Nearly
70% of British people want urgent political action to tackle climate
change and protect the natural environment, according to research.
Two-thirds of people believe Britain needs to cut its carbon
emissions to zero far faster. The Climate Coalition and Greener UK
consists of more than 130 organisations including the Women’s
Institute, NGOs such as Cafod, Oxfam, WWF and Tearfund, as well
as the National Trust, Mumsnet and the National Union of Students
will be lobbying parliament next week to say “The time is now”
for action. Organisers say thousands of people from all over the
country intend to come to Westminster to demand urgent action.
The
destruction that capitalism has visited upon the planet, by
deforestation, industrial agriculture, with CO2 levels changing the
world’s climate has become well-known. Capitalism has so far simply
proved incapable of stopping or limiting its use of fossil fuels.
Why can't capitalism control carbon emissions? It does have proposed
solutions like carbon trading which rest on the possibility of
putting a price on a ton of carbon and requiring companies to pay to
emit any level above a certain amount permitted. The solutions on
offer, from carbon trading, carbon sequestration and storage, clean
development mechanisms, or massive geo-engineering projects, are ways
in which the system can continue to use fossil fuels and produce CO2.
None will end climate change or will save the planet. The
hand-writing is on the wall for all to see. The issue is no longer
about the science, it’s the politics.
Capitalism
is driven by short-termism in its hunger for profits. Investment
decisions are made on the basis on what will make a return in the
quickest time. Such a system cannot deal with the scale of the
climate crisis or make rational planned decisions about what to
produce that is separate from the bottom line of profits. Marx
understood how capitalism treated nature and the consequences for
both humans and environment, writing:
“For
the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind,
purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for
itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws merely
as a ruse so as to subject it under human needs, whether as an object
of consumption or as a means of production”
Faced
with the socialist argument that capitalism is the cause of climate
change and only socialism i.e. common ownership and democratic planning
of production can solve the problem, many environmentalists have
objected, that there is no time to wait for the revolution. Instead
they believe with effective campaigning they can push governments to
take action and achieve speedier results than the struggle to
overthrow capitalism.
The Socialist Party's answer is that there is
no time to wait for the capitalists and their governments to regulate
and legislate. Whether capitalism could solve the problem of climate
change is an abstract question; it is clearly not doing so with the
required urgency. It is not about life-style choices and
individually consuming less. It is all about stopping capitalism from
consuming the planet. Socialists need to bring attention to green
activists that the issues and the realities of climate change we must
foremost identify capitalism as the culprit. For all the talk and
rhetoric of a green economy we are well away from even taking the
first steps.
The Socialist Party is determined to win the new young
generation to the struggle for revolutionary change which is to
ensure the survival of humanity in the face of what may be greatest
threat youth has ever faced. The presentation of the socialist case
to the broad grassroots coalition and a larger analysis at this
pivotal moment is essential to its success. Let’s be honest: No one
said that changing course to avoid environmental catastrophe is easy.
It can be done, and the necessary technology exists to do so, but
converting to a sustainable economy and renewable energy requires
both understanding and action. Saving the environment must also go
hand in hand with ending capitalism and eliminating the obscene
inequalities in our world. For an economic and social system
organised for the accumulation and exchange of abstract value, nature
is nothing more than a free, exploitable resource to trash. It should
now be clear to everyone that the desperate state of the planet and
the appalling potential of catastrophic climate change and the
greatest obstacle to reversing this course is global capitalism.
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