Socialism is Green

CAPITALISM

Thousands of protesters, including Greta Thunberg were on the streets of Lausanne, Switzerland Friday ahead a summit for the world's business and political leaders in Davos that kicks off Tuesday. The youth activists are planning to attend the Davos summit to demand that "participants from all companies, banks, institutions, and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies, and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels."

About 15,000 climate strikers came together for the protest in the city to demand that Swiss banks stop financing the fossil fuel industry, according to Klimastreik Schweiz, which organised Friday's march.

Socialism is not about redistributing the spoils of pillaging the planet more evenly among humans. It is not about gluttonous consumption. Socialist society is not about some central planning authority and the use of mass production technologies which are inherently destructive to the earth.

 Socialism means organising human societies in a manner that is compatible with the way that nature is ordered. 

Modern industrial society robs us of community with each other and community with the Earth. This creates a great longing inside us, which we are taught to fill with consumer goods. But consumer goods, beyond those needed for basic comfort and survival, are not really what we crave.

One of the principles of socialism is "production for use, not for profit." Or to re-phrase it, "production for need, not for greed."