07) TO ACHIEVE CLIMATE JUSTICE, PHASE OUT CAPITALISM

 

People's Voice Editorial

 

            The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a "stark" report, warning that unrestricted use of fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 to avoid "severe, pervasive and irreversible" climate change. The good news from the IPCC is that most of the world's electricity could be produced from low‑carbon sources by 2050, at a cost far less than the damage caused by inaction.

 

            But while people and even many governments grasp the need to slash greenhouse gas emissions, the major imperialist powers remain in the grip of a military-industrial-energy complex which opposes such radical change. Despite the occasional fine rhetoric of President Obama, the U.S. and its allies cling to the historical anachronism known as the private profit system of capitalism.

 

            At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Cuba's Fidel Castro prophetically warned that "An important biological species - humankind - is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive elimination of its natural habitat. We are becoming aware of this problem when it is almost too late to prevent it. It must be said that consumer societies are chiefly responsible for this appalling environmental destruction..."

 

            The drive for increased corporate profits is at the heart of "consumerism". Putting it bluntly, the big energy and arms monopolies, and the leaders of the imperialist governments they support, are not role models or agents of change. They are simply criminals. Why? Because they defend a capitalist system which will turn billions of people into desperate, hungry, homeless refugees within our own lifetimes.

 

            Our world still has the time and resources to turn away from disaster. But to succeed, the struggle for climate justice must be combined with economic, social and political justice - with a socialist alternative based on meeting the needs of people and the environment, not on the greed of a tiny minority.

 

 (The above article is from the November 16-30, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)