Monday, July 01, 2019

We need change in people for a changing world


The naturalist, David Attenborough, received an ovation from the festival-goers at Glastonbury as he once more drew attention to the perilous state of the planet. But television documentaries are not enough. 

We are facing the scenario of the breakdown of our ecological system by CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. Extreme weather events and fluctuations along with deforestation and soil exhaustion have devastated major food-growing areas of the world. Conditions of many are characterised by malnutrition, disease, slum housing, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy well beyond any reasonable definition of human decency. There is mounting evidence that this frightening picture of the irreversible breakdown of our world is now occurring and at an alarming rate. Among many tell-tale signs has been the discovery that the arctic permafrost has warmed up. The destruction of the environment has now reached calamitous proportions and is inevitable in a society dominated by blind market forces. The anarchic development of capitalism and its rapacious greed threaten humanity with extinction. 

Under capitalism, the tremendous achievements that science has contributed to society has been applied in an irrational and unplanned manner. The inherent contradictions, antagonisms and the competition of interests makes capitalism absolutely incapable of developing adequate safeguards against global warming and its harmful effects. Is it not possible to be a “caring” capitalist making huge profits to be concerned for the environment. The fact is that capitalism can never go “green” or be “ethical” and can never save the planet. Competition and market forces squeezes profits and strangles ethics which fails to create stable, sustainable relationships because it is unplanned and because it is driven by the crude search for profits. The short term interests of particular capitalists will always prevail over the welfare of communities and eco-systems.

There’s a lot at stake for the capitalist class, investments and profits, and those at the helm have poured millions into the creation and promotion of business-friendly “solutions”, entailing a level of commitment and coordination that is beyond the system's capability. A global economy that requires constant expansion of production and increasing exploitation of finite resources requires to be transformed at its roots, not tinkered with. Capitalism has never got any kinder. Challenging the rule of capital — based as it is on the cheapest and fastest exploitation of labour and nature and the endless expansion of exchange value — and the creation of a social democracy, is at the core of this necessary transformation.

Capitalism compromises our relation to nature. All production decisions are made by a tiny handful of capitalists, not in the interests of humanity, but purely for profit. Environmental concerns are ignored in the short term scramble for profit. The vast majority of the population who want to live in a safe, healthy world, and to enjoy nature, have no control over decisions that affect our lives. The market can never be harnessed to develop a harmonious relationship with nature. Because it depends on the exploitation of most of humanity, it must keep us subjected. Because its motor force is profit, it will result in the blind destruction of the environment.

Modern technology is not in itself destructive. The new industries are much cleaner than previous technologies while actually cutting energy consumption. The new technologies that have developed under capitalism have widened the experience of millions round the world, drawing them away from the narrow drudgery of peasant existence and improved living conditions in vast areas of the globe, and made different ideas and culture available to nearly everybody, almost everywhere. Without modern techniques it simply would not be possible to feed current population levels. 

The fact is, though, that such measures have not been used to abolish hunger once and for all.


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