Life in the balance:
Capitalism at war with nature and humanity
By John Bachtell.
Opening to the National Board June 20, 2002

Saving humanity from self destruction is a defining issue of our age, whether from immediate destruction of the Earth’s ecosphere through nuclear annihilation or longer term environmental pollution. It is rapidly becoming an issue of mass majority concern and a source of deep insecurity for the future. For example the global warming crisis, irregardless of what we do today, will be with us for our lifetimes and probably our children’s lifetimes.

My son recently expressed some sentiments that probably reflect the fears of his generation. He was lamenting the lack of winter snow in Chicago of all places. ‘I will have to describe what snow is like to my children,’ he said.

A Marxist approach to the environmental crisis

The modern day ecology movement received one of its greatest impetuses from Rachel Carson’s famous book, ‘Silent Spring,’ that sparked the movement to ban DDT. But deep concern for the environment has been developing throughout the history of capitalism.

In fact, Marx and Engles were early environmentalists. They and many Marxists over the years have been very influential in the development of modern environmental science, by rooting it in the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

The foundations of dialectical materialism (the philosophy of change, development and interconnectedness rooted in material reality) were influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the ecology of cell biology and the laws of thermo-dynamics. Marx and Engels also drew extensively from German agronomist Justus Von Liebig’s studies of soil chemistry which were aimed at solving the early capitalist agricultural crisis. Liebig’s discoveries exposed the destruction that capitalist agriculture was wrecking on nature through the depletion of soil minerals.
Marx noted that humans must carry on a continuous intercourse with nature or perish. This intercourse not only alters nature but alters humans too. Under capitalism alienation of humans from their labor and from nature is one in the same. The system turns labor and nature into commodities, exploiting both.

Humans fashion their relations with nature by producing their means of subsistence, through their labor. These relations are governed by society’s mode of economic production.

In the capitalist economy the means of production are privately held, including all the machinery, technology, intellectual property rights, etc. and all the natural resources that workers fashion into products for consumption. Workers have no control over the production process. Every decision on what is produced and how it is produced is based on what will create maximum profit for the capitalist. Workers are alienated from their labor and their ability to use that labor to transform nature.

The products of labor and the products of nature are privately appropriated by the capitalist. The advent of private property not only degrades creative labor, but it degrades nature and our living and working environment.

Everything in life is interconnected. Five billions years of evolution have produced nature’s complex web of interactions, ecology and intersecting ecological systems. All life, including human life is a product of this evolutionary development.

Humanity, society and nature co-evolve. Humanity is part of the natural world, not the object of evolution, above it or separate from it. Everything that effects nature effects humanity and society. Consequently, as the great environmentalist Barry Commoner says, the environmental crisis is also a social crisis. Since capitalism is the dominant mode of production, the environmental crisis is also a crisis of capitalism.

Because of the interdependence of nature and society, human activity alters nature and this web of interactions. Marx defined this labor process in Capital as ‘a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.’
While humans have altered nature throughout civilization, capitalism ushered in a level of degradation and rapaciousness of nature never seen before. Marx captured it in his famous quote from Capital:

‘The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.’

In just the few years of its existence, capitalism has altered an ecology that was created over billion of years. These alterations are having a profound, lasting and even permanent effect. The larger the alterations the more profound the effect. We cannot predict what the long term implications will be from these alterations, what destructive tendencies have been set in motion, what ripple effects they will have on all ecosystems. This includes the issue of genetically modified plants and animals.

Today’s ecological crisis

Today’s ecological crisis has to be seen within the framework of the dominant mode of production on the planet today, the dominant mode of human interaction with nature. The capitalist production process places immediate maximum profits before a sustainable ecology. The capitalist’s concern for immediate profit over rides their concern for environmental destruction. The capitalist is selling himself the rope to hang him and us with. It is an anarchistic system incapable of harmonizing with the laws of nature.

The development of gigantic monopoly corporations has been the determining factor in shaping the production process and its relationship to nature, particularly in the post WWII period. A new economic pattern emerged where synthetics replaced nature’s products in the production process. New production processes emerged that were on a qualitatively new level of destructiveness.

