Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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Can the Party presently put meat on the bones of what has already been suggested by the informed professionals as solutions. We can collate them and we can categorize them but presently our 100 active members have not got the sufficient technical expertise other than access the knowledge that is already out there to offer new answers with new ideas. (my emphasis)
Which is what we are doing anyways. But in this case what I’m suggesting is that in the case of climate adaptation – and with the effects of climate change a foregone conclusion – we compare and contrast how the different frameworks of capitalism and socialism tackle climate change and adaptation.
For instance, with science, production, distribution and the decision making process no longer shackled by the profit system there can only be positive outcomes in reference to climate adaptation. We need to back up our claim that socialism is the only framework for tackling the problems and issues of climate change by outlining how this framework will take a proactive approach rather than waiting for market reaction.
I am always mind of one of my first lessons when I joined the Party (I forget the teacher) when it was pointed out to me that socialism is the science of generalization. We cannot be expected to hold the answer to every specific issue. We do not lay-out a blueprint of future society and when it comes to achiving socialism all we can do is present vital guide-lines that are in no way deterministic and applicable to all circumstances. What we have is a social evolution-based law of Nature and Society.
If someone reads the numerous messages on the environment posted at our SOYMB blog, one point is constantly emphasized – the basic laws of capitalism, its foundation, cannot be reconciled with solutions to the climate crises. If capitalism changes to be able to fix global warming, the change required would make it that capitalism was no longer capitalism…no more production for profit, no more capital accumulation, no more business growth and market expansion.
What else can we do but assert that capitalism is incapable of resolving the climate crisis by explaining what capitalism is.
But I return to an earlier question. Is the Marxian Labour theory of Value where for a hundred years socialist have declared the worker robbed via the extraction of surplus value now of any crucial primary importance? Is it now ” the robbery of the soil” the more important theft these days?
If it is going to be the issue of the environment, need we talk about class anymore.
I can envisage some of us returning to the basic idea, that it is the worker who is the creator of all wealth, applying brain and muscle power to Nature but perhaps when it comes to the environment, we might begin to view ourselves no longer as working class in the Marxian sense. Our “class” consciousness has transmogrified into “human” consciousness. In terms of achieving the socialist revolution we have become already “class-free”, unlike the owning capitalist class who cannot free themselves from their class-chains.
Am I being too heretical?
This news item, drawn attention to on our blog, brings out well why capitalism can’t deal with the problem of climate change:
“Many Asian countries’ existing and expanding dependence on coalpower is undermining international efforts to fight greenhouse gas emissions and keeping the world on course to see catastrophic impacts from the worsening climate crisis, the United Nations has warned. Amid surges in demand for electricity, countries including India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are accelerating their move to cheap coal power.”
As long as burning coal (or oil or gas) is cheaper than using renewables, capitalist states are going to have recourse to it. In the competitive world that capitalism is states cannot be expected to opt for more costly energy, so undermining their competitiveness. It’s just not going to happen. Those for whom coal is the cheapest will only abandon this when other sources becomes cheaper. This might well happen eventually. but we can’t wait for this.
While I’m writing, I agree with Brian that this thread would be better if, instead of repeating doom and gloom stuff, we highlighted technical innovations and possibilities which show how the problem might be tackled if we had common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s resources.
While I’m writing, I agree with Brian that this thread would be better if, instead of repeating doom and gloom stuff, we highlighted technical innovations and possibilities which show how the problem might be tackled if we had common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s resources.
One technical innovation we would by necessity encouraging is the ‘greening of the earth’ which paradoxically is already occurring with the increase in Co2. However, much of this greening is being offset with the destruction of the rain forests. Obviously, such greening would require an initial intake of water which would mean cleaning up the polluted waterways or desalinating the oceans without the use of osmosis – which uses a tremendous amount of energy.
I don’t think we would go so far has to try and capture Co2 by industrial methods because this also uses a tremendous amount of energy. Far better to use natural sources which are plant based.
It has not been mentioned, (perhaps it is a theory that can likened to be perpetual motion machines,) but ever since I first joined the Socialist Party, now going on almost 50 years ago, fusion nuclear power has always been talked of as the promised energy panacea. Some new developments have occurred but I wonder what the current state of play is about its use in the near future.
Every eco-engineer solution, every lifestyle change suggestion, in fact, every proposal raised by capitalism except the carbon taxes and carbon trading, will be applicable with socialism. Already some are being implemented such as reforestation. Most are too slowly introduced by the gradual timetable of the policy of protecting business and national self-interests. Socialism will speed up the process and give the urgency that XR and Thunberg’s climate strikers now urge.
But what we have failed to and I have mentioned this before is that it has to be done in tandem and in parallel with a growth of production, not its reduction as environmentalists equally demand. It is this part of the message I think should receive prominence and one that separates us from mainstream environmental movements. Curbing global warming but upgrading living conditions, particularly to our poor cousins in the developing and undeveloped parts of the world, that free access will necessitate. I think the current policies is one that the impoverished can rightly condemn as almost as climate apartheid where their quality of life is sacrificed so that the wealthier regions, North America and Europe, can continue without consequences.
