Extinction Rebellion are drawing a halt to their present protests to plan for future actions and, needlessly to say, the police will be reviewing their anti-protester tactics.
But as a parting protest, ER intend to several hours of disruption during rush hour by holding a “swarming” event to block roads in the Square Mile. Said a ER spokeswoman, the City of London is being targeted because “the financial industry is responsible for funding climate and ecological destruction and we are calling on them, the companies and the institutions that allow this to happen, to tell the truth.”
But as a parting protest, ER intend to several hours of disruption during rush hour by holding a “swarming” event to block roads in the Square Mile. Said a ER spokeswoman, the City of London is being targeted because “the financial industry is responsible for funding climate and ecological destruction and we are calling on them, the companies and the institutions that allow this to happen, to tell the truth.”
It is undeniable that the protesters against climate change had success. Support and sympathy for them has grown substantially, as have their funds. They are reflecting the genuine concern of many people. Campaigners have issued three core demands to the government: to "tell the truth about climate change"; to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025; and to create a citizens' assembly to oversee progress. It is therefore still a mission unaccomplished as yet, for Extinction Rebellion.
Unlike many green economists, the Socialist Party never says that
capitalism can offer the solutions to climate change. We are not
delusional enough to believe capitalism has the answers. Instead of
offering any source of real hope regarding the sort of society that
should take the place of capitalism, too many environmentalists
suggest simply another form of capitalism's economics.
Environmentalists do not usually dispute that the drive for profit
underlies the move towards the planet's degradation. What they want
instead is a “fairer” system of in which environmental and
social needs are taken into account and as the Green New Deal
suggests look towards sanctions to ensure compliance with
regulations, funding for their enforcement, taxes and duties on
environmentally damaging practices and so on. In other words, they
unreasonably expect that the goal of increasing profits and expanding
the market can be countered under the profit system. But it can’t.
The profit system demands a system that allows profits to be
maximised. The Green New Deal is setting out to impose on capitalism
something that is incompatible with it. To protect the environment it
is the whole global profit system itself that must go. Transforming
the capitalist economy so that it works for the common good cannot be
done. No State is going to implement legislation which would penalise
the competitiveness of its national enterprises in the face of
foreign competition. States only take into account environmental
questions if they can find an agreement at international level which
will disadvantage none of them. But that’s
the snag because competition for the appropriation of world profits
is one of the basis of the present system. Capitalism cannot go green
because it simply cannot change its spots.
Many
in the green movement argue that when the Socialist Party blame
global warming and climate change on the capitalist system, the critics complain there is no room for debate or discussion about all
the various reforms and policies offered by governments that appear
to be meeting people’s needs. However, what the Socialist Party is
attempting to point out is that the varied aspects of capitalism are
interwoven together in a web of interrelationships and interactions
that a vast system that operates by particular laws and so is
incapable of adequate reform. The simple fact is that businesses will
not take the risk of falling behind in the struggle for profits and
nor will any government enforce policy that will result in a drop in
the profits of its respective capitalist class. Capitalist businesses
survive by forcing out their competition, by cutting costs and
sidestepping policies that hinder their expansion. They seek new
outlets for their wares, to sell more and more, because this is the
law of capitalism, and it is a law antagonistic to ecological
concerns. It is the crazed law of capitalism that compels the big oil
producers to pay teams of scientists to prepare reports that refute
the findings of environmentalists who forewarn of the dire effects of
current production methods. The market economy demands that
businesses only take into account their own narrow financial
interests. Pleasing shareholders takes far more priority than
ecological considerations. The upshot is that productive processes
are distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits.
When
socialists blame the capitalist system, we are promoting the idea
that all social problems derive from the fact that a few individuals
or countries own the means of producing the things we require to live.
What the Socialist Party urges people to do is put aside preconceived
assumptions about the way the world operates in order to create a new
global system to end ecological destruction.
The Socialist Party is
no different from activists in the climate justice movement in
desiring an environment in which the conservation of all animal and
plant species is ensured, in a society in which each production
process takes into consideration not only human need but any likely
effect upon the environment. Where we differ is in recognising that
their demands have to be set against a well-entrenched economic and
social system, based on class privilege and property and governed by
the overriding law of profits first.
The
history of capitalism is a history of radical movements that have
opposed the exploitation and conflict upon which the system
rests. Extinction Rebellion's resistance is to be applauded.
Nevertheless, the Socialist Party's message to our fellow-workers in
the Extinction Rebellion is not to prune back the system of
exploitation, but to pull it up wholesale by its roots and turn the
world’s resources into a common treasury for all. The Socialist
Party seeks a radical transformation of the world where a sustainable
society is achieved in which all the Earth’s resources, natural and
industrial, have become the common heritage, under democratic control
at local, regional and world level, of all humanity. Although
Extinction Rebellion provides a lot of useful information it does not
offer a solution to the present system.
The
continuation of capitalism on its blind and uncontrolled course is a
gamble on the conditions of life itself. This is surely is obvious to
anyone with a serious concern for ensuring a stable balance of
natural systems in which humanity can enjoy being part of nature. Who
are the ecological minded and defenders of the planet? Supporters of
the Extinction Rebellion join us now. Civilisation will not survive
capitalism.
Engels
the Ecologist explains:
“The
factory town, however, transforms all water into stinking ditch water
. . . The present poisoning of the air, water and land can only be
put an end to by the fusion of town and country; and only this fusion
will change the situation of the masses now languishing in the towns,
and enable their excrement to be used for the production of plants
instead of for the production of disease.”
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