Stop
abusing the land we live on if we want to avoid catastrophic levels
of climate warming, scientists on the UN’s major Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC)
will warn at a meeting in Geneva this week.
“I
hope this report will raise awareness among all people about the
threats and opportunities posed by climate change to the land we live
on and which feeds us,” said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee.
Soils
are believed to sequester 1 per cent of the planet’s total carbon,
but they once contained as much as 7 per cent. If land is farmed in a
more sustainable way, carbon could be absorbed back into the soils,
making them a carbon sink. However, currently one-third of total
emissions come from the land.
Researchers
believe any genuine plan to combat climate change must tackle the
state of the land and production of food. This means putting a
stop to chopping down rainforest, degrading soils, killing wildlife
and draining peatlands.
Professor
Jane Rickson, an expert in climate change and soil erosion at
Cranfield University, says, “Climate change will intensify soil
erosion, compaction, loss of organic matter, loss of biodiversity,
landslides and salinisation – many of which are irreversible.”
Rob
Percival, head of food and health policy at the Soil Association,
said: “The intensification of farming has fuelled soil
degradation, deforestation
and biodiversity loss – further intensification is not a solution
to the challenges we face.To
effectively tackle the climate crisis, we urgently need to move to
farming systems that improve soil health and protect wildlife. Soil
is critically important – humanity depends on it and it’s right
that the IPCC recognises this along with calls to prioritise farming
practices that actually improve our environment, such as agroforestry
and mixed farming using extensive grass-based systems.”
Farming
has demonstrated that they can increase organic matter and improve
soil function in just a few years, through soil health management
systems. Advancements in agricultural technology throughout the past
century have allowed farmers to feed a population that has grown from
less than 2 billion people to more than 7 billion today. But, as
demand for food continues to grow, our lands are stretched to their
limits and crop yields struggle to keep up the pace, the world will
need farmers to make another leap – to seek the end of the exchange
economy. Capitalism is based on continuous expansion. Instead of
production for profit’s sake, our economy should be geared towards
meeting real human and social needs
We
still have time to avert the scale of the ecological disaster facing
us, but we must respond not by a few tweaks of legislation and
regulations but by system change – a transition of our capitalist
society to socialism. That's the very rational thing to do. Climate
talks produce declarations and statements, usually adopted by
everybody, simply because they carry no obligations other than good
intentions. Every country decides its own solutions according to
their own criteria, based on the criteria established by national
governments on the basis of their domestic politics and economic
advantage or disadvantage. The interests of humanity are not part of
the equation. Humankind is parcelled among 196 countries, and so is
the planet. It is irrational to expect all these countries to
sacrifice their self-interest.
Too
often members of the Socialist Party hear from those involved environmentalism that
our answer is too politically partisan and that we must bring
together a coalition of non-socialists, in fact, even invite
pro-capitalists to join the climate change campaigns. Is the paradox
not obvious?
The basic purpose of capitalism is the cause of the climate crisis, no matter
how it is wrapped up in green ribbons. The Socialist Party's task is
to help build a society that can feed the world and protect the
planet and it is bitterly scathing of the notion that the air,
rivers, seas and land can be treated as a "free gift of nature"
for businesses to extract profits from. The Socialist Party analysis
of the environment under capitalism shows how saving the planet is
inextricably linked to transforming our society. This is because
capitalism is dominated by corporations devoted to profit above all
else, profoundly at odds with a sustainable planet. Engels explained
this destructive dynamic:
"As
individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the
sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate
results must first be taken into account. As long as the individual
manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity
with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern
himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its
purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same
actions"
Engels
put it in The Housing Question:
“The
abolition of the antithesis between town and country is no more and
no less utopian than the abolition of the antithesis between
capitalists and wage-workers. From day to day it is becoming more and
more a practical demand of both industrial and agricultural
production. No one has demanded this more energetically than Liebig
in his writings on the chemistry of agriculture, in which his first
demand has always been that man shall give back to the land what he
receives from it, and in which he proves that only the existence of
the towns, and in particular the big towns, prevents this. When one
observes how here in London alone a greater quantity of manure than
is produced in the whole kingdom of Saxony is poured away every day
into the sea with an expenditure of enormous sums, and what colossal
structures are necessary in order to prevent this manure from
poisoning the whole of London, then the utopia of abolishing the
distinction between town and country is given a remarkably practical
basis.”
Engels
warned. "Let
us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human
victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on
us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the
results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite
different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the
first."
Engels
added: "At
every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like
a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of
nature." On the other hand, "we have the advantage of all
other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them
correctly."
