A Scottish Ecological Apocalypse

Outlining a apocalyptic scenario that the country could face within the next decade, Francesca Osowska, head of Scottish Natural Heritage, described numerous catastrophic impacts from the climate crisis which could leave the country with polluted waters, abandoned villages, dying forests and few remaining birds. Some of the biggest impacts include enormous wildfires which burned across swathes of the country in April and May, with one in Moray described as one of the largest wildfires seen in the UK in recent years. The country also faces the twin perils of both lack of water, and heightened risks of flooding, due to less rainfall, but rising sea levels which threaten low-lying coastal regions. Warming temperatures have already changed the timings of spring events such as leaf unfolding, bird migration and egg-laying, as well as fish abundance and spawning locations, according to the Scottish government. The country is failing to meet its own target to plant more trees with more land being given over to agriculture, while the salmon industry is already dealing with the impact of algal blooms due to climate change and pesticide use, and a surge in oil and gas exploration in the North Sea is expected to soon be under way which will further compound the problem.

“Let me paint you a picture of what we could have in Scotland in 2030,” Ms Osowska will say in her address at the Royal Society of Edinburghthis evening. “Imagine an apocalypse – polluted waters; drained and eroding peatlands; coastal towns and villages deserted in the wake of rising sea level and coastal erosion; massive areas of forestry afflicted by disease; a dearth of people in rural areas and no birdsong. All of this is possible, and there are parts of the world we can point to where inaction has given rise to one or more of these nightmare landscapes.”

Unlike the green economists, the Socialist Party has concluded that in a class-divided society where the means of living are used to serve the interests of the owners of private property any talk of finding a ‘common interest’, so that there is a change of course of market forces and consequently a greening of capitalism, is a fool’s errand. We have, therefore, consistently argued that, where classes exist, there are class divisions in the production and distribution of wealth with the subsequent inequality manifesting itself in a class struggle between two classes with diametrically opposed interests.

Built-in rivalry between the sections of the capitalist class always results in casualties in some form or another. At one end we have the everyday casualties of lay-offs and redundancies. Whilst at the other end from time to time inter-capitalist rivalry erupts into a full scale war – with extensive human casualties, refugees, communities being destroyed – and extensive damage to the environment and the destruction of wealth on a tremendous scale. It is these conditions of competition which make it extremely difficult to reach any regulatory agreement which can have a global application. When any such proposals come into conflict with the competitive self-interest of the various national sections of the capitalist class, the problems of winners and losers appears. This is usually announced in the media as, “There was a failure to reach an agreement over who is to pay the bill”. If market forces essentially cause and create environmental damage by literally encouraging an irrational human impact, how can you realistically expect those self-same forces to solve it? This conundrum will almost certainly intensify if globalisation picks up pace and the competition gets even tougher for the possession of scarce resources, especially energy and water.

But the conundrum does not end there since the system of capitalism is also dependent on economic growth and the accumulation of capital on a larger and larger global scale. And in order to achieve an accumulation of capital, market forces must not only create and produce commodities on a mass scale but also destroy them in a systematic fashion never known in human history. When confronted by barriers of environmental legislation which are designed to diminish the rate of expected profits and the accumulation of capital, the capitalists will do what they have always done in their search for short-term profits: finding or creating loopholes, moving the goalposts, corrupting officials, trying to bribe the local population with empty promises, or shifting the whole concern to an area or region where a more favourable reception is expected and profits maintained. 

Only when we are living in a society based on a system of common ownership, a society of free access where wage slavery has been abolished, money is obsolete, hierarchical structures pointless, class laws transformed into social rules, and production is geared to satisfying human needs, will we be in a position to minimise any environmental damage caused by human activity. Once we have reach this stage in human development and social evolution — where our interaction with the natural environment not only enhances our understanding of ourselves but also converges with a social recognition that we are as much dependent on nature as is nature dependent on us — so we will be able to start to tackle a rational clean up of the environmental damage which capitalism will have left in its wake. The lesson is that those concerned about global warming should direct their efforts to getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with a system where the Earth’s natural and industrial resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity. This will put a stop to the operation of the current economic imperative to seek and accumulate profits and will provide the framework for co-ordinated global action to deal not only with global warming but other current problems such as world poverty and constant war somewhere in the world.