"The great party of the twentieth century is coming to an end, and unless we now start preparing our survival kit we will soon be just another species eking out an existence in the few remaining habitable regions."
— James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia

The New Year brought spring-like days to regions of Illinois and Wisconsin. It also brought a rarity for January: an eight-funnel-cloud storm system with dangerously high winds and lightning, a storm so severe it derailed a freight train, uprooted trees, and flattened homes, leaving 11,000 families without power. The storm killed one person and injured twenty-one. “I have never, ever seen damage like this”, a Wisconsin sheriff told the Chicago Tribune. “To have this happen in January is just mind-boggling."

Climate specialists say global warming is the cause of the rash of environmental catastrophes sweeping the earth. Impacts from global warming include a rise in sea levels, more extreme weather, loss of entire forests, and outbreaks of pests, marine life destruction, glacial retreat and the extinction of species.

Global warming is caused by a concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emitted primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests. When the sunlight strikes the earth’s surface, a part of it is reflected back towards space as infrared radiation or heat. Over the earth’s history, the amount of energy sent from the sun to the earth was about the same as the amount of energy radiated back into space, and the temperature of the earth’s surface remained essentially constant.

What has changed is that greenhouse gases absorb this infrared radiation and trap the heat in the atmosphere. The earth gets warmer, which melts the polar ice. Since there is less ice, the earth becomes even warmer. The hotter the earth, the more the ice melts. The more the ice melts, the more the sea level rises. Now there are predictions of deadly heat waves and floods that threaten the world’s coastal cities. So it is a constantly escalating, increasingly dangerous process. Scientists say the earth could soon pass into a morbid fever. Once it starts, it will be irreversible. As the earth warms many living things will die.

Conditions may call the very existence of civilization into question. Our response must match the urgency of the question. We must examine the root cause of the environmental crisis to find the solution. Today, a tiny but powerful global class of capitalists is destroying the earth, drowning its people in poverty, and entangling the world in war and violence. The environmental crisis is inextricably entangled with the capitalist crisis. It is an inevitable result of industrialization under capitalism, an economic system where private interests supersede social interests. It cannot be resolved apart from who rules society.

This mammoth crisis cannot be resolved by individual solutions such as reducing one's own carbon emissions, by buying sustainable products, or by recycling. Nor can it be resolved by pressuring politicians or by trying to force the corporations to "do right." The globalization of the economy and the new market-state makes it nearly impossible to force the giant international corporations to protect the environment. Yet it is vital that we achieve a rapid move away from fossil-fuel-powered society if we are to save the earth and civilization. Achieving this will require a fundamental reorganization of the world economic, social and political structures into a system based on production for use instead of for profit.

The fundamental problem is that socially necessary production, such as energy, is privately owned and distributed only for profit. The huge energy consortiums don't give a hoot about our welfare. They don't care about it because they can't. They have trillions of dollars invested in a global fossil fuel energy financial infrastructure and they are not about to change that unless it becomes profitable to do so.

Compounding the struggle for the earth and humanity is that the U.S. state has been reconstructed to serve the needs of capital. The purpose of the new market-state is to clear the way for corporate global profits rather than to provide for the peoples’ welfare. Corporations put politicians into office to insure laws are passed to guarantee corporate interests. The state and the corporations have merged to the point that their roles and functions are indistinguishable from one another.

It is therefore no surprise that the U.S. government refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. Or that it attempted to steer the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change away from support for a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. The point is that the actions of the state reflect the policies of the ruling class and not the whims of some bad individual. What makes the situation so politically dangerous is that the capitalists are meticulously discussing how they are going to maintain their power in a changing world. Their vision is a fascist America to protect their interests. Only the masses of people can bring about change according to the interests of the people.

Roots of the Environmental crisis

The environmental crisis did not just happen. It is interconnected with the growth of industry, society and the global market in the post-World War II period. Armed with billions of dollars from war profiteering, the American ruling class set out to make the world totally dependent on the corporations and the organization of the economy and society around fossil fuel.

