We Accuse

On Friday September 20th an estimated 4 million people took time to say that they wanted change. In the U.S. alone, 600,000 people—or two percent of the population—attended various types of demonstrations. And now campaigners consequently carried out follow-up public events to lobby for action on the climate crisis culminating in another worldwide day of protest when an estimated half a million participated in Montreal, Canada along with many other global protests on September 27th 

We must clearly identify just what and who are the enemies of humanity. It is the capitalism and the capitalist class. The main obstacle to reducing global warming is our economic system, where production is geared to profit, and production costs have to be kept to a minimum. Oh yes. Everybody’s issuing green policy statements supporting those in the ecological campaigns, speaking so many nice words.

Action to counter climate change calls for less fossil fuel usage, reduced carbon dioxide emissions and a shift toward renewable energy sources. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) determined that the turning over of more and more land to commercial agriculture has resulted in increasing net greenhouse gas emissions, the loss of natural ecosystems and declining biodiversity. According to one study, adoption of regenerative farming practices — like more cover crops and conservation crop rotation — could cut the greenhouse gas footprint of the U.S. agricultural sector in half by mid-century. The pathway toward more sustainable farming practices is opposed by powerful political force actively which spends more on lobbying than even the defence sector - the American Farm Bureau Federation which has made its stance on climate change clear by opposing regulatory measures. In 2001, the U.S. pulled out of the Kyoto agreement, which attempted to set internationally binding emissions reductions targets. “The Farm Bureau was absolutely critical in derailing Kyoto,” Stuart Eizenstat, President Clinton’s chief U.S. negotiator on the Kyoto Protocol. The worldwide industrial food system, change of land use entailing massive deforestation for monocrop production and biofuel plantations, production of crops as commodities rather than food, all cause huge but unnecessary additional emissions. With big investors around the world looking for profitable returns, capitalist politics takes no heed of public opinion. Vested business interests hire foundations and think tanks in order to denounce or reduce the impact of scientific reports. Capitalists are ideologically blinkered against climate change since it exposes the dangers of capitalism as an environmental threat. Capitalists and their corporations will seek to distort the facts of the matter so they can carry on as usual. Regulation won't work. The legal system which govern these matters end up as the preserve of corporate lawyers of whom Big Business have more than the governments.

The 100 corporations that emit most of the world’s suffocating carbon dioxide first tried to frame the crisis as illusory and untrue. Then they argued that the science is disputed. More recently they’ve tried to suggest that emissions are an individual problem and could be solved by individuals becoming vegetarians and such stuff and nonsense as that. The hundred include state-owned Chinese coal companies and in the private sector, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron as the highest-emitting companies, whose profits depend on the burning of fossil fuels. ExxonMobil covered up its own scientists’ findings of rapid global heating and paid for PR campaigns to muddy the waters and allow it to keep profiting from wrecking the planet.

Political and economic decisions are overriding the interests and well-being of the majority of the people for the benefit of a select few. We need to have well-informed and knowledgeable citizens who can unite for the purpose of not negotiating with our class foe but to overthrow them. We have years of conferences and summits all concluding with vacuous declarations but with non-binding, ineffectual, voluntary agreements. We cannot expect the problems to be solved within capitalism. Consider the fact that since climate change has been on the international agenda nothing of real substance has been achieved. Emissions have increased. The environment must come second to the economy.

Only in a society where we have the power to determine what can and cannot be done will we be able to stop this headlong rush to environmental devastation. We must recognise the unequal struggle for what it is – them against us; power against the people and, unless collectively we abandon hope's triumph over experience, it will ever be thus. Only socialism can deliver on the environment.