That
is, we can organise society in step with nature's limits.
This
is impossible unless the profit motive is removed from determining
production in human society and a system of participatory democracy
and rational planning is built in its stead. The Socialist Party
argues that only working people organised as "associated
producers"
can
deal with nature in a rational manner. This requires a complete
revolution. We agree with Marx when he defines socialism as “the
unity of being of man with nature.”
Marx
described how “Capitalist production collects the population
together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve
an ever-greater preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand
it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other
hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the
earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent
elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it
hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the
lasting fertility of the soil…But by destroying the circumstances
surrounding this metabolism…it compels its systematic restoration
as a regulative law of social production, and in a form adequate to
the full development of the human race…All progress in capitalist
agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker,
but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of
the soil for a given time is progress towards ruining the more
long-lasting sources of that fertility…Capitalist production,
therefore, only develops the technique and the degree of combination
of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the
original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker.”
Capitalists
do not primarily take into account the ecological sustainability of
their investments but aim to maximise profits, which leads to a waste
or the irrational cultivation of the land
The
Socialist Party shares the same ecological aspiration as Marx in
Capital who demands both the preservation and sustainable
improvements of lands for future generations:
“From
the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private
property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as
absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an
entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies
taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its
possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved
state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads
of the household].”
The
Socialist Party can agree with Joel Kovel, an “eco-socialist”,
who said in a speech to Occupy Wall Street:
“An
association of free people will take care of nature because they see
themselves as part of nature. They will struggle for a new world
based on a new kind of production that gives nature intrinsic value.
They will develop the tools for overcoming and healing the cancer of
accumulation and the ecological crisis it generates. Such a society
will be in harmony with nature and not nature’s enemy. I would call
it “eco-socialism,” and I hope you will join in its building.”
Yet
some environmental movements remain complicit in maintaining the
status quo and refuse to see an economic alternative, and although
assuming themselves to be on the progressive left often share the
same beliefs as those on the right, such as blaming over-population
as the cause of the problem. The trouble with parties built on
single issue politics like environmentalism, is that it includes a
lot of people with vastly different political positions yet may agree
on this one issue, meaning that when they come with other principles
beyond that single issue, and in how to handle that issue, so there
are massive divisions and conflicts. Unless the those in the green
movement call for the abolition of capital as a necessary condition
for the solution of ecological problems then it can be described as
utopian-reformist for their plans and ideas about working within the
framework of the capitalist mode of production regarding implementing
their policies. They lack an articulated vision about
post-capitalism. Most in the campaigns to halt climate change are not
anti-capitalist and believe in highly-regulated capitalism achieved
by a mix of electoral politics and non-violent direct action,
obliviously unaware that for the results they seek, it require a
revolution, the abolition of capitalism to achieve them. The biggest
challenge for the Socialist Part is convincing the wider green
movement that sustainability and social justice can only be achieved
in a society based on the common ownership of the means of
production, alongside a multiplicity of democratic forms of
decision-making . If socialism isn’t the answer, then it’s likely
there is no answer.
The
various Green Parties and ecology groups around the world can be
described as the American labour activist Eugene Debs once explained
of the progressive parties springing up:
“…A middle class party,
by whatever name, would still be a capitalist party, for while it
might champion ‘little interests’ against ‘big interests,’
with a sop to labor, it would still stand for the capitalist system
and the perpetuation of wage slavery…”
Humanity's
destiny will unfold according to our ability to implement a political
awakening, to struggle for the only pragmatic solution, the only
realistic alternative. Capitalism has utterly failed us. It has
destroyed our communities, our democracy and now the planet we live
on. As long as people believe in capitalism they'll focus on
reforming it, smoothing around the edges, drafting legislation and
re-writing regulations and so on. The Socialist Party seeks a
revolution that overthrows the whole system, to clear the way for
something entirely different.
We,
in the Socialist Party, are committed to building a society that will
be beacon of democracy and social justice. The demands the Socialist
Party put forward are based on what working people need if they are
to live any sort of a decent life. They are not based on what the
capitalist system says it can afford. Our intention is to provide a
guide and plan of action, and, at the same time, assist working
people in becoming aware of their power to reconstruct society so
that it serves the interests of humanity. Our demand is the aim of
revolution and the establishment of a democratic socialism. The
tactics, methods, and forms of struggle may necessarily change over
time, depending on the development of the conditions. But, at all
times, these tactics, methods, forms, and aims employed by the
Socialist Party are developed with the same objective — the
advancing of the struggles of working people for their immediate and
historic interests.
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