Profit threatens our future
Fight for socialism
A NEW secret report warns that climate change could kill
millions of people worldwide through violent storms, searing heat, flooding,
famine and drought.
It could also increase the risk of warfare – including
nuclear war – over dwindling reserves of food, water and energy sources.
Embarrassingly for President Bush, this message of
catastrophe came from the US Pentagon. George W boycotted the Kyoto Protocol on
climate change, a half-hearted attempt to tackle global warming. Bush sees no
problem, although the USA accounts for a quarter of all greenhouse gases that
cause climate change!
The Pentagon report, obtained by The Observer newspaper,
says climate change and the possible ‘climate wars’ are a bigger threat to
world security than terrorism.
People might hope that Pentagon predictions such as a
Siberian-type climate in Britain within 20 years are as unreliable as the US
defence establishment’s intelligence briefings about WMDs in Iraq.
Unfortunately their forecasts echo the warnings of many people in the
scientific world.
The poorest people on earth will suffer most. The main
problem is the unplanned and unfettered burning of fossil fuels, which causes
global warming by building up "greenhouse gases" in the earth’s
atmosphere.
And who’s most responsible for that? A tiny minority – the
rich owners and top shareholders of the world’s biggest capitalist companies!
Research programmes to develop alternative sources of
energy – such as wind, water and solar power – should be a top priority. But
the world’s most powerful corporations make massive profits out of fossil fuel,
especially oil.
Capitalist leaders, especially Bush, give their priority to
increasing the big corporations’ profits before everything else. Bush and Blair
made war on Iraq to defend these interests. The rule of profit already gives us
war and widespread poverty – don’t let capitalism destroy the environment as
well.
This disaster is avoidable. The Socialist Party is fighting
for an international socialist solution where planning could tackle the threat
of global warming. A socialist society would put people’s needs and interests,
immediate and long-term, before profit.
A socialist plan could carry out the measures needed to cut
down and then get rid of greenhouse gases – for example through investment in
renewable energy sources, such as wind, wave and solar power and new
technologies.
