Winning the Battle of Ideas

French police pepper-sprayed XR climate campaigners involved in a sit-down protest endeavouring to block a bridge over the River Seine.

"We need to civilly disrupt because, otherwise, nothing is going to be done." said a female who took part in the protest

The meteorological agency said that temperature in parts of France topped 45° C (113° F), the highest on record.

The retreat of mountain glaciers, the shrinking of polar ice sheets and the fluctuations of El Nino events, has dire consequences for huge swathes of humanity. Many scientists believe we have reached tipping points and feedbacks that will lead to runaway uncontrollable global warming. Each new research paper indicate climate change is accelerating faster than previous estimates. The speed of the change is already effecting humanity and eco-systems, costing lives and causing species extinction on an unprecedented scale. This reality is radicalising a whole section of society who are coming to conclusions that the system is no longer equipped to slow down much less stop climate change. Yet the same people look to the capitalist market for a solution and hope that our rulers might listen. 

Leading eco-activists continue to believe that the free-market is the only force capable of reducing CO2 emissions to the levels needed, in the time needed, to stave off disaster. Gambling with all of our futures, their best bet the planet is the hope that some scheme might be devised that could make profits so to incentify the corporations. All the solutions on offer will not save the planet. The Socialist Party considers this as a form of climate denial. Socialists must galvanise the many climate justice movements so to leave no room for ambiguity about what it necessary within our lifetimes to avoid global climate catastrophe. .

Capitalism has simply proven incapable of stopping or limiting the damage climate change is inflicting upon the world's peoples. Capitalism could survive a switch from fossil fuels to reneawable forms of energy but the stumbling block to such shifts are profits, competition and the need for each company to expand and accumulate capital. Capitalism is driven by a short-term hunger for profits. Investment decisions are made on the basis on what will make a return in the least waiting 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. This is the intrinsic logic of capitalism. This is the reason that capitalism has visited destruction upon the planet. 

The Socialist Party is well aware of this and of the system’s rapacious nature. The Socialist Party knows that capitalism is the cause of climate change and socialism i.e. common ownership and democratic production-for-needs is the cure. Those within the green movement who advocate life-style changes to reduce consumerism and consumption miss the point. It is not about consuming less for most of the planets inhabitants or even for those of us in the “affluent” developed countries. It is about stopping capitalism from consuming the planet. The Socialist Party offers the only chance to ensure the survival of humanity in the face of what may be greatest threat it has ever faced.