En Passant

THERE IS little doubt that freakish and unnaturally assembled storms are a taste of what the future holds under an economic system that has “interfered with the tranquility of domestic affections” and galvanized the forces of nature into a fury of clashing dislocations as we pump ever-more heat-trapping gases into our atmosphere and industrial filth into our lungs.

If we want to stop environmental destruction and live in a truly sustainable society, we have to abolish capitalism. The choice, to put it bluntly, is between capitalism and a habitable planet.

Imagine the car plants in Australia being geared up for production to address climate change. They could produce buses for mass public transport, light rail vehicles, high speed rail and trains, electric cars, solar and wind farms…

Capitalism’s manic drive for profit and its frenzied competition deny the possibility of addressing climate change in any real and concerted way. Only the democratic organisation of society and production to satisfy human need – socialism – can do that.

The fundamental obstacle to a sustainable energy policy goes to the core of how our global economy is organized. Chris Williams is a long-time environmental activist and author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis. He talked to Jon Hochschartner for the US magazine Socialist Worker about the prospects for saving the earth before it’s too late.

The carbon price scheme the Greens and Labor are pushing is really one great big exercise in passing the buck. Most importantly, this is an attempt to pass the costs of restructuring the Australian economy onto the working class in the long term. But it’s also about reassuring polluting Australian businesses that they can keep polluting for a long time to come.

When Julia Gillard says a carbon price is essential because “it unlocks one of the most powerful forces on earth – the genius of the free market”, she is, according to the authors of The Ecological Rift, talking about “Capitalism in Wonderland”. And rather than creating a real world of wonder, continuing on this free market path can only mean that the future of the planet will be “nasty, brutish and short.”

Many of Marx’s writings contain a strong environmental critique; his understanding of humans’ relationship to nature was a core feature of his analysis. Marx’s starting point was seeing that humans, like all living things, have a dialectical relationship to the earth. We come from and are affected by the natural environment, and in turn we impact on and shape the environment around us.

Capitalism as a system of unpaid costs will lead to barbarism in the form of ecological collapse, unless there’s a movement for a different kind of system.

‘The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is ‘crap’ and you don’t need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental fig leaf to cover a determination to do nothing.’                                            – deposed Liberal Party leader […]