“The climate catastrophe demonstrates the disastrous self-interest of the capitalist class. To avoid excessive warming, as well as the many severe environmental threats produced by capitalism, it is necessary to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.” (PSL, below)
Previous posts at MasterResource have examined the energy platforms of the Democrat Party, Green Party, and Cornel West for President. On the free-market side, summaries have been provided for the GOP Platform, American Petroleum Institute, and Heritage Foundation/Agenda 25, and America First Policy Institute (AFPI, a think tank in the Trump fold). Today’s post turns again to the interventionist/socialist view of energy and climate.
The Party For Socialism and Liberation (PSL). “For the planet to live capitalism must end,” states the website banner. The “About” section reads:
The Party for Socialism and Liberation believes that the only solution to the deepening crisis of capitalism is the socialist transformation of society. Driven by an insatiable appetite for ever greater profits regardless of social cost, capitalism is on a collision course with the people of the world and the planet itself. Imperialist war; deepening unemployment and poverty; deteriorating health care, housing and education; racism; discrimination and violence based on gender and sexual orientation; environmental destruction—all are inevitable products of the capitalist system itself….
A forceful overthrow is supported:
The idea that the capitalists’ grip on society and their increasingly repressive state can be abolished through any means other than a revolutionary overturn is an illusion. Equally unrealistic are reformist hopes for a “kinder, gentler” capitalism, or solutions based on economic decentralization or small group autonomy. Meeting the needs of the more than 6.5 billion people who inhabit the planet today is impossible without large-scale agriculture and industry and economic planning.
Turning to climate, PSL starkly states: Climate crisis: Unsolvable under capitalism
The climate catastrophe demonstrates the disastrous self-interest of the capitalist class. To avoid excessive warming, as well as the many severe environmental threats produced by capitalism, it is necessary to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But the capitalist class is driven to protect its investments in coal, oil and gas, as well as associated industries. It will do whatever it takes to hold on to power, even if that means destroying much of the world.
The struggle to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of global warming is therefore a class struggle. It is a struggle for power — not a struggle over morality or individual consumer choices. All people are not equally responsible for the climate change. Imperialist countries reaped the benefits of fossil fuels while they exploited the resources of countries they colonized. Within industrialized countries the proceeds of workers’ labor were channeled into the pockets of the capitalists while the neighborhoods of working, poor and oppressed people were treated as sacrifice zones, dumping grounds for the toxic waste products of the carbon economy.
The class war around the climate is also an imperialist war. Countries damaged by imperialist exploitation and colonialist expropriation are the first to experience the devastation of rising sea levels and disrupted weather patterns. The imperialist response to climate change appears in the closure and militarization of borders. Ever more people are forced to migrate. Yet immigrants are violently apprehended and imprisoned in concentration camps.
The imperialist dimension of climate change is undeniable when we recall that the U.S. military is the world’s biggest institutional danger to the environment. Dismantling the U.S. war machine is thus crucial for human survival. Addressing the climate catastrophe and environmental racism in an equitable and just way requires specialized planning at multiple levels ─ international, state, regional, and local. Agriculture, transportation, shipping, construction, mining and virtually all heavy industries must be reconstructed. Even information networks ─ from the coltan used in cell phones to the vast amounts of energy used by massive server farms ─ will have to be reconfigured.
The work force of all these industries is immense. Capitalists try to convince workers that threats to the carbon economy are threats to the working class. But of course, the capitalists’ interests are antagonistic to the workers. Such transition to socialist production is to guarantee economic stability for workers who transition to sustainable jobs.
No specific language regards energy policy, but the implicit message is really explicit: nationalize, socialize. As if Venezuela was the prize.
We have historical evidence comparing socialist and capitalist governance regarding environment and CO2 emissions. If this line of reasoning is to be believed, then the socialist-oriented countries should be better suited to environmental preservation and sustainability than their capitalist counterparts. Or at the very least, the plans should have been in place for a cleaner environment, if the effect of other socio-economic maladies had not taken precedence. What are the facts? Two experiments give the same results.
The merger of East and West Germany exposed the truth about environmentalism under socialism. Estimates suggest that 42 percent of East German rivers and streams were unable to be processed for drinking water, and almost half of East German lakes were unable to sustain fish or other higher forms of life. At most a third of industrial sewage and half of domestic sewage was treated before being dumped into rivers and lakes, while 40 percent of the population lived in conditions for which West Germany would have issued smog warnings. Only one East German power plant had sulfur-scrubbing capabilities for its stack. Even the East German Environment Minister admitted in 1990 that their environmental policy “did not exist.”
North Korea has not fared any better under its brand of socialism. Environmental disasters plague the North, whereas South Korea thrives in abundance. Air pollution is extreme due to both the extensive combustion of coal without sulfur scrubbers and winds that blow polluted air in from China. Cutting of firewood for home heating and cooking has led to serious deforestation and concomitant soil erosion. Large cities have sewage treatment, but wastewater in rural areas is still deposited untreated into rivers. Any effort at environmental protection becomes subservient to production and the desire for full employment. Despite 25 years of technological advancement since the end of East Germany, present-day conditions in North Korea are really no better.
https://rclutz.com/2018/08/27/socialist-snow-job/
It’s my understanding that both Cuba and North Korea welcome immigration.
It’s my understanding that the UN is led by socialists.