World Bank chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern who, claims David Miliband (left), put forward a‘challenging message.’ Right: Frederick Engels, author of ‘Dialectics of Nature’.

Whiff of profits

Responding to the report, Miliband sounded quite optimistic. Interviewed by the Independent (30 October), he said: "The second half of his message is that the technology does exist, the financing, public and private, does exist, and the international mechanisms also exist to get to grips with this problem - so I don't think it's a catastrophe that he puts forward. It's a challenging message."

What we are offered are capitalist remedies, and to make it all the more attractive there are profits to be had - well, the master class has to have some damned incentive before they act. As the Independent reported: “Combating climate change could become one of the world's biggest growth industries, generating around $250bn of business globally by 2050.” Providing, that is, that we still have a planet worth saving in 50 years time.

Environmental disaster and the best capitalist politicians can think up is to tempt the master class with the whiff of profits to come if they agree to mend their ways! Indeed, the report is punctuated with terms such as “cost-effective” and “profitability”. Well, Stern is after all a leading world economist so his thoughts are naturally with his associates in big business. The very people who have disregarded the effects of their production methods on the natural environment for hundreds of years are now being asked to show it some mercy! Global environmental catastrophe can be halted by throwing money at the problem!

The simple fact is that businesses will not take the risk of falling behind in the struggle for profits and nor will any government enforce policy that will result in a drop in the profits of its respective capitalist class. This is exactly what President Bush cited when he pulled the USA out of the Kyoto Agreement. He is no doubt aware that the USA consumes more than one quarter of global oil production and is accountable for one quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, while being home to only 4.5 per cent of the world’s population, but his remit is not to protect the environment, nor the millions who would suffer as a direct result of environmental chaos. His job is protecting US interests all over the world, interests which are inseparable from profits.

Capitalist businesses survive by forcing out their competition, by cutting costs and sidestepping policies that hinder their expansion. They seek new outlets for their wares, to sell more and more, because this is the law of capitalism, and it is a law antagonistic to ecological concerns. It is the crazed law of capitalism that compels the big oil producers to pay teams of scientists to prepare reports that refute the findings of environmentalists who forewarn of the dire effects of current production methods.

The market economy demands that businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interests. Pleasing shareholders takes far more priority than ecological considerations. The upshot is that productive processes are distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by anarchic market forces which compel decision-makers, whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste. They may well be loath to contaminate ecosystems, but the alternative is closure should they invest in costlier eco-friendlier production methods. Little wonder then that nature’s balances are upset today, and that we face problems such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, acidic oceans and the like.

All Greens now

The Greens have long insisted that things could be put right with a change of government policy, which is exactly what Labour now proposes. The problem, they believe, can be rectified by governments forcing through laws and imposing green taxes on air travel, motoring and high emission vehicles - to protect the environment. Even the Conservatives, with their new infantile eco-logo, and the Liberals have jumped on board the green bandwagon. Shadow chancellor George Osborne promises a whole swathe of green taxes. All are seemingly convinced the problem facing the environment is an economic one insofar as the world's governments can spend their way out of environmental catastrophe.

Governments, to be sure, exist to run the political side of the profit system and, no matter how well intentioned, do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They do not control the market-driven profit system it controls them and shapes their policies. Which government is going to tell its oil companies to produce less oil, when these same oil producers are under constant pressure to pump more out of the ground and as cheaply as possible? Within three years annual car sales are set to hit 60 million per year, 10 million up on 2004. Which government will dare threaten these car sales with its eco-policies? At the very best their eco-policies can only slow down the speed of environmental decay, not halt it in its tracks at some future date.

Socialists are no different from others in desiring an environment in which the safety of all animal and plant species is ensured. Where we differ from our political opponents is in recognising that their demands have to be set against a well-entrenched economic and social system, based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding law of profits first.

It has long been our case that human needs can be satisfied without recourse to production methods that adversely effect the natural environment, which is exactly why we advocate the establishment of a system of society in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit. We are not talking about nationalisation or any other tinkering with the present system, but rather its entire abolition and replacement with a global system in which the Earth’s natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled; a society in which each production process takes into consideration not only human need but any likely effect upon the environment.

One does not need a mastery of Earth sciences to envisage types of farming that preserve and enhance the natural fertility of the soil, the systematic recycling of materials obtained from non-renewable energy sources while developing alternative sources that continually renew themselves (i.e. solar energy and wind power); industrial processes that avoid releasing poisonous chemicals or radioactivity into the biosphere; the manufacture of solid goods made to last, not planned to break down after a period of time.

Once the Earth's natural and industrial resources have been wrested from the master class and become the common heritage of all humanity, then production can be geared to meeting needs in an ecologically acceptable way, instead of making profits without consideration for the environment. This the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature and to at last begin to reverse the degradation of the environment caused by the profit system. The only effective strategy for achieving a free and democratic society and, moreover, one that is in harmony with nature, is to build up a movement which has the achievement of such a society as its objective.

JOHN BISSETT