Green capitalism is still capitalism

The Fridays for Future in Germany have drawn up its demands with input from groups of students from across Germany in coordination with climate scientists. The activists said that student strikes would continue until their demands were met.

What are the activists demanding in Germany 

• By 2030, Germany should cease all coal mining
• By 2035, Germany should have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions
• By 2035, all of Germany's energy should come from renewable sources

Meanwhile, the group has also suggested three immediate changes, to be implemented in 2019: 

• Cutting all government subsidies for fossil-fuel energy sources
• Shutting one quarter of all German coal power plants
• A tax on carbon dioxide emissions to make its cost "as high as the cost that greenhouse gases will cause future generations"

The group add that their climate goals for Germany would need to be achieved in a "socially acceptable" manner and "in no way put a one-sided burden on lower-income people."

While there is an understandable tendency for those of us in the older generation to stand in solidarity with this vibrant younger generation, we cannot always accept the decisions and choices it makes.

The demands being placed upon the German State to reform its environment policies is a plea for a “green capitalism” solution to a problem that is inherent within the economic structure of society, that is, the capitalist mode of production. Those active in the Fridays For Future campaign may not like capitalism in its present form and want to re-balance and re-focus it, but they still see no alternative to this system of production for profit and are resigned to working within it. It is true that the sort of capitalism they envisage would not be dominated by fossil-fuel multinationals but one in which the profit-seeking enterprises will be eco-friendly. But there is little chance of an ecologically benign capitalism. 

Transforming capitalism so that it works for the common good is precisely what cannot be done. It can only function as a profit system in the interest of those who live off profits. All governments including Germany's have to take this constraint into account and frame their policies so as to give priority to profits and profit-making. . This means that they have to back off from taxing businesses too much – to pay for ecological measures in case they reduce the incentive to pursue profits and so provoke an economic crisis.

The Socialist Party have been saying for a very long time that workers must wake up to the enormous threat of environmental damage which the profit system poses to the world around us. The Socialist Party argument to avoid a possible apocalyptic catastrophe is to the elimination of the pernicious profit system once and for all. It is simply impossible to humanise this capitalist system. The task facing us is not to romanticise the Fridays for Future climate change crusade with platitudes but to revolutionise it by instilling within the participants the idea that our world can be re-made for us all.