Scientists have for years warned of the dangers of the destruction of the environment. It wasn't that nobody listened. The leaders of industry said — and continue to say — that we can't afford to put the environment ahead of profits. As the transnational corporation and globalization consolidated, environmental destruction became an integral part of the capitalist method of production.

Today, no country is immune. The U.S., however, is by far the biggest polluter in the world. Their chemical, oil and coal industries are relentlessly spewing poisons into the environment. In addition to global warming, industrial poisons are polluting rivers, lakes, oceans and fresh water sources throughout the globe. The world has lost 80 per cent of the original forests which covered the earth. Economic giants like China, with a population of over a billion people, also face grave environmental problems. If any corporation or nation spends money on environmental concerns, it will lose out in the global market.

Only Public Ownership Can Save Civilization

The corporations may sound like they are talking about “solutions,” but they are simply commodifying the problem. In the name of the "green" revolution, they seek to enrich their already enormous profits, wreaking havoc on the environment and on societies globally. The watchdog group, CorpWatch, points out that the new boom in "biofuels has accelerated the demand for [oil palm] plantations, which in turn has led to widespread forest and peat land clearing." In addition, devoting large portions of the corn crop to ethanol fuel when prices are at historic highs is creating huge profits alongside global food riots. The stage is being set for mass starvation in the world’s vast slums. Lastly, it is worth noting that Exxon Mobil Corporation posted $40.6 billion, the biggest annual profit by any company last year. Their net income rose three percent. Why would they give that up? Also, the money Big Oil puts into “alternative fuels” pales in comparison with their financial transactions. In 2005, they spent 38 percent of their cash flow on stock buybacks.

The head of General Electric summed up the capitalists approach to global warming when he told NBC television that he could make money “doing something good [i.e. going Green].” The reality is that there are no half-measures. The capitalists cannot change fundamentally, because if they did, the whole capitalist house of cards would come apart. The rules of the market economy are that if you take measures to protect the environment at the expense of profit, you will be taken over by corporations who have no such concerns.

On the side of humanity, there are many visions for a sustainable planet and for “eco-smart” cities waiting to be implemented. Scientific American magazine proposes solar power, since “the energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year.” There are even ideas for using playgrounds and sidewalks to generate energy from footsteps! New cars are being invented that will be powered by compressed air. Energy can be tapped from anything. The problem is that the giant corporations will not and are not moving toward proposals on a grand scale that aim to move the globe away from fossil fuels, nor are they planning how to save humanity from what's coming. They aren't because they can't.

A planned global economy where the interests of humanity, not profits, drive the world economy and society is the next step forward. For the first time in human history, the technology exists to make such a world possible. The question is whether revolutionaries will disseminate a vision of a new cooperative world and forge a new global movement into a force that can gain the political power to create fundamental change. Under communism — an economic system where the means of production are publicly owned — we can reclaim the earth and create a humane economic system worthy of the people who inhabit it. With a different kind of government that represents the interests of humanity, we would have the resources to develop and implement the visionary environmental proposals being proposed.

In summation, as revolutionaries, we have to see that the environmental movement is stuck until it breaks out of the confines of capitalism and fights for the earth and humanity based on a vision of a new world. As the crisis deepens, the capitalists will take measures to provide for the top one percent of the population, leaving the rest of humanity to fend for themselves. As revolutionaries, we also have to see that the environmental movement has become a strategic front of struggle against corporate power. Today, revolutionaries who avoid the issue of the environment do so at their peril. The struggle around the environment is inextricably connected to the political crisis of capitalism and central to humanity’s future. If the environmental movement connects with and bases itself on the struggle of the billions of dispossessed humans throughout the world — it can save humanity and the earth.

Given the historical new reality, huge responsibilities are being placed on the shoulders of American revolutionaries. The U.S. is the most militarily powerful country, and it is attempting to impose its will on countries throughout the globe. World war – nuclear war — is on the horizon. Revolutionaries must unite around the understanding that saving the earth and humanity will take a massive, global class-conscious movement fighting for the political power to end private property. Our choice is the consolidation of the power of the corporations over society – and the possible end of civilization – or the power of society over the exploiters.

 

March.2008.Vol18.Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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