For a free humanity

Almost every problem working people face can be traced to the failures of our exploitative economic system that empowers capitalists to do whatever enhances their profits, no matter the cost to people or the environment. Our future depends on transforming that system to one in which people and communities are dedicated to everyone’s well-being and happiness in a balanced relationship with nature. Time is not on our side to realise a good quality of life, and to live free of pollution 

The Socialist Party is not at war with the planet. We re-imagine our relationship with the Earth and each other because we care for the planet and its people. A vast web of profiteering and exploitation and influence prevents meaningful action on climate change. In effect, it’s business as usual for the corporations which express little urgency about the climate emergency. Companies must maximise profits above all else. They have to protect their dividend-paying capacity. You cannot talk about addressing climate change without talking about abolishing the system that thrives on the hunger and poverty of the world's majority. It is the people of the poorer nations who are most vulnerable to climate change, and who are often mistakenly blamed for causing it. The poorest half of the world is responsible for only 10% of global emissions, while the richest 10% is responsible for half of the carbon emissions. Capitalist enterprises commercialise (commodifies) everything so to accumulate ever more capital. The root of the environmental problem is in the capitalist system. With official indifference to the quality of working class life including the environment, it might be expected that the most industrialised and profitable areas where most workers live suffer the worst effects of polluted air and water.

What threatens mankind is lethal global warming with deforestation and soil erosion, associated floods, the acidification of the oceans, and disruption offood chains, all combining to precipitate recurring cycles of famine and drought. Scientists have long argued that dramatic changes in the earth’s atmosphere through carbon dioxide emissions, would have a disastrous effect on the ecological system, the so-called ‘Greenhouse Effect’. It is now generally accepted that if present trends continue, the resulting global temperature rise will produce enormous weather variations which will disrupt agriculture and submerge some presently low-lying land area as the polar ice cap melts. There is mounting evidence of 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 by as much as three degrees over the past 100 years. Glaciers have been melting. A searing indictment of the short sighted and disastrous policies of big business has been in relation to the devastation of the mighty Amazonian rain forests. With the blessing of the Brazilian government the competing multinational companies launched a ferocious assault on the jungle to transform it into a vast pasture land for cattle, for soya and palm oil plantations for the world market. Seeking spectacular profits for minimum investments and no controls, the companies ignited vast forest fires, consuming hundreds of millions of trees, lasting many months.

The anarchic development of capitalism and the rapacious greed of today’s multi-national corporations now threaten humanity with extinction. Socialists have never been opposed the achievements that science has contributed to society. But under capitalism it has been used and developed in an irrational and unplanned manner which has resulted in many climate catastrophes. The environment is now in a state of general crisis. Despite the regulation and legislation and reforms of the past years, have things improved? Regardless of what CEOs say, corporations must be interested in one thing above all else - making a profit. Wages are a cost to be minimized so that corporations can maximize their profits. So too, the protection of nature is a cost to be minimized in order to ensure a profit; not just any profit, but the largest profit possible. Even if well-meaning chief executives don't want to pollute, competition will ensure that they will go out of business if they act upon their conscience. This is a fact of the market, irrespective of the personalities involved. Capitalist competition is the engine which drives environmental degradation.

The destruction of the environment has now reached calamitous proportions. The ‘Greenhouse Effect’ is inevitable in a society dominated by blind market forces. The inherent contradictions, antagonisms and the competition of interests makes capitalism absolutely incapable of developing the immense natural potential energy sources that exist or even introduce adequate safeguards against pollution and harmful effects. Today’s environmental problems spring from capitalism’s reckless pursuit of accumulation without regard for human welfare. The drive for profit is leading to the neglect of everything that stands in the way of this – has created ecological havoc from one end of the planet to the other.

Today’s environmental crises present an opportunity to engage people in discussion of socialist ideas. Freedom is not a state of mind; it is the condition in which people are not forced to work and live in a way that exploits humans and destroys nature. Right now, and as long as the capitalist system exists, we all have to live within it. Capitalist relations affect and dominate every aspect of life. We can’t all just opt out of the capitalist system and find some other way to survive.