The ecosocialist perspective

In November – December 2010, the UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON THE CLIMATE (COP) takes place in Cancún, Mexico. All signs show that this conference will follow the same line as the one which took place in Copenhagen in December 2009: it will be a new step in the neo-liberal policy of the great powers, which try to evade the responsibility of capitalism in the climate change. They will take pretext of the situation in order to privatize the atmosphere, the forests as well as other natural resources, while presenting the bill for their mismanagement to the poor of the whole planet. Unable to break with productivism and the accumulation of profits, and consequently, with fossil fuels, great capital wants also to impose on us its technological follies: nuclear energy, agrofuels, GMOs and the so-called “clean carbon”.

In Copenhagen, the USA, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the European Union negotiated secretly a parallel agreement which they tried, without success, to impose to the General Assembly of the UN CONFERENCE. This document is totally insufficient on the ecological level: it implies, in the short run, a rise in temperature of more than 4 °C, synonymous with very serious catastrophes. On the social level, it means the elimination of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” of the advanced capitalist countries and those “in development”. The representatives of several countries of the South denounced the illegality, the irresponsibility, the cynicism and the injustice of the agreement between the greatest polluters. Alas, inspite of their protests, it was de facto adopted as the frame for the climate policy of the UNITED NATIONS, in particular for the UN CONVENTION ON THE CLIMATE and its secretariat.

This is inacceptable! In april 2010, in answer to a call by the Bolivian President Evo Morales, more than 30.000 representatives of social movements, trade unions, indigenous peoples and some governments assembled in Cochabamba (Bolivia) and adopted a “Declaration of the peoples on the climate change and the rights of Mother-Earth”. This declaration states clearly that capitalism is responsible for the global warming and that the countries of the North must radically reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, in order to effectively limit the rise in temperature. Without subscribing to every point of this text, the ECOSOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL NETWORK supports all those who demand that this declaration, and not the self-styled “Copenhagen agreement”, serve as basis for the negotiations of Cancun. Cochabamba made it possible to be heard the voice of the indigenous peoples, the peasants, the women, the workers and poor in general. In one word: the voice of the victims. It is this voice, and not the one of the multinationals, that should give the tone of the climate negotiations.

Summer 2010 has been signaled by a series of catastrophes which show what global warming has in store for us: murderous fires in Russia, deluge rains and floods in China, Mexico and Pakistan. The case of Pakistan is dramatic and revealing. Floods made 20 million victims and enormous material prejudices. If Pakistan continues to follow the recipes of the WORLD BANK and the IMF, it risks plunging into a spiral of misery. In order to avoid it, it would be necessary to abolish the foreign debt and demand reparations from the North. This requires a break with the capitalist “model” of development, and the implementing of measures such as a democratic agrarian reform, production for the social needs and an alternative management of the water and energetic resources, at the service of the population.

Climate change shows that capitalism has come to the end of the road. By its productivism, its race after the profit, this mode of production is destroying the two only sources of all wealth: the Earth and the Labourer. In order to confront this coming barbarism, an alternative society, a radical choice of civilization is required: ecosocialism. The optimization of private profits without taking into account the natural limits has to be replaced by the optimization of the collective well-being, the buen-vivir, in the respect of Mother-Earth. This is the message that the ECOSOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL NETWORK brings to you. Rejoin us!