“What
matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who
is sitting in" -- and who is marching outside the White House,
pushing for change.” ―
Howard Zinn
Whatever
some may think of whether or not Extinction Rebellion's protest
tactics are appropriate ones, at least they are talking seriously and
positively about the need for a livable planet. If we’re waiting
for some politician to fix this climate change chaos we have a very
long wait, possibly past civilisation's expiry date. Capitalism is
prepared to sacrifice human health and the environment to capital's
insatiable hunger to grow. People are engaged in continuous battle
against industry and transport that spout poisonous fumes and waste
from smoke stacks and exhaust pipes. We must expose those that
pollute streams, lakes, sea, with their effluent and raw sewage. We
must bring every social, political and educational pressure against
such abuses as over-grazing of the range and intensive crop
practices. We fight destruction of the forests and resist
urbanisation of populations in vast industrial centres. Socialists
are committed to a reverence for life rather than the frightening
hazards of production under socially irresponsible ownership bent
exclusively on profits. Stewardship must take the place of the
befoulment and destruction of mankind’s environment.
The
pending climate catastrophe is the
biggest
issue of our or any time.
If global warming isn’t halted in the next few decades, then
nothing else we socialists care so much about is going to matter. We
are accelerating towards civilisation's self-destruction. We really
don’t know how quickly the existential threat might develop.
Numerous scientists find various reports insufficiently alarmist, for
they fail to highlight irreversible climate “tipping points.”
There
are a number of environmental problems with capitalism such as that
the capitalist class and their CEOs don’t actually care about
anything other than the accumulation of capital and profit. They have
always been perfectly content to profit from anything and everything.
Their contempt for human life and dignity is glaringly obvious. The
media is not interested in talking about why society places profit
over people, believing it is better to avoid such fundamental
questions and instead debate environment tax measures, carbon trading
transactions and new emission-reducing technology.
The
solution is to take the use of science and technology out of the
hands of a handful of profiteers and make it accountable to and
controlled by a harmonious socialist society will it be possible to
really harness science as a mighty lever for benefiting mankind and
the environment instead of destroying both as is the situation now.
Business logic will always use capital in the same way: cheating and
speculating at one thousand percent, raising their champagne glasses
to the coming if not of the next drought, then of the next flood.
Today
any transformation of the technical and natural environment is a
possibility. Today we have the capacity to turn the world into hell,
and we are well on the way to doing so. We also have the capacity to
turn it into the opposite of hell. We live in a world dominated by
capitalism. It is capitalism that brings about great inequalities in
living standards, starts murderous wars to steal resources and causes
the growing devastation of our natural environment. Either we get rid
of this outmoded and increasingly decrepit system or it will
devastate humanity. The hour is late and urgent action is necessary.
People know that capitalism is no good but few can see a way forward
to a better type of society.
Civilisation
can be saved only through a social revolution. All the conditions for
revolution are prepared by the uninterrupted series of economic,
political and military crises into which society is plunged by
capitalism. Human beings cannot continue to live indefinitely in a
society that totters on the brink of the abyss. When the
transformation in mass ideas come, it heralds a revolutionary
situation where the tempo of revolutionary events grows more rapid.
The revolution is precisely a revolution by reason of the fact that
it permeates every nook and cranny of society, leaving nothing
untouched. The only viable way forward is to achieve socialism, a
class-free and state-free world where people do not oppress and
exploit each other and where we live in harmony with our natural
environment. To create a socialist world it is necessary to overthrow
the rule of capitalism and this can be done only through revolution,
deposing and dispossessing the capitalist ruling class to establish
socialism, a system of real, popular democracy that sets about the
reconstruction of society. The purity and integrity of air, water,
soil, are vital.
What we need is a red revolution, not a green one.
What we need is a red revolution, not a green one.
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