Environment

You can’t have a green capitalism

Submitted by ICConline on

Every day the evidence for the environmental catastrophe grows more alarming: melting glaciers, fires and floods linked to global warming, massive extinction of species, unbreathable air in cities, plastic waste building up in the oceans: it’s almost impossible to keep up with the coverage in the media and the press. And virtually every article you read, every speech by celebrated scientists and authors, ends up by calling on the governments of the world to be more committed to protecting the planet, and the individual “citizen” to use their votes more responsibly.

A bee in the bourgeoisie's bonnet

Submitted by ICConline on

It isn't only proletarian workers under attack from a greedy bourgeoisie. Our friends and comrades, the hard working bees. are also under attack  and in danger of extinction in the UK. This as a result of the bourgeoisie's love of insecticide as a means of upping food and flower production.

No Respite From ‘Natural’ Disasters Under Capitalism

Submitted by Internationalism USA on

Over the past decades we have observed a multiplication of violent phenomena that ‘experts’ pay-rolled by the bourgeoisie describe as ‘natural disasters’. They encompass a wide range: from wildfires, to floods, earthquakes and tsunamis. The bourgeois media peddle the lie that there is nothing humanity can do to protect itself against nature’s whims and that we should just resign ourselves to fate.

Post your responses to the catastrophe in Japan!

Submitted by ICConline on

We are starting a thread on our forum on the nightmarish situation in Japan following the huge earthquake in the north of the country. The first post is translated from the opening post of a thread on our French web page. We encourage others to contribute, to express their horror and anger, and to develop a discussion about the degree to which we can hold capitalism responsible for this so-called natural disaster.
 

Economic debacle, “natural” catastrophes, imperialist chaos... Capitalism is a bankrupt system that must be overthrown

Submitted by International Review on

Since the crisis of the financial system in 2008 it seems nothing can hide the depth of the capitalism’s historic crisis. Attacks on the working class escalate, poverty increases, imperialist tensions sharpen, hundreds of millions are malnourished, natural catastrophes grow more deadly. The bourgeoisie itself cannot deny the scale of the difficulties nor pretend that it can provide a better future. It concedes that the present capitalist crisis is the most serious since the thirties and that we will have to “learn to live with” the evil of worsening poverty...

The catastrophic nature of capitalism

Submitted by World Revolution on

This summer pitiless disasters have hit people across the world. Fires have raged in Russia and Portugal, devastating monsoons have covered Pakistan, India, Nepal and China in mud, while floods have also hit eastern Europe and a part of Germany. The list of disasters from summer 2010 is very long.

Copenhagen Summit: Save the planet? No, they can't!

Submitted by International Review on

2009: "Copenhagen ends in failure" (Guardian, UK) "Fiasco in Copenhagen", "Grotesque conclusion", "Worse than useless" (Financial Times, UK), "A worthless summit" (The Asian Age, India), "A cold shower", "The worst agreement in history" (Liberation, France)... The international press is nearly unanimous that this supposedly historic summit was a catastrophe.

The world on the eve of an environmental catastrophe: Who is responsible?

Submitted by International Review on

In the first part of this series on the question of the environment we looked at the current state of affairs and tried to show the nature of the threat facing the whole of humanity with the development on a planetary scale of phenomena. We continue this series with a second article in which we will try to show that the problems of the environment are not the fault of a few individuals or enterprises which don't respect the law but that it is capitalism, with its logic of maximum profit, which is really responsible.

‘Green Economy’ Can’t Save Capitalism

Submitted by Internationalism USA on

Capitalism today requires an arsenal of ideological mystifications to survive. As an historically bankrupt social/economic system, capitalism has nothing to offer humanity except a future of misery, decay, and war. The ruling class finds it necessary to obscure this reality to keep the working class from recognizing and acting upon its revolutionary, historic responsibilities.

The world on the eve of an environmental catastrophe

Submitted by International Review on

The question of the environment has been present in revolutionary propaganda since Marx and Engels denounced the unbearable conditions of London in the mid-19th century, taking in Bordiga's exposure of environmental disasters as the result of the irresponsibility of capitalism. Today this question is even more crucial and demands added effort on the part of revolutionary organisations, in order to show that the historic alternative facing humanity - socialism or barbarism - is not only a choice between socialism and the barbarism of war, local or generalised. The danger of barbarism also includes the threat of an ecological catastrophe which is appearing more and more clearly on the horizon.

Ecological crisis: myth or real menace?

Submitted by World Revolution on

We have received an interesting letter from a comrade in Spain who asks about the reality of the ecological crisis.The comrade asks whether we are facing a grave ecological crisis, or whether, on the contrary, it might be a media show to make us accept austerity measures and poverty under the pretext of ‘saving the planet'.

Food riots show the need to overcome capitalism

Submitted by ICConline on

During the past weeks a series of revolts, protests and strikes against the rising food and energy prices have broken out in many countries of the capitalist periphery. At recent meetings the guard dogs of the capitalist institutions - IMF, World Bank and G 8 - have warned of a gigantic destabilisation and conflicts in almost 40 countries around the world.

