The
world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the
rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate
crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from UN human
rights expert, Philip Alston, UN special
rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said. The impacts of
global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life,
water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also
democracy and the rule of law.
Alston
is critical of the “patently inadequate” steps taken by the UN
itself, countries, NGOs and businesses, saying they are “entirely
disproportionate to the urgency and magnitude of the threat”. His
report to the UN human rights council (HRC) concludes: “Human
rights might not survive the coming upheaval.”
“Climate
change threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress in
development, global
health,
and poverty reduction,” Alston said. Developing countries will bear
an estimated 75% of the costs of the climate crisis, the report said,
despite the poorest half of the world’s population causing just 10%
of carbon dioxide emissions. Yet democracy and the rule of law, as
well as a wide range of civil and political rights are every bit at
risk,” Alston’s report said. “The risk of community discontent,
of growing inequality, and of even greater levels of deprivation
among some groups, will likely stimulate nationalist, xenophobic,
racist and other responses. Maintaining a balanced approach to civil
and political rights will be extremely complex.”
The
impacts of the climate crisis could increase divisions, Alston said.
“We risk a ‘climate apartheid’ scenario where the wealthy pay
to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the
world is left to suffer,” he said. “When
Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on New York in 2012, stranding
low-income and vulnerable New Yorkers without access to power and
healthcare, the Goldman Sachs headquarters was protected by tens of
thousands of its own sandbags and power from its generator.”
International
climate treaties have been ineffective, the report said, with even
the 2015 Paris accord still leaving the world on course for a
catastrophic 3C (equivalent to an increase of 5.4F) of heating
without further action. “States have marched past every scientific
warning and threshold, and what was once considered catastrophic
warming now seems like a best-case scenario,” the report said.
Socialism may not be able to immediately halt and reverse climate change nor could it perhaps instantly clear the atmosphere of the already accumulated
greenhouse gases. However, socialism could and would set corrective processes
in motion by eliminating the anarchy and duplication characteristic
of capitalist production; by putting an end to the massive production
of arms; by decreasing the use of fossil fuels wherever possible; by
the elimination of a host of other wasteful industrial and commercial
activities and polluting practices that are part and parcel of the
capitalist system and its mad drive for profits.
It would, thereby,
provide time and resources to our scientists to
enable them to discover and develop alternative non-polluting
renewable and sustainable energy sources, even as nature begins to
clear the atmosphere. Only a socialist world can promote the type of global cooperation necessary to insure resources sufficient for everyone's
needs.
Given the nature of capitalism, and the predatory character of
ruling classes, there is a real danger that bitter wars may be fought
in the future over the right to acquire natural resources. Capitalism
is still the system under which we are trying to live. The aggressive
ambitions of the capitalists to get big profits, and quickly preclude
any possible consideration of more sensible ecological policies and
to minimise the damage caused requires a socialist reconstruction of
society.
Only
a society that has purged itself of property and profit interests can
cope with such problems as global warming. Only such a society can
view global warming and other environmental problems rationally and
give them the first-rank place of importance they deserve.
Socialism
will be such a society. By ending the rule of private interests and
the motivation of profit, by making the life and welfare, hence the
environment, of human beings paramount, socialism will enable us to
marshal all of our scientific knowledge and physical resources for
the solution of this urgent problem. The
capitalist class has never acted in the past, and cannot be expected
to act in the future, in any way beneficial to the majority of the
people. Indeed, their relentless pursuit of profits is threatening
our very existence in many ways. Government regulations pose no
threat to capitalism, and never have, regardless of how they may
affect or place certain restraints on specific capitalist interests.
Capitalism
as a social system, and the capitalist class as a whole, not only
needs the political state to survive, capitalism created the modern
centralised political state as it emerged from feudalism at the end
of the medieval era. The real threat to capitalism and the crimes
that capitalism commits against nature and humanity is an informed
and active working class that is willing to take control of all
industries. Taking, holding and operating the industries on a
democratic basis means socialism.
Only socialism can satisfy our
needs while operating all the industries in harmony with the best
interest of the whole planet. However, until the working class
decides that it must take control of the economy and establish a new
form of democratic government based on collective and democratic
ownership of the economy, all creatures on earth will continue to
suffer under the capitalist dictum of "business as usual."
Not
until workers take over the industries that our lives depend upon
will our votes, within a cooperative commonwealth of labour, bring us
a response to our needs
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