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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2007EditorialGlobal warming or revolutionary change?Over 1,000 rallies and gatherings will take place April 14 and 15 in almost every state of the U.S., demanding serious action on climate change. Under the aegis of Step It Up 2007, from the levees of New Orleans to melting glaciers in the West, from the coral reefs of Key West to city streets, people will be demanding an 80% reduction of carbon emissions by 2050. Scientific reports now routinely project that, if left unchecked, global warming will likely lead to the spread of malaria and other diseases, increased drought, famine, and coastal flooding. The conservative UN consensus estimates 130 million environmental refugees within a few decades. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has brought home what scientists have pointed out for years: poorer countries and poor people in all countries will be hurt the most. COMMON WISDOM Climate change’s metamorphosis from esoteric climatology topic to Academy-Award-winning movie theme is enough to take one’s breath away. What was, just a few years ago, painted as dubious by the Bush administration and by employees of think tanks funded by oil companies, is today common wisdom from elementary schools to evangelical churches. This year the most conservative U.S. scientific organization, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, acknowledged that human-caused climate change is "a growing threat to society." This swift and broad shift in consciousness includes near universal recognition that the crisis must be addressed. Even Fortune 500 companies and Republican Senators have joined calls for mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. But this is more than an environmental public relations coup. Both corporate leaders and activists recognize that the mounting crisis of global warming has created an opening for major change. The looming battle is over the nature of the change that will occur--new life for capitalism or a fundamental social transformation? Will the anti-Black, anti-poor, anti-worker rebuilding of post-Katrina New Orleans become the model? Will the rulers forge a temporary adaptation to climate change by sacrificing the living conditions of three billion laboring and oppressed people, shifting the burden to people of color, women, and the poor? Or will masses in motion forge a revolutionary solution that cuts off capitalism’s inhuman dynamic and opens new, sustainable paths to development? Some activists, academics and policy wonks are advocating, in their own words, "fundamental change." This reflects, at one and the same time, a reach beyond the destructiveness of capitalism’s unsustainable motion, and the pull of the ideology that there is no alternative to capitalism. LAW OF ACCUMULATION While appreciating Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth for the impetus it has given to the movement against global warming, more radical environmentalists have criticized it as calling for changes within the existing system. Carbon taxes, "cap and trade" systems, investment in renewable energy--as important as these are, all involve the market as part of the solution. Yet many radicals’ counterproposals founder on the question of what is the needed fundamental change. Calling for new moral values or for austerity by consumers does not touch capital’s limitless drive to grow. Even those who point to roots of the crisis in the "current economic system" usually dream of returning to an earlier, pre-corporate stage of commodity production, as if we could keep capitalism and wish away the laws of its development. As long as the structure of capitalism stands, the law of accumulation of capital cannot be suspended. Yet sustainable development is increasingly discussed, not only among activists but among scientists studying how to deal with global warming. Lurking in the background is the question, What kind of development is human development? If followed out fully, it points to the need to transform this racist, sexist, capitalist society into a new human society. Don’t let the rulers divert the revolutionary aspirations unleashed by this crisis. What is needed is to support the April 14-15 actions, and critically push the climate action movement forward in both actions and ideas. |
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