It is no coincidence that the hunger revolts are erupting now, since the sharp rise in food prices is not a natural disaster but a result of the sharpening of the capitalist crisis.

A summer of catastrophes: capitalism kills

Submitted by World Revolution on

In addition to the climatic volatility (creating victims of the most terrible monsoons for a century in India, Bangladesh and China; floods in Britain; drought in the south and east of Europe), this summer has been marked by several catastrophes: the railway accident releasing toxic substances in Ukraine, the earthquake in Japan causing a crack in a nuclear reactor, a deadly air disaster in Brazil, the collapse of a bridge in the USA.

Capitalism can’t save us from ecological disaster

Submitted by World Revolution on

Global warming is more and more a headline issue. In February Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met in Paris. They announced that the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, was "very likely" the cause of global warming. Before that announcement they had been more cautious in their level of certainty. In the report published they estimated that world temperature rises would be between 2 and 4 degrees centigrade by 2100. This makes it the fastest temperature rise in so short a period that the world has seen.

Imperialist chaos, ecological disaster: Twin-track to capitalist oblivion

Submitted by International Review on

Frederick Engels predicted more than a century ago that capitalist society would ultimately drag human society down into barbarism if left to its own devices. Indeed, the evolution of imperialist war over the last hundred years has provided more and more horrifying details of how this prediction would be realised. Today, the capitalist world increasingly offers another route to the apocalypse, complementary to that of imperialist war, through a “man- made” ecological meltdown that in the span of a few generations could make the earth as inhospitable to human life as Mars.

Capitalism is condemned...

Submitted by World Revolution on

Frederick Engels predicted more than a century ago that capitalism would ultimately drag human society down into barbarism if left to its own devices. The evolution of imperialist war over the last hundred years has shown how this terrible prediction would be realised. Today, the capitalist world also offers another route to the apocalypse: a ‘man-made’ ecological melt-down that could make the earth as inhospitable to human life as Mars. Despite the recognition of this perspective by the defenders of the capitalist order, there is absolutely nothing effective they can do to stop it, because both imperialist war and climate catastrophe have been brought about by the perpetuation of their dying mode of production.

Global Warming Shows Capitalism’s Bankruptcy

Submitted by Internationalism USA on

For six years the Bush administration doggedly refused to acknowledge growing scientific evidence about the dangers of global warming and climate change. Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and at NASA complained that administration political appointees, with no scientific background or expertise, edited their research reports and findings to downplay the dangers of climate change and serve the propaganda needs of corporate interests allied to the government.

Global warming shows the need for a science of revolution

Submitted by World Revolution on

The media response to the publication of the latest report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was more or less unanimous: the ‘debate’ on whether global warming is caused by ‘human activity’ is now over. There is now overwhelming evidence that climate change is being driven by greenhouse gases produced by factories, power stations, transport, and other sectors of the economy.

Review: 'An Inconvenient Truth' - the capitalist system can't halt the course of environmental destruction

Submitted by ICConline on

‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is a film about the impending disaster facing planet Earth because of global warming and the dreadful consequences for humanity if nothing is done to reverse the current course. Global warming results from the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, like coal and gasoline/petrol. Global average temperatures are predicted to rise by anything from 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C over the period 1990 to 2100.

Global warming: Drive to profit pollutes the planet

Submitted by World Revolution on

For more than 30 years scientists have warned of the dangers of global warming from the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The recent Stern report on the impact of climate change shows an economist, supported by the British government, putting a price on it. Tony Blair, convinced by the overwhelming evidence, thought that the consequences of ‘business as usual’ would be literally “disastrous”.

Hurricane Katrina: A Capitalist-made Crisis

Submitted by Internationalism USA on

Everyone has seen the catastrophic images. Bloated corpses floating in fetid flood waters in New Orleans. An elderly man sitting in a lawn chair, hunched over, dead, killed by heat and lack of food and water as other survivors languish around him. Mothers trapped with their young children with nothing to eat or drink for three days. Chaos at the very refugee centers that the authorities told the victims to go to for safety...

Hurricane Katrina: Capitalism leads humanity to disaster

Submitted by World Revolution on

As with the Bam earthquake which killed tens of thousands in Iran two years ago, as with the Tsunami which left hundreds of thousands dead in the Indian ocean region in December, so in New Orleans, in Mississippi and Alabama, the capitalist system has turned a natural disaster into a social disaster.

Capitalist governments can’t save us from global disaster

Submitted by World Revolution on

The world’s oceans have become warmer and more acidic due to capitalism spewing out increasing quantities of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2. There is an urgent need to limit these emissions and keep the rise in global temperatures below 2°C. Failure to do so threatens not just wildlife, but increasing disasters, droughts, floods and loss of human life on a massive scale.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Environment