Socialists
understand that capitalist production and “the market” cannot and
will not halt the rush to climate catastrophe. In a capitalist market
economy, each enterprise must profit at whatever expense, or die.
Honourable intentions make little to no difference.
Man
well-meaning environmentalists ask each of us individually to changes
our habits and life-styles so we can prevent tipping into
irreversible climate change. Suggestions abound, such as switching to
electric cars. But if everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a
little. What is required is system change. Saying that individual or
small scale actions can help solve the crisis, amounts to blaming
ordinary folk absolving the capitalist system for the destruction
of the environment. The average person is not to blame for
struggling to survive in the only ways that this system permits and
it adds insult to injury by blaming those unable to control or direct
the system for its consequences.
It
is the capitalists, in their imperative drive to sell commodities in
order to realise profits, who determine the consumption practices of
the world’s peoples so why blame these consumption practices on the
people themselves, especially upon those who struggle for the basics
needed to sustain life. Capitalism,
however, presents millions of workers with the impossible choice:
Your job or your life. There can be no “solution” based on
somehow lowering global living standards to some minimum level in the
name of sacrifice to save the planet. There would be no way to impose
it except by some authoritarian dictatorship.
When
the working people are able to rationally plan the production of
things we really need cooperative planning without the intervention
of the profit motive, will permit us to act according to our needs.
We will defeat global warming, as well as put an end to war and the
other miseries of capitalist rule. Socialism is the only form of
organisation in which the world will be capable of restoring a
sustainable relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. As
long as capitalism exists, with its expansionist tendencies, we will
be incapable of solving the problems of humanity’s interaction with
nature, in which nature is used up in the drive for profits and the
waste products choke and starve us. Socialism
means organising human societies in a manner that is compatible with
the way that nature is organised. Capitalist society robs us of
community with each other and community with the earth. Capitalism
systematically defiles the environment. When profit is the ultimate
motive for development, risks of serious danger to health and damage
to the environment are secondary considerations.
One
of the most mistaken ideas subscribed to unwittingly by many honest
people is that overpopulation in the world is the main cause of both
global warming and resource depletion. The problem is not too many
people, but rather capitalist poverty. Many claim that the earth’s
carrying capacity has been exceeded but just what is that maximum
carrying capacity? It all depends on who you ask. The
rationale for industrial farming is to “feed the world” by
doubling food production by 2050. But the world has been producing
more than enough food to feed every human being for half a century.
People don’t go hungry because food is scarce, but because they are
too poor to buy the food being produced. Producing so much food just
drives prices even lower, running smaller farmers out of business. In
developing countries, these farmers join the ranks of the hungry—a
cruel irony behind the call to “feed the world.”
Our
message to XR and anyone anywhere near to be concerned about the way
the climate crisis will impact our jobs, health, children and
communities is simple: join us.
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