For example, the post WWII rise of the agricultural monopoly corporations paralleled the change in agricultural production methods, especially the exponential growth in the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified seeds. This was the result of growing monopolization of the agricultural industry and the drive for maximum profits. By sheer economic power they determined the direction of the overall agricultural production process and its response to the growing depletion of the soil and the demand for ever greater yields.

The petrol-chemical industry that emerged out of WWI was forced to create a market for the excess chemical capacity that had been devoted to warfare. These chemicals were now used for killing people and killing insects. This began the historic development of large-scale introduction of chemicals as insecticides and herbicides into agriculture.

Similarly, it was Dupont Chemical Corporation with its chief stake in General Motors that determined the use of lead in gas, ruling out other alternative fuel additives. It created an immediate market for itself.

The oil, auto and rubber companies teamed up to buy most of the urban commuter train tracks to force people to use cars and buses. Today the transnational auto industry has a decisive influence on our economic pattern. Cars account for 90% of our transportation. Funding for highways has increased while funding for mass transit has decreased. Today, the auto industry pushes bigger vehicles like SUVs simply because bigger vehicles with bigger engines mean bigger profits.

Survival of humanity at stake

Today, the survival of humanity and nature are at stake. Entire ecological systems are in danger of being wiped out. This is most starkly illustrated by the United Nations Environmental Program Global 3 report written by 1000 eminent scientists worldwide. It predicted that in 30 years if humanity doesn’t alter its economic pattern from what it called a ‘markets first’ approach (unrestrained, unregulated capitalist development), and adopt a ‘sustainability first’ approach, an environmental calamity will occur.

Under this scenario, the Earth would become a desert-strewn wasteland of urban slums and leave people inhabiting large regions perishing from thirst and water-born diseases. Increasingly extreme climatic changes will result in a mass extinction of plants and animals, coastal and river flooding and widespread desertification. One can only guess that ten’s of millions will die. The recent EPA report also reinforces this outlook.

Even if humanity were able to turn things around today, it would take generations, even hundreds and thousands of years to undo the damage. The ecological crisis is of a global character, on a scale that humanity has never confronted before. The world’s underdeveloped regions are bearing the worst effects of the world environmental crisis and will require the commitment of special approaches and resources.

The list of crises is long and growing. The most urgent is that of global warming and the aggravation of extreme weather conditions such as El Nino and La Nina. Some regions are inundated with torrential rains and flooding and others face growing desertification and drought. One factor in the western fires that has consumed hundreds of thousands acres of forest is climate change.

As a result of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) depleting atmospheric ozone, a huge hole opened up in the ozone layer over the Antarctic beginning some 30 years ago. At its largest in 2000 it covered an area three times the size of the United States. Smaller holes have been recorded over the Arctic and Europe.

The ozone layer is the primary protection between us and the deadly ultraviolet rays of the sun. While CFCs are being phased out, it may take 100 years for the hole to heal itself. But there is new concern that global warming may also have an effect on Ozone depletion, causing the hole to grow once again. There is also new speculation that replacement gases for CFCs, called hydroflourocarbons may be even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent.

Of the 75,000 synthetic chemicals registered with the EPA, only a few have ever been fully tested, including in combination, to determine their effect on people. About 400 are found in humans. The journalist Bill Moyers was tested for his chemical content while producing the documentary, ‘Trade Secrets.’ An analysis showed his body contained 84 synthetic chemicals.

Polyvinylchloride is the most common synthetic produced for consumer items and the construction industry. Twenty-two to 30 million tons of the stuff is produced each year by the chemical industry. These are persistent chemicals that resist breaking down. Over 400 million tons are in the environment. When they are incinerated they form deadly dioxins.

Ethylene dichloride is needed to produce PVCs. This is a chemical in the top 10% of all synthetics in terms of the ability to damage the environment. It is a known carcinogen and nerve poison.

US industry dumps 100s of billions of tons of toxic waste into the environment each year. There are 30,000 toxic waste sites in the US. These toxic wastes are leaching into the ground water. More and more ground water is unsafe to drink.
Unless it’s stopped, over 100,000 shipments of highly irradiated nuclear waste will be sent by road and rail to Yucca Mountain, Nevada for storage. This demands urgent action.

