Monday, August 20, 2007

Global Climate for Socialism

Global climate change is obviously recognized by the vast majority of people as a fact on the ground. If Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami disasters did not convince everyone, the increasingly bizzare weather patterns affecting most if not all parts of the globe, have done so.

With increasing flooding not just in the hurricane affected zones but also south Texas and England, the question of whether capitalism has what it takes to handle this crisis becomes all the more pressing.

An interview with Marc Brodine in Political Affairs calls for a concerted, socialistic world effort united to combat world climate change before it is too late:

[...]

Capitalism is a significant part of the cause of the environmental problems that we are facing. Because we can’t separate out how we produce things and how we finance things, and how we distribute things, and how we sell things, from our interactions with the natural world. That is why we are burning all this carbon to produce lots and lots of commodities that capitalists think they can sell profitably, whether that’s actual goods like plastic bags or little toys, or the gas that we put in our car, or use for chemical processes like making plastic for example. So capitalism is part of the cause, and we have to change our economic system, because it is directly linked to why we have these problems. However, socialism does not automatically solve such problems for us. We have to unite socialism with the latest in science.

[...]

"We Can't Wish it Away": Climate Change and the Human Prospect

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