Across the United States, storms have been raging, the
likely result of climate change and global warming brought about by rising
levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
According to a Democracy Now! news summary, Feb. 2: “A massive winter storm has affected 100 million people
from New Mexico to New England. … The National Weather Service issued storm
watches, warnings and advisories in more than 30 states and blizzard warnings
for eight. States of emergency were declared in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri
and Oklahoma. Many scientists have linked the extreme winter weather patterns
to climate change.”
The state of emergency that is occurring now, not years from
now, needs to be confronted immediately. But the reaction of Congress is to
start a full-fledged attack on the Environmental Protection Agency and already
inadequate environmental protection regulations.
“House Republicans are planning
to introduce a bill today to ban the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from
regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. And in the Senate, a group
of Democrats … have proposed a two-year moratorium on EPA attempts to regulate
greenhouse gases.” (Democracy Now!, Feb. 2)
So with the reality of climate
change growing ever more extreme and with Congress dominated by big business
and the oil industry, what is the solution? We have to build a people’s
movement that demands action to confront this threat now.
The country leading the way on
this issue is socialist Cuba. “According to the WWF [formerly the World Wildlife Fund], Cuba is the only
country that has managed to combine an environmentally sustainable footprint
per head of population with an acceptably high quality of life as measured by
the UN Human Development Index.” (The
Guardian, Oct. 30, 2009)
The engine of capitalist
production is the pursuit of maximum profits. Any capitalist enterprise that were
to place any other consideration before profits—be it the environment, the well
being of its workers or the needs of society in general—would be crushed in the
course of ruthless capitalist competition. The biggest, most powerful
capitalist players are those who stop at nothing to maximize profits.
A system that is dominated by
the drive for profit rather than meeting human needs cannot ultimately solve
global warming and climate change. The only true solution requires taking the
productive resources of society out of the hands of this tiny clique of billionaires
and putting them into the hands of all workers. The only true solution requires
eliminating capitalist competition and the profit motive. The only true
solution is socialism.
