Democratic planning the only solution
Copenhagen climate summit
Save the planet – fight capitalism!
Just before this summit, new alarming facts were released:
- Carbon dioxide levels have reached 385.2 ppm – the highest level for 650,000 years, according to WMO (World Meteorological Organistion).
- Despite the Kyoto deal in 1997, carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 41% compared to 1990 levels. Last year, despite the economic crisis, they increased by another 2%, more than the annual average of the 1990s, according to NatureGeoscience.
These developments are in line with the worst predictions of the UN Climate Panel – predicting a temperature increase of 6 degrees within a century. Already today, 300,000 deaths every year are related to the direct or indirect effects of climate change. Scientists argue there are only six years left (until 2015) to change today’s destructive energy consumption and production patterns before “catastrophic” effects become unavoidable. This shows: Our struggle is a race against time.
The climate crisis is caused by the capitalist system and its multinational companies. The political leaders in Kyoto and now in Copenhagen have no solutions. Their only aim as governing parties and states is to escape being branded as "climate bad guys" while passing the bill to someone else! Through false capitalist solutions like caps and trading with emission rights etc, they want to continue to rely on fossil fuels. This is because they are in the pocket of big business, not least the oil and energy industries. Numbers 1 and 2 on Fortune’s 500 biggest companies are oil giants, Exxon and Chevron. Numbers 4 and 5 are General Electric and Wal-Mart. Without challenging the power of these multinationals – including all their politicians – the climate crisis can not be solved.
What is needed is a global and democratic climate movement, involving workers, youth, poor farmers and all who are hit by the effects of global warming. No trust can be placed in governments or companies.
Democratic socialism, organised on a global scale, is the only alternative to the capitalist system. Instead of resources being wasted on profits, bonuses, the military, destroying the entire globe, we need democratic planning according to the needs of people and the environment.
The CWI stands for:
- A target to reduce emissions by at least 50% by 2020, with the aim of at least a 90% reduction by 2050.
- Oppose the imposition of increased taxes and charges (such as carbon taxes) on the backs of working class people. Make the real polluters pay – big business!
- Massive public investment to replace fossil and nuclear fuels with renewable energy.
- A wholesale shift to sustainable transport, housing, agriculture, forestry and industry, for global planning under democratic workers’ control.
- A transformation of industries such as car production and coal, defending all jobs and wages to use the technology and knowledge of the workforce to produce socially useful and environmentally friendly goods
- Nationalisation of the 500 multinationals which dominate the world today, economically and politically
- Mobilise and unite the daily struggle for jobs, welfare and climate – for an international joint struggle of trade unions, environmental groups and left organisations including the NPA in France, Die LINKE in Germany, and Syriza in Greece with the aim of building socialist and environmentally conscious mass parties.
Who we are
The CWI is an international socialist organisation, with sections and members in over 40 countries.
- In the US and elsewhere CWI sections play an important part in the anti-war movement, for example organising school strikes.
- In Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan, CWI sections fight for the unity of all workers, against war, terrorism and ethnic/religious division.
- In Greece, the CWI section launched Green Attack to organise a struggle of ordinary people against environmental after terrible forest fires.
- In Britain, CWI members in trade unions and amongst youth are in the forefront fighting to defend jobs, for example at wind power factory Vistas.
- In South Africa and Nigeria, CWI sections organise to fight back against unemployment and education cuts caused by capitalist globalisation and multinationals, such as Shell in Nigeria.
- In Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and Bolivia, CWI sections are involved in anti-privatisation struggles and for the rights of indigenous peoples.
- In Sweden, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (CWI Sweden) is involved in several campaigns: against new huge highway projects; for nationalisation of the car industry to save jobs and reorganise production; for better transport planning and free local transport; against the right-wing government’s attacks on workers and the environment.
In June, Joe Higgins of the Socialist party (CWI Ireland) was elected to the European parliament. Joe and the SP have led a number of mass campaigns – including defeating water charges and support for Turkish construction workers. In the EU elections, Joe Higgins defeated the candidate from the leading government party who had served over 20 years as an MEP. CWI sections have elected city councillors in several countries – Australia, Germany, England, Ireland, Sweden.
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