Are we all doomed?
In the 1970’s comedy ‘Dad’s Army’ the character, Private Fraser used to periodically cry out “we’re doomed. Doomed I tell ya,”. Many climate activists and scientists also portray the future in apocalyptic terms. The future is bleak and humankind will become extinct.
Socialists do not share this pessimism. While climate change is scientifically true and is and will cause problems to various parts of the world like enforced migration due to drought and flooding, there is a solution; the common ownership of the means of production and distribution by all of society: socialism. That is the abolition of the profit system through democratic and political action by the world’s working class.
However, there are some climate optimists who believe that the environmental problems will be resolved within capitalism. One scientist is Hannah Ritchie who was recently given a platform in the ‘Observer’ (31.12.223) to advertise her new book ‘Not the End of the World: How we can be the first generation to build a Sustainable Planet’ (Chatto and Windus, 2024).
Ritchie stated that she changed from a climate pessimist to a climate optimist by following the Climate Action Tracker. The CAT follows every country’s climate policies, and its pledges and targets. She said:
“If we stick with the climate policies that countries currently have in place, we’re heading towards a world of 2.5C to 2.9C. Let me be clear: this is terrible and we have to avoid it. But countries have pledged to go much further. They’ve committed to making their policies much more ambitious. If each country was to follow through on their climate pledges, we’d come out at 2.1C by 2100”.
Later Ritchie was interviewed by the ‘Observer’ journalist, Killian Fox. Fox asked Ritchie:
“Capitalism has been a great accelerator of climate change and other environmental crises, but you don’t challenge it much in your book. Do you believe capitalism can right its wrongs? Or that it’s the best system to get us out of this mess?”
Ritchie replied:
“I accept that there are definitely flaws with capitalism. What I would push back against is the notion that we can just dismantle capitalism and build something else. The core reason is time. We need to be acting on this problem urgently, on a large scale, in the next five to ten years, and to me it does not seem to be feasible that we’re going to dismantle the system and build a new one in that time. I think capitalism does drive innovation, which is what we need to create affordable low-carbon technologies”.
Ritchie does not tell us what flaws are associated with capitalism. However, socialists are well aware of contradictions of capitalism. The principal contradiction of the profit system is between social production and class ownership. Productive work under capitalism is undertaken by the co-operation of millions of workers. It is the working class who produce wealth. However, the means of production, including oil and gas and their use in commodity production and exchange for profit, is owned as private property by a minority capitalist class. They have one interest and that it is making profit. This profit motive is forced upon capitalists and their politicians as an economic coercive power.
Capitalism is the cause of the climate emergency.
Capitalism is the cause of the climate emergency. This fact has been known for a long time but the coal, gas and oil industries has paid millions of pounds to “think tanks” to deny climate change, and to finance the media and politicians to rubbish the science of climate change. For decades little or nothing could be done due to the power and influence of powerful vested interest groups.
Ritchie naively believes in the pledges of nation states. And this is where the basic flaw of Climate Action Tracker is shown. Nation states make pledges but never keep them. They have their own interests to pursue. The gas and oil industry want their interests pursued by governments and politicians. Nation states like capitalist businesses are in competition with each other. They do not want to lose their competitive edge by surrendering their own interests for “the collective good”. Pledges are watered down, ignored, or dropped altogether.
Take as an example the United States. According to OilPrice.com the United States is now producing more than 13 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil—more than any country ever—and is headed to a continued increase in the short and medium term. U.S. crude oil production hit a new monthly record of 13.236 million bpd in September, according to the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). And what does Ritchie think will happen if Trump wins the Presidency this Autumn? What of United States pledges on the climate emergency then?
Here is the United Nations Environmental Programme commenting on the 2023 Production Gap Report: “Phasing down or phasing up? Top fossil fuel producers plan even more extraction despite climate promises” produced by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Climate Analytics, E3G, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Report (8 November 2023).
“A major new report published today finds that governments plan to produce around 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, and 69% more than would be consistent with 2°C.This comes despite 151 national governments having pledged to achieve net-zero emissions and the latest forecasts which suggest global coal, oil, and gas demand will peak this decade, even without new policies. When combined, government plans would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050, creating an ever-widening fossil fuel production gap over time”.
What of the problem of “dismantling capitalism” thereby creating adverse conditions for dealing with climate change. Capitalism has developed technology and social production to the point where plenty for all can be produced but also a level of technology and science to solve environmental and social problems. Socialism will inherit scientific and technological expertise to solve problems bequeathed by capitalism.
Socialism will not start from nothing.
Socialism will not be a tabula rasa. Socialism will not start from nothing. Socialism will be a globally interconnected social system. The means of production and distribution will still exist. So will transport and communication, technological and scientific research and more importantly common ownership and democratic control at a global, regional, and local level. What will be abolished is the profit system, the wages system, classes, and nation states. The absence of these serious barriers will not create adverse conditions but quite the reverse. Socialism would retain what is useful production and distribution along with co-operative and social labour.
Socialism would not need five to ten years to resolves the problems caused by capitalism. It will be hard work to initially deal with the problems caused by capitalism but the profit motive and class exploitation will not be in the way. Capitalism is incapable of solving the problems it causes. It is capitalism who does not have the time, not socialism.
What innovation takes place under capitalism often means that the negative consequences are not understood until much later. The profit motive cheapens production to create profit but does not create a world fit for human beings; paradoxically much of capitalism’s innovation is associated with war and conflict. It will be socialism that innovates where production takes place solely for social use. Meeting human need, dealing with environmental problems will generate innovation.
The profit system can never be made to work in the interest of workers. Workers under capitalism do not have the power to solve the problems that face them. In not owning and controlling the means of production and distribution workers can little effect change to environmental problems. Capitalism can only work in the interests of the privileged owning class of capitalists. Capitalism cannot be reformed a fact that scientists like Ritchie fail to grasp. The advantage socialism will have is the absence of nation states. And we will not be doomed to watch endless repeats of Dad’s Army.
