Just
in case we do not already know it, more research highlight the
seriousness of the climate crisis. The
speed and extent of current global warming exceeds any similar event
in the past 2,000 years. The
research suggests
that the current warming rate is higher than any observed previously.
There is no event to compare with it. Not the “Little Ice Age” or
what's called the “Roman Warm Period” and other such variations.
experts say that this new work debunks many of the claims made by
climate sceptics in recent decades.
"This
paper should finally stop climate change deniers claiming that the
recent observed coherent global warming is part of a natural climate
cycle," said Prof Mark Maslin, from University College London,
UK, who wasn't part of the studies. "This paper shows the truly
stark difference between regional and localised changes in climate of
the past and the truly global effect of anthropogenic greenhouse
emissions."
The
authors say this highlights how unusual warming has become in recent
years as a result of industrial emissions.
“There
is no doubt left – as has been shown extensively in many other
studies addressing many different aspects of the climate system using
different methods and data sets,” said Stefan Brönnimann, from the
University of Bern and the Pages 2K consortium of climate scientists.
Currently,
across Europe, the United States and China many regions are experiencing record-breaking
heatwaves. Clare Nullis, from the World Meteorological Organization,
said the heatwaves bore the “hallmark of climate change”. The
extreme events were “becoming more frequent, they’re starting
earlier, and they’re becoming more intense,” she said. “It’s
not a problem that’s going to go away.”
The
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich said the summer
heatwave
across northern Europe
last
year would have been “statistically impossible” without climate
change driven by human activity. The Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research said Europe’s five hottest summers since 1500 had
all occurred in the 21st century – in 2018, 2010, 2003, 2016 and
2002.
The
environmentalist movements are a marvel of our time. Ecologist groups
are springing up everywhere. Many involved were not previously
politically involved at all and united by the slenderest of threads,
a shared concern for the future of the planet. There are very real
anxieties about the effects of climate change and it has made many
people want to do something to halt it. So there are marches and
speeches and demonstrations. Will they succeed? Can they succeed? We
do not deny the sincerity of many campaigners; the energy and
ingenuity they displayed in tackling a job they considered important
provided further proof that once working men and women get on the
right track capitalism’s days are numbered.
In
calling for the world's governments to join together to combate
global warming, it is easy for the non-socialists to make the mistake
of thinking that it is in nations interest to co-operate. This is
because they identify the nation with the people. In fact the nation
is not the people; it is the capitalist class. The people—ninety
per cent of them —are not the nation. They are the working-class
who have no country. It is certainly in the interests of all the
peoples of the world to co-operate. But it is not in the interests of
all the nations of the world to co-operate. It is not in any nation’s
interest to combine with another nation, except to form a
supra-national bloc in order more effectively to assault other
nations or blocs.
Any
effort expended on reforms is effort unexpended on revolution. When
we consider that parties which have started out for revolution and
“immediate aims” have ended up with no revolution and immediate
aims gone sour, we realise what a wild goose chase the pursuit of
palliatives is, even if they are connected with something as vital as
the possible end of civilisation. The only way to solve climate
change is to establish socialism. The remedy is not the unreality of
asking capitalism to behave differently but the socialist policy of
getting rid of capitalism which creates environmental destruction.
The only effective cure would be to abolish capitalism altogether.
The
only possible way to reduce carbon emissions produced by capitalism,
is to abolish their root cause—capitalism itself. Clearing away all
the mystification about our present social system in the media and in
education, the Socialist Party recognises that the two hundred year
old system of industrial capitalism is already dangerously obsolete.
Only the profitability of capital is their focus. This is insanity.
Technology need not be a danger if it can be made safe and geared to
human needs. Capitalism cannot be humanised. It cannot even be
controlled. It cannot cope. Our only hope is to scrap it before it
destroys us. Help us organise to replace it with a liberated
class-free world without private property socialism. What is needed
is to go beyond a moral outcry and to attack the system which creates
the spoliation of nature. Good intentions will not solve the problem
of climate change. We must first end capitalism.
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