I fear that if we neglect the gloom and doom message which is very much fundamental to our analysis of capitalist economic laws, by promoting possible alternatives to the present eco-policies, we might just well be offering capitalists arguments that they too can present as remedies.
The science exists to solve climate change, the political will isn’t and the economic prerequisite isn’t. Surely what is lacking is where we should focus our campaigns.
Alan says: ‘If it is going to be the issue of the environment, need we talk about class anymore.
I can envisage some of us returning to the basic idea, that it is the worker who is the creator of all wealth, applying brain and muscle power to Nature but perhaps when it comes to the environment, we might begin to view ourselves no longer as working class in the Marxian sense. Our “class” consciousness has transmogrified into “human” consciousness. In terms of achieving the socialist revolution we have become already “class-free”, unlike the owning capitalist class who cannot free themselves from their class-chains.’
Isn’t this basically Marx’s (Hegelian) idea of the working class having become the ‘universal class’, the only class that stands for human progress? So I don’t think it’s such a heretical idea. The way that I would put it is that the working class revolution has become more and more of an ‘existential’ necessity, especially over the last century with the world wars and after WW2 the threat of nuclear annihilation.
I don’t know if this has been posted already from Hal Hornborg Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University. He starts off well enough identifying capitalism and money as the problem, but then ends in seeing globalisation as the problem.
but then ends in seeing globalization as the problem.
It is the same problem, globalization is just capitalist expansion which is a normal process of capitalism that has been taking place since capitalism emerged in England. Some peoples in nowadays such read Rosa Luxembourg book on the accumulation of capital. There are millions of peoples talking about globalization but they do not know what they are talking about, like the one talking about liberals
Capitalism has just dropped an atomic bomb in the Bahamas There is nothing left. It looks like Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Capitalism has just dropped an atomic bomb in the Bahamas There is nothing left. It looks like Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Bullshit!
Capitalism has just dropped an atomic bomb in the Bahamas There is nothing left. It looks like Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Bullshit!
Why do you call it bullshit ? I can write another bullshit An atomic bomb was dropped in Puerto Rico, and Brasil, and I personally know the whole area of the Caribbean, South America and Central America. I am talking about the devastation that capitalism have produced in those two countries and several island in the Caribbeans. Besides knowing those area, and I also well informed about the life, the history and the living conditions of that particular area
Marquito was talking metaphorically, I believe, not literally.
The met experts consider that it was climate change which intensified the Hurricane Dorian’s power and ferocity and, just now, relief efforts need more assistance, while survivors seeking help are being turned away from the USA for not having the proper visa requirements. (although this is being reversed due to averse publicity in certain cases)
The death toll may not be as high as if a atomic bomb was dropped but certainly the infrastructure damage might be equivalent to one
The death toll may not be as high as if a atomic bomb was dropped but certainly the infrastructure damage might be equivalent to one
Exactly !!! , that is what I was talking about. We have too many keyboard warriors. The government of Puerto Rico and the USA are still saying that the death toll was only 64, and it has been proven that the death toll in Puerto Rico was 3,000 peoples. There are predictions that most peoples from the Caribbean in the future would be forced to move from that area due to the increased intensity of the hurricanes and the rising sea level. This time the Puerto Rican were expecting a bigger devastation but the hurricane change its route
What’s the big beef all about say the farmers. We’ve got it solved.
Farming can become climate neutral by 2040 without cutting beef production or converting substantial areas of farmland into forest, according to the National Farmers’ Union.
The NFU says three-quarters of the UK’s agricultural emissions can be offset by growing fuel for power stations and then capturing and burying the carbon dioxide, which could lead to energy plants becoming the nation’s biggest crop after wheat. Increasing the carbon stored in soils and using technology to reduce the emissions caused by cattle and fertiliser use are also needed. The NFU plan envisages half of farming’s emissions being offset by growing willow, miscanthus grass and other energy crops to use in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage power plants. The technology is only at the pilot stage but the scale required by the NFU plan is consistent with projections for 2050 from the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s official advisers. The NFU plans also call for a doubling of wind, solar and biomethane energy on farms. Storing more carbon in soils, peatlands, woodlands and hedgerows offsets another fifth of agricultural emissions. Only 1.5% of the total comes from new tree planting – less than the CCC has recommended – but the NFU sees its figure as the maximum realistically possible. A quarter of farming’s emissions can be cut by raising animals and growing crops more efficiently, according to the NFU. Its plans highlight feed additives to cut methane in animals, gene editing to improve crops and livestock, and controlled-release fertilisers.
Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, said “We don’t plan to make any cuts [in meat production],” Batters said. “We think we can do it without changing levels of production.” People are increasingly choosing to eat less meat and Batters said: “Everybody’s diet is up to individuals to choose, but there are other parts of the world that are hungry for high-quality meat.”
The Friends of the Earth campaigner Guy Shrubsole said: “Eating less but better meat is a crucial part of the fight against climate breakdown, yet astonishingly there is no mention of this in the NFU’s report. Doing so would free up much more land for trees and agroforestry, which would absorb huge quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. It seems the NFU is still not prepared to contemplate significant land use change in Britain, despite the CCC recommending this as being vital,”
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