The future you might not see

This is the biggest crisis in human history so what are we going to tell our children and grand-children when they ask: why didn't we do anything to stop it while we still had time? Humanity has two choices - to transform or collapse. The only rational choice is to engage yourself in the struggle to protect all life. Legend has it that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Not to be outdone, the present ruling class is fiddling about while almost unthinkable environmental disasters are in the making. 

Capitalism's profit motive is the culprit. Sina Reisch, spokeswoman of campaign group Ende Gelände, in a statement said, "This is about changing a destructive system that is based on the quest for infinite economic growth and exploitation. We are fighting for a future in which people count more than profits."

The profit motive and capitalism are bringing civilisation to the brink of disaster, and time is running out to take corrective actions where possible or to lessen the effects where the damage is already too advanced to be undone. It ought to be clear that the system primarily responsible for bringing humanity such dangers and which even now continues to ignore the warnings of scientists is not about to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to avert or mitigate the dangers. And that is one more reason why capitalism must be ended. 

The Socialist Party's ardent efforts, freed from any restrictions imposed by private-ownership interests and operating only for the good of humankind and the world, is in sharp contrast to the many "environmentalists" of the capitalist system who are perennially preoccupied with garnering political influence among politicians and trying to raise the monetary funds to carry on their work. Current environmentalists, limit their world view and understanding of the capitalist system, imbued with notions of the greedy men theory of history and are prone to divorce their specific environmental cause from the whole socio-economic system. These environmental warriors of capitalist society endlessly flounder, winning, at best, only a delaying action against the destructive effects of capitalism on the natural world. The environmental degradation is inherent in capitalist development and can have only one conclusion: that meaningful action to repair our world can only be taken when the competitive pressures of capitalism, indeed the capitalist system itself, is abolished and socialism established. 

The possibility for a successful eco-movement lies within the principles of the Socialist Party, for only the case for socialism can turn the campaigns into effective action to restore the world. There is no reason inherent in the human species that prevents it from living in harmony with its natural surroundings. Indeed, humanity is itself an integral part of the total environment. Capitalism was as necessary to the development of the human species as adolescence is to the individual human being. But, just as the adolescent must progress into maturity if it survives, so must humanity continue to progress toward the maturity of its social development - to socialism. If we do not move forward we must either stagnate or regress. It is time to choose. The problem of global warming is not one that capitalism is able to solve. Efforts to do so under this system above all else attest to the truth of the socialist contention that every time capitalism "solves" a problem it creates a new one. It will take a fundamentally different type of social and economic system to even begin to rationally address the problem - a socialist society, freed from what Marx once referred to as "the furies of private interest" that now control technology and its uses.