On April 14, Peta Lindsay participated in a debate sponsored by the Peace and Freedom Party in Santa Cruz, California. The following Earth Day statement is based on her response to a question about protecting the environment.
The owners of the banks and corporations care nothing for the environment unless it will maximize their profits in the short-term. Organic, sustainable practices are only adopted by corporations like Wal-Mart etc when they can see the dollar signs piling up. Energy corporations and the military industrial complex have carried out consistent rampant destruction of the earth. Whole areas of the earth have been completely destroyed, ecosystems irreparably disrupted, species pushed to the brink of extinction and the neighborhoods workers live in polluted. Non-renewable natural resources of all kinds are being rapidly depleted for the sake of maximizing profit.
We need a central economic plan to significantly cut greenhouse gases, clean up the environment and build a massive renewable energy network. The for-profit economic system creates incentives to pollute. I call for no fracking—an incredibly destructive policy—and no Keystone pipeline!
The necessary actions to save the environment would also create millions of new, much-needed jobs.
A long-term, sustainable, socialist economic system is the only way this can be stopped. This is also the only real solution to the crisis of climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation of all kinds.
