21 December 2011
On October 12th. Peter Kent, Canada's Minister of the Environment, pulled out of the United Nations Climate talks in South Africa. Five days earlier, British Prime Minister, David Cameron decided not to cooperate with twenty-six other European Union heads of state concerning their new treaty to harmonize financial policies. These two actions, or non-actions, though seemingly very different, reveal a certain similarity.
According to Mr. Kent, "We are invoking Canada's legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto. This decision formalizes what we have said since 2006 - that we will not implement the Kyoto protocol." The Conservative party claims that by meeting the Kyoto agreement they would damage the Canadian economy. From this we deduce that businesses that pollute would be in some difficulty maintaining current profit levels that would put them at a disadvantage compared to competitors.
Obviously, environmentalists were not happy with Kent's and Canada's abrupt departure from the talks. "The Harper government has imposed a death sentence on many of the world's most vulnerable people by pulling out of Kyoto," said Greenpeace spokesperson, Mike Hudema.
Mr. Cameron refused to participate in the new financial agreement because,"…they do not protect our interests." Representing a government already deeply in debt, Cameron wanted special privileges for Britain's financial services sector that the other EU nations were not prepared to give. Both Kent and Cameron were basically saying "look, I will go along with matters of mutual interest as long as the interests of capitalism in my country are protected first and foremost.
This clearly shows the competitive nature of capitalism and that such conferences and the agreements they attempt to work out are doomed to failure. They are just foolhardy attempts to make capitalism work. It has been clearly shown over the last two hundred years that capitalism can work in one way only - producing profits expropriated by the capitalist class from the surplus-labour of the working class. A life of struggle and uncertainty with poverty, unemployment, war, and pollution a natural and constant condition is the lot of the workers. Furthermore, competing interests of the capitalist class in the various countries of the world will only doom such talks to failure.
If anyone wants a pristine environment, fairness, equality, peace, or security, they won't find it under capitalism, which is another good reason to work for socialism and get rid of capitalism - it's way past its 'best before' date.
