already manifesting itself in an increasing number
of extreme weather events, such as heat-waves, droughts, floods and typhoons.
Melting ice sheets are resulting in rising sea levels and increased flooding of
low-lying areas. Some islands will soon be totally submerged, turning their
inhabitants into climate refugees. Some solutions to climate change are known
and simple: rapidly phase out the use of fossil fuels, make the switch to
renewables and halt deforestation. But significant economic interests at the
heart of the capitalist system have big investments in coal, oil and gas.
Protecting these interests, governments refuse to take more than token measures
to halt climate change. The goal of the big corporations is to secure the
greatest possible profits for their super-rich owners — regardless of the
consequences to the planet and its people.
Imagine an alternative, a society where each individual has
the means to live a life of dignity and fulfilment, without exception; where
discrimination and prejudice are wiped out; where all members of society are
guaranteed a decent life, the means to contribute to society; and where the environment
is protected and rehabilitated. This is socialism — a truly humane, a truly
ecological society. With socialism our work would engage our skills and bring
personal satisfaction. Leisure time would be expanded and fulfilling. Our
skies, oceans, lakes, rivers and streams will be pollution free. Our
neighborhoods would become green spaces for rest and recreation. Communal
institutions, like cafeterias will serve up healthy and delicious food and
offer a menu of cultural events.
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