Political and social change is scary but the alternative is
terrifying. Our planet is in ecological free fall. Where will it stop? When
will it stop? Is it too late to stop? There is not an issue that is more
critical to our survival. We count on our elected representatives to do
everything they can to reverse climate change. And what do
they do? They undo what little safeguards we have and support policies that are
designed to make matters many times worse. The world cannot continue on their
current trajectory if survival is the goal. Our only hope is a transformation
of the economic system. And it is quite possible. Those who scream the loudest
about change being impossible are usually those who have something to lose when
change takes place. Change is constant and inevitable. The only questions are
what change will take place.
Capitalism inevitably divides humanity through racism,
nationalism and sexism. Socialism is a sensible process of overcoming
humanity's divisions and building economic and social democracy, where the
resources and productive capacity of the world belong to its people, who use
them to meet human needs rather than to generate private profits for a few
owners. Reforms can never achieve this goal; the system must be overthrown, and
that requires revolution. The capitalist system is designed to stumble from one
crisis to the next. Thirty people own 6% of the world's wealth. Meanwhile, 80%
of the world's population share 20% of the world's wealth. About 1000 people on
the planet, according to Forbes, own roughly 10% of the world's GDP.
The world's richest people (a few dozen billionaires)
tentatively agreed to give away to the charities of their choice half of their
wealth, which amounts to $3.5 trillion, or just over one-quarter of the EU's
GDP. Will global poverty end if the 1000 richest people and the next one
million richest donate all their wealth? Of course not! Charity has never been
the solution to the problem of unequal distribution of wealth. Philanthropy is
not the solution to poverty.
One billion people do not have access to drinking water
largely because a handful of multinational corporations, in which the
billionaire philanthropists own much of the stock, they own water rights around
the world and charge exorbitant utility rates for water that IMF and World Bank
insist must be under private ownership as Tim Di Muzio pointed out in his ‘The
1% and the Rest of Us.’
Two billion people are victims of chronic malnutrition and
lack of medicine, largely because multinational corporations, in which
billionaire philanthropists again own most of the stock, make it unaffordable
for people to eat and have medicine.
Water, food, health, education and affordable housing are
among the problems that billionaire philanthropists want to address but the
political economy which these very same ‘generous philanthropist billionaires,
created the aforementioned problems in the first place. Inequality and poverty
cannot be eradicated by business interests even with the support of the UN and
World Bank whose driving goal is commercial exploitation of natural resources,
labour and markets. Most of the programs introduced to combat have been
band-aid solutions to patch up the victims
Our foods are polluted. On one hand our food is polluted
with herbicides and on the other hand by antibiotics. And then we have hormones
and pesticides. The World Health Organization has concluded that the glyphosate
in Monsanto’s Roundup, a herbicide widely sprayed on GMO food crops, is a
likely causes of cancer in humans and animals.
93% of doctors are concerned about the meat industry’s
excessive use of antibiotics, and independent scientists have definite evidence
that the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is due to the use of
antibiotics as animal feed. 70% of all antibiotics are fed to livestock because
it produces weight gain and saves money on feed costs. Scientists at the
University of Iowa found Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in 70
percent of farmed hogs. A Consumer Reports investigation found that US meat,
regardless of the meat’s source, is full of “pathogens, commensals, and
antibiotic resistant bacteria.” Pork tested contained five resistant bacteria
strains. As the drug companies have more or less stopped the development of new
antibiotics, the protection antibiotics provide against infections is rapidly
fading.
The FDA tried in 2008 to ban farm use of cephalosporins
(antibiotics like Cefzil and Keflex) because they are needed for pneumonia,
strep throat, and other serious human conditions, the egg, chicken, turkey,
milk, pork, and cattle industries and the animal Health Institute protested The
Animal Health Institute consists of the drug companies who make profits selling
70 percent of their production to meat, egg, and milk producers. The members of
the “health” institute are Abbott, Bayer Healthcare, Elanco/Lilly, Merck,
Boehringer, Ingelheim Vetmedica, Novartis, etc.
Congress responded not to the health and safety but to campaign
donations. In other words profits come far ahead of public health.
While a severe drought in the western US is ongoing, with
California reportedly left with one year’s supply of water, the fossil-fuel
fracking industry is polluting the remaining surface and ground water.
Dr. Jacqueline Kasun, professor of economics at Humboldt
State University in California, observes in her 1988 book The War Against
Population that:
1. No more than
1-3% of the Earth's ice-free land area is occupied by humans.
2. Less than
11% of the Earth's ice-free land area is used for agriculture.
3. Somewhere
between 8 and 22 times the current world population could support itself at the
present standard of living, using present technology.
This leaves 50% of the Earth's land surface open to wildlife
and conservation areas.
The lower limit of 8 times the current population (about 44
billion) has been considered as being perfectly workable. According to Dr.
Kasun,
"Better yields and/or the use of a larger share of the
land area would support over 40 billion persons."
Former Harvard Center for Population Studies Director Roger
Revelle estimated that the agricultural resources of the world were capable of
providing an adequate diet (2,500 kilocalories per day) for 40 billion people,
and that it would require the use of less than 25% of the Earth's ice-free land
area. Revelle estimated that the less-developed continents were capable of
feeding 18 billion people, and that Africa alone was capable of feeding 10
billion people.
In addition to the fact that many new strains of food have
been developed that can boost food production, there are other indications that
food would not be a problem. In the September 1976 issue of Scientific
American, Dr. David Hopper asserted that the worlds "food problem"
does not arise from any physical limitation on potential output or any danger
of unduly stressing the environment. The limitations on abundance are to be
found in social and political structures of nations and the economic relations
between them.
The landmass of Texas is 268,820 sq. miles
(7,494,271,488,000 sq ft) So, divide 7,494,271,488,000 sq. ft. by 6,908,688,000
people , and you get 1084.76 sq ft/person That's approximately a 33' x 33'
(about 10 x 10 meters = 100 m2) plot of land for every person on the planet,
enough space for a town house. Given an average four person family, every
family would have a 66' x 66' plot of land, which would comfortably provide a
single family home and yard - and all of them fit on a landmass the size of
Texas. Admittedly, it'd basically be one massive subdivision, but Texas is a
tiny portion of the inhabitable Earth. Such an arrangement would leave the
entire rest of the world vacant. There's plenty of space for humanity.
Capitalists make money by exploiting labour and by
externalising the costs of the waste products of the manufaturing process by
dumping the wastes on the environment. The short-term time horizon of
production for profit focused on quarterly profits is destroying the livability
of the earth. To deny this is nothing but an apology for capitalist
exploitation of labor and the earth. To ensure that ourselves and our children
and their children can live through this and next century, we must do what
seems impossible. And that’s to have a worldwide united action for socialism.
The wealthy 1% is now focused on maximising their wealth; we must show the
unavoidable disaster they will inflict upon the planet if they are permitted to
pursue their goal of capital accumulation.
The current economic system is not geared toward sustaining
global life support systems and is fundamentally flawed. It is clear the
economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and future
generations will find it increasingly hard to survive. The current system is
not concerned with human need, such as stable global ecosystems, but the
personal enrichment of a tiny minority, even at the expense of the health of
the planet. It is therefore up to people to fight against the exploitation and
plunder of capitalism and to set up a society in which the use of Earth’s
natural resources can be rationally planned—a socialist society.
Capitalism’s pursuit of profit is destroying life on earth.
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