Climate change and global warming can no longer be ignored or downplayed. The question nowadays is not whether there is an ecological crisis; it is how it is to be combated.

As of yet, the most influential answers have come under a ‘green’ heading, with ‘green’ ideas being influential not only in terms of established politics in and around the Green Party, but also in more radical movements such as the Climate Camp demonstrations in the summer.

Yet in order to understand just what is required we need to understand the question in a way that grasps how the problem of global warming reflects something wider about the way we human beings relate to the environment around us.

Nature and capitalism

Humanity is that part of nature which is conscious of itself and is constantly transforming nature through the process of labour. We belong to and rely upon nature – we are metabolically dependent on it. While other species organise their labour by slowly adapting to nature (think of the efficiency of a bee hive), humanity is unique in that it adapts nature to fit its manifold needs. Today, no part of the planet remains untouched or unmodified as a result of our activities; in that sense, nature has become socialised.

However, nature is not simply to be plundered for our short-term benefit. We are merely one of nature’s threads and the way in which we organise production and consumption inevitably brings consequences upon us. As such we have a responsibility to organise our lives in a planned and sustainable way. As is made evident by the problem of global warming, our very existence depends on it.

For the system of capitalism – where production is based on the spectral needs of capital to accumulate and expand – nature is not seen as something precious on which we are dependent, but as a ‘free gift’ that can be greedily set upon. The innate value of a walk in the mountains or of breathing clean air is not recognised by capital unless it can extract profit from it. Capitalism is anti-environmental by its very nature because it generates constant growth for its own sake.

In this cut-throat system of competition, nature’s riches are constantly being drilled, felled, ploughed, mined from the ground and then transported, processed and sold as commodities for profit – not for the social needs of humanity as a whole. Indeed, capital becomes interested in ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, purification of water and pest control partly to the extent that it can assist in the life-and-death game of accumulation in competition with other capitals.

Capitalist response

It is within this framework that we must understand the rather half-hearted response of the world’s leading economies and their paid-up politicians. The taking of radical measures in the here and now to reduce the impact of global warming necessitates cutting into the capitalist logic of expansion for expansion’s sake.

For these leaders it will not be capital, but the working class that will be expected to pay for capital’s excesses in the form of higher taxes, restrictions on travel and other curbs on consumption. Yet looking to reduce consumption is useless without grasping the root cause of global warming – the way that we produce which leads to overproduction, waste and pollution. Indeed, what sane capitalist would agree to enforce drastic cuts in consumption and therefore a large drop in profits?

What can be expected therefore are bureaucratic measures of control and authoritarianism. On a national basis, congestion charges and paying for rubbish disposal are examples of how the threat to the environment is individualised. This is certainly the case with measures that are being pushed now. Twenty years ago anyone who recycled was thought of as a bit of an oddball, but now capitalism has appropriated the ideas of a minority, partly as a political diversion, but also paradoxically to make money and thus fuel the further expansion of capital.

The media constantly reinforce the idea that individual solutions must be called upon deal with a social problem – ie, the way in which humanity as a whole organises to fulfil its needs. The drive is on to make us believe that individuals must reduce their own ‘eco-footprint’. We must downsize, be more self-sufficient, lead simpler lifestyles and happily pay our ever-increasing ‘green’ taxes – a pretext for attacking the working class and making us stump up the cash for a crisis that has been caused by the capitalists and their system.

The congestion charge, for example, was introduced on the basis that it would reduce pollution caused by traffic. In reality what this means is that inner-city roads have been freed up for executives – City bankers, Whitehall mandarins and other types for whom £8 does not even qualify as small change. They still travel in air-conditioned luxury in their gas-guzzling vehicles – except now they do so at far greater speed. Meanwhile, millions are forced to walk, take to bicycles, and pack into overcrowded buses, trains and the Underground like sardines.

Green response

The Green Party, Forum for the Future, Greenpeace and Earth First are essentially strains of thought and action that can be characterised as an attempt to tame the worst effects of capitalism but not supersede it – in essence a domesticated capitalism. They like to portray themselves as above what they perceive are discredited notions of left or right. But no solution will be found in a political vacuum. There is always a political element and environmentalism, ecologism or Greenism as a thing in itself is an illusion. Refusal to recognise this is a hallmark of reactionary ecology.

Even when they have listed off the evils of capitalism such as oil spills, species loss and habitat damage, many still believe there is a more fundamental problem: humanity itself. There are just too many of us – a reactionary outlook that is not far removed from death camps, planned starvation and Malthusian genocide in the name of ‘humanity’.

What is to be done?

Green responses such as ecological responsibility and egalitarianism cannot replace accumulation for its own sake as the mainspring of capital’s laws of motion. Communists must begin by puncturing the cosy consensus on this question.

Communists support a whole range of measures to reduce greenhouse emissions in the short to medium term, such as energy conservation, insulation of the housing stock, solar and other renewable energy sources, massive reforestation and overseeing a radical shift away from artificial patterns of consumption driven by advertising and celebrity culture. However, all this relies on a radical social turn away from the market and towards another, higher principle – production for need based on democratic planning from below.

We have to combat the idea that there are individual solutions to the environmental crisis. You can eat less meat, avoid air transport, compost your waste and collect rainwater (if, of course, you can afford the extra expense and don’t mind going without a foreign holiday). This is merely fiddling while the planet burns. To be a consistent environmentalist one must be a consistent anti-capitalist. Sustainable environmental reproduction is impossible without positively superseding the insatiable appetite of capital.

The climate crisis that is already affecting millions across the globe poses most sharply the major dilemma humanity finds itself in – unless we break from the anarchy of the market, our very existence is under threat. The resolution of the climate crisis and other environmental problems calls for a democratic, internationalist and proletarian solution – one that challenges the very logic of capitalism and takes up the fight for the working class internationally to break with this rotten system and organise for a society where production and consumption is democratically planned and subordinate to human need.

Simon Wells