In Glasgow today, in cities across the UK and around the world, protests are taking place to demand action on the global warming crises that humanity is facing. Yesterday in Glasgow, the Friday for Future demonstration showed that the younger generation is fighting for their future.
The Socialist Party is also concerned with the destruction of our environment and it is because we are so concerned that we ask questions about it. The only answer that makes sense is that it is because of the way society is ordered. Couldn’t the solution be the Earth as the common storehouse of all humanity; the production of wealth solely for use not sale or profit; a world without weaponry — is this an unrealistic Utopia? Not at all. It is the only logical and rational way to run the world given the present high stage of development of the forces of production. Because a solution is so simple and obvious does not mean that it won’t work. We don’t see why humanity has to wait till capitalism has nearly destroyed the planet to establish this. It could be instituted now, so avoiding not only the environmental degradation that will occur if capitalism continues but also all the wars and the destruction and misery they bring that will occur during this period too
Already for millions the misery and suffering of climate change is a reality. The human cost of climate change is here and now. It is increasing poverty, political instability and the displacement of people. It is fuelling tensions and competition over dwindling resources and those who least contribute to the high levels of carbon emissions are suffering the most. For politicians in the wealthier countries, it is a distant problem in distant lands. It suits politicians to make sympathetic noises about environmental issues, but after the COP summit is over the same politicians can usually find "pragmatic reasons" that make them have "re-appraise" earlier "policy pledges". There are numerous accountancy tricks that help countries reach their net-zero commitments, without them actually reducing their very own emissions. CO2 is suddenly a commodity to be bought and sold on the world market, a market in which the underdeveloped countries are duped by the richer ones and their corporate elites. The overall aim is to make biodiversity a commodity just as carbon became one a few short years ago. To commodify biodiversity means to own the back garden of someone who lives half a world away, to control another’s fishing ground or grazing land. Carbon trading and off-setting should raise alarm bells for millions living in or near forests, mountains, coastline, estuaries, steppe, savannah, marginal land, meadow, farmland.
What we want is for the production of the useful things that people need to live and enjoy life to be taken out of the hands of profit-seeking enterprises altogether. We want the means of production to be owned in common by the whole community as the only basis on which production can be organised to take account of the overall interest of all the members of society. In socialism there won’t be any profit-seeking capitalist enterprises to regulate; just democratically-run productive units producing, in an ecologically and socially acceptable way, what people need. When you consider the future of the planet you are faced with two choices. You can continue to support the defenders of capitalism – they come in many disguises – and acquiesce in the destruction of the environment or stand in their way by joining the struggle for socialism and the destruction of a system that will nonchalantly prioritise profit over not only human well-being but the world we live in.
But don’t wait until you are waist-deep in floodwater to make up your mind. Think hard and now. Capitalism, and with it the worsening of every environmental problem or socialism, a world social system that places control of the Earth in the hands of a global majority who will tend to it with respect and without the barriers profit places in the path of production?
We in the Socialist Party do not shout for minimum reforms or minor changes to current worldwide production methods in an attempt to mitigate or offset the damage already done. Instead, we believe that the only real solution is an end to the root cause of the problem, that is capitalism itself – nothing more, nothing less.
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