Socialism - A rational civilisation

People are right to be concerned about what is happening to the environment. There is a serious environmental crisis but the issue is not whether it exists but what to do about it. The Socialist Party explains that no government nor any international treaty can protect the environment. Governments exist to run the political side of the profit system. And the profit system can only work by giving priority to making profits over all other considerations. So to protect the environment we must end production for profit. Production today is in the hands of business enterprises, all competing to sell their products at a profit. All of them — and it doesn’t matter whether they are privately-owned or state-owned — aim to maximise their profits. This is an economic necessity imposed by the forces of the market. If a business does not make a profit it goes out of business. Under the competitive pressures of the market, businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations. All they look to is their own balance sheet and in particular, the bottom line which shows whether or not they are making a profit. The whole of production, from the materials used to the methods employed to transform them, is distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision makers, however, selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder and to pollute.

Governments do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the profit-driven market system whose rules are "profits first" and "you can’t buck the market". Too many environmentalists are not against the market and are not against profit-making. They imagine that, by firm government policy, these can be tamed and prevented from harming the environment. This is an illusion. You can’t impose other priorities on the profit system than making profits. That’s why environmentalist activists will fail. They also fail to realise that what those who want a safe sustainable environment are up against is a well-entrenched economic and social system based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding economic law of profits first. If the environmental crisis is to be solved, this system must go. What is required is political action aimed at replacing this system by a new and different one which will allow us to meet our needs in an environmentally-friendly way. To do this we must control production but to be able to control production we must own the means of production. That’s the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature. And it’s the only basis on which we can begin to successfully reverse the degradation of the environment already caused by the profit system.  Until those who do the work of the world understand that only when privilege in all forms, and class ownership of the means of living, have been abolished will it be possible for the people of the world to live in harmony with their surroundings and their neighbours.

The world’s governments are “nowhere near on track” to meet their commitment to avoid global warming of more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial period, according to an author of a key UN report. A massive, immediate transformation in the way the world’s population generates energy, uses transportation and grows food will be required to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C and the forthcoming analysis is set to lay bare how remote this possibility is.

“It’s extraordinarily challenging to get to the 1.5C target and we are nowhere near on track to doing that,” said Drew Shindell, a Duke University climate scientist and a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Shindell said that the more ambitious 1.5C goal would require a precipitous drop in greenhouse emissions triggered by a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, particularly coal, mass deployment of solar and wind energy and the eradication of emissions from cars, trucks, and airplanes. The fading prospect of keeping the global temperature rise to below 1.5C has provoked alarm among leaders of low-lying island nations that risk being inundated should the world warm beyond this point. Last year, global greenhouse gas emissions rose slightly again. A difference of 0.5C in temperature may appear small but the IPCC report, which is a summary of leading climate science, is expected to warn there will be major impacts if warming reaches 2C.

“Even 1.5C is no picnic, really,” said Dr. Tabea Lissner, head of adaption and vulnerability at Climate Analytics. Lissner said a world beyond 1.5C warming meant the Arctic would be ice-free in summer, around half of land-based creatures would be severely affected and deadly heatwaves would become far more common. “0.5C makes quite a big difference,” she said.