We need socialist change
Ryan Leonard, Hillingdon Socialist Party
Ecological collapse could become a profound threat to national security and prosperity. So warns Britain’s own intelligence assessment, conducted by the joint intelligence committee and buried by Keir Starmer’s government. Its six case studies examine how ecological collapse in rainforests, coral reefs, mangroves and mountains could lead to a global refugee crisis, resource wars over water, insecure food chains and decreased profits for the bosses.
The report is highly confident that climate collapse will have a significant impact on the security and prosperity of Britain. Collapse refers to ecological systems becoming unable to maintain essential function and structure – a point of no return. The review found all six key ecological case studies to be on their way to collapse.
The geopolitical competition for food and water caused by ecosystem collapse has a high likelihood of impacting Britain, making the price increases following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pale in comparison.
The government knows that eco-collapse will make home uninhabitable for millions around the world, forcing people to flee rising tides, temperatures and increasingly insecure food chains. ‘Stop the boats’ is as fitting a slogan as ‘whip the sea’!
The Labour government was far more responsive to pensioners opposing genocide than the climate crisis. Starmer’s government used the Tories’ Police, Crime and Sentencing Act to prosecute climate direct action protesters for their participation in a Zoom call. It’s clear that despite the severity of the intelligence that the government has, successive governments have attempted to minimise and hide the reality of what capitalism is doing to the planet.
The coming el Niño climate event is a prologue to far more devastating climate crises. The climate impact lab has predicted around half a million more heat-related deaths next year as a result of the climate phenomenon.
Andy Burnham, with full access to this information, has “no fixed position” around granting new licences to expand North Sea oil and gas fields. The government is showing not only how underprepared the country is for the coming crisis but also its contempt for human life compared to profit.
The situation facing us is dire; the only way to prevent the mass death and destruction posed in the report is to end the rule of the polluting capitalist bosses. If the working class owned the wealth and resources of the world and ran them democratically for our good, instead of for the bosses’ profits, we could avoid climate catastrophe.
