Tuesday, December 15, 2015

WE NEED SYSTEM CHANGE, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!


The entire capitalist system is leading us towards disaster. The dishonest Paris Climate Agreement has betrayed our children, grandchildren and all future generations. To save human civilization, the biosphere and the future, the people of the world must take matters into their own hands and change the system. Inaction is not an option. We have to act even if the odds are against success, because the stakes are so high. We need a new economic system, a new society and a new way of life. Our current economic system is unsustainable and fails to meet even the most basic needs of millions. We must achieve a steady-state socialist economic system. We must restore democracy and break the power of corporate greed. 196 nations reached an agreement on climate change but the most heartening feature of COP21 wasn't the world leaders coming together, but activists from across the world gathering on the streets of Paris calling for action. Now that world leaders have failed to reach an agreement that will build a new sustainable economy, it's our turn.

The Paris summit could talk the climate justice talk, but not walk the walk. The hollowness of the leaders' of the world’s governments words are clear as Dr Andrew Glikson (climate scientist) explains “Despite warnings over the last 30 years, we are still developing global infrastructures to extract every economically accessible ton of coal, barrel of conventional or shale/sand oil and cubic meter of natural gas and coal-seam gas.” Too much existing infrastructure -- refineries, distribution networks, transportation systems, power plants, and the like -- are dependent on oil, coal, and natural gas, which means that these fuels will continue to play a prominent role for decades.  Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and other energy giants have been madly expanding their oil and gas distribution networks in Asia, Africa, and other developing areas.

Businesses are not going to stop using oil or change their "anything for money" stratagem. Any good done by capitalism is a mere byproduct of making money and not the goal. Capitalism is a total dismissal of all the actual needs of humanity, as it only focuses on what can be commodified, and this is capitalism's great lie - it never intended to help humanity in any way, its sole amoral intent is to grab as much money as possible and subsequently will guard against anyone else that might try to take its claim. War and environmental destruction are built in to this construct. Politicians have fallen under the spell of the capitalists corporations pushing false solutions to climate change. The unproven technique of carbon capture and storage, the creation of rigged carbon markets—where the polluters make even greater profits—and industrial agriculture will all endanger communities and exacerbate the problems. We, socialists, focus on genuine, effective action rather than false solutions. Now is the time to act and to unite our struggles. Global citizens need to organize. It is what happens now that counts. We are the many, and they the few and we are coming to change a few things. History is on our side. We will prevail. Better that, than sitting around worrying as our World disappears. As Chris Hedges writes “Those who worship before the idols of profit will use every tool at their disposal, including violence, to crush us. This is a war waged between the forces of life and the forces of death. It is a war that requires us, in every way possible, to deny to these industries the profits used to justify gaiacide. It is a war we must not lose.”


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