In order to survive, a socialist world is necessary

It appears more and more that the scientific concensus on climate change has been on the conservative side, with more and more research suggesting that we are approaching the crises sooner than was expected, confirming the necessity for more urgency in implementing policies to reduce global warming. 

The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic. The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. Researchers said it showed ice could disappear much more rapidly than previously thought. Rates of decline after 2014 were three times faster than the most rapid melting ever recorded in the Arctic.

“There has been a huge decrease,” said Claire Parkinson, at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in the US. In her study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she called the decline precipitous and a dramatic reversal.

Prof Andrew Shepherd at Leeds University in the UK said: “The rapid decline has caught us by surprise and changes the picture completely. Now sea ice is retreating in both hemispheres and that presents a challenge because it could mean further warming.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/01/precipitous-fall-in-antarctic-sea-ice-revealed

The world is plunging into chaos. We live in a world dominated by capitalism which feeds off the labour of millions and millions of men and women. What is to be done about global warming? The greenhouse effect? 

The Socialist Party rejects the idea that capitalism has any self-correcting economic mechanism to mitigate its effects. If nothing fundamental changes the result will be continued climate chaos. Socialism is the only answer to these nightmares. For many people, capitalism is something we’re not supposed to question and this is why it’s always off the discussion tables at these climate change conferences. Capitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately or state owned. The capitalists appropriate the surplus product created by the workers. This appropriation leads to the accumulation of more capital, the amassing of wealth, further investment, and thus the expansion of capitalism. Commodities are produced for the purpose of generating profit and promoting accumulation. Corporations will not allow governments to curtail profits and when profits are threatened by a particular policy that policy is lobbied against and eventually replaced or repealed. The lesson is clear: The “logic” of the capitalist market is suicide for civilisation. The fight against climate change and moving to renewable energy sources has to be part of a larger perspective of breaking with a capitalist economy based on the endless expansion of production no matter the cost.

In the past several years, many speeches, articles and books have discussed the disaster facing humanity as a result of climate change. Most explain the roots of the problem and the horrific consequences, but few offer serious strategies for limiting further global warming. Few writers have been able to explain what changes should be made. We can only begin to address the problem of climate change if we understand it. If we start from the priorities of capitalism we can see why politicians have failed to seriously reduce carbon emissions. Capitalism is a barrier to reducing emissions. Civilisation is heading towards the climate cliff-edge. The future of society is at severe risk. Besides pondering our own survival, every decent human being ought to think about the future of species with which we share the planet.

Relying on the moral and political pressure on corporations to clean up their act won’t solve the problem. For sure, some argue that the capitalist market could promote a sustainability revolution. The political power wielded by corporations will prevent the rationality of human survival from triumphing over the rationality of capital accumulation for the existing corporate structure. We already know this is true from the real-life example of private American insurance companies blocking the creation of a rational universal care system — even though much of industry would benefit from it. Socialism is a necessity. The Socialist Party proposes then a global justice movement requires a movement for socialism for survival— it is indeed “over to us.”