The accumulation of these chemicals, nuclear wastes, nitrates and others have been accompanied by a dramatic rise in cancer and birth defects, and neurological disorders. This has been a canary in the mineshaft for many years.

Human created imbalances

Seventy-eight percent of the Earth’s atmosphere is composed of nitrogen gas. It is in a form that most living things can not use. To be utilized it must be ‘fixed,’ usually in the soil through bacteria. Life has adapted to using scarce amounts of nitrogen. But over the past few decades, the capitalist production process has doubled the amount of nitrogen entering the land-based nitrogen cycle.
Some turns into nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Some turns into nitric oxide, which when combined with hydrocarbons causes smog and acid rain and which is also a contributor to ozone depletion.

A large amount enters nature’s chain through nitrogen based fertilizers. The use of nitrogen fertilizer has accelerated world wide to overcome the mineral depletion of soil. Little of it is absorbed by the soil and it turns to runoff. It further depletes the soil by leaching other essential nutrients.

The amount of nitrogen in our rivers and streams has grown dramatically. Nitrogen content has doubled in the Mississippi River since 1965. Many scientists believe this is responsible for creating large scale ecological crises, particularly in the oceans. It causes Eutrophication, mass algae blooms, in estuaries and coastal areas, leading to creeping ‘dead zones.’ These are areas where the bottom water is devoid of oxygen. For example a huge dead zone many miles across has appeared at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Eutrophication is linked to the loss of oceanic biodiversity, destruction of the corral reefs, sea grasses and seaweeds. In the last few decades 35 million acres of corral reefs have been destroyed. This has reverberating effects all the way up the food chain.

We are experiencing mass deforestation and desertification, particularly in Asia and Africa. Many tropical forests which contain the greatest concentrations of biodiversity are being destroyed. We have our own desertification crisis in Montana and some western states reminiscent of the Dust Bowl. Worldwide over 135 million people in 110 countries are affected, particularly in poor rural regions. Some 60 million people are expected to leave the Sahelian region of North Africa if desertification there is not halted.

The shortage of water for human consumption is a world crisis. Water tables are dropping drastically, agricultural production is threatened over vast areas, and conflicts are brewing between countries over water resources. Public water supplies are threatened with privatization.

There is a sharpening contradiction between the dominant mode of production and sustaining the Earth’s ecology. The capitalist mode of production seeks infinite economic expansion and the consumption of finite non-renewable energy sources. Nature has limits. At some point the destruction and altering of nature’s ecology reaches a qualitative stage where the destruction is irreversible making life unlivable. We are approaching that point.

Peace is an environmental issue

The existence of nuclear weapons of mass destruction poses a peril for humanity and nature. Their use can cause irreparable harm to the Earth’s ecosphere and decimate humankind. The policies of imperialism and the drive for profits by the armaments industry are increasing the nuclear danger and therefore the threat to life itself.

The tensions between Pakistan and India raise the specter of a nuclear war in the immediacy. Even a regional war there would have devastating consequences for people and nature. It is estimated that 9-12 people would die instantly and 12-17 million more would be severely injured.

The Bush Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review and the possible use of ‘bunker buster’ bombs could in fact cause huge clouds of deadly radioactive dust rendering large areas useless for people. If Star Wars were able to work and actually shot down a nuclear warhead, millions of people would be in danger below from the nuclear fallout.

We are still living with the consequences of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in Nevada during the 1950s. Open-air nuclear testing has killed more than 15,000 Americans and will cause another 80,000 to contract cancer.

The nuclear weapons industry has produced tens of thousand of tons of deadly wastes including plutonium wastes to build weapons of mass destruction. The Rocky Flats facility and other sites are environmental disasters. There is a big struggle over shipping these wastes to South Carolina.

The United States has over 1.1 billion pounds of depleted uranium (DU) on hand. DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years. It has been used in the Gulf War, Bosnia and the Balkans, contaminating many huge areas for generations to come.

Military installations are some of the most polluted areas of the country. Military exemptions from laws and lax enforcement by regulatory agencies have contributed to the existence of more than 27,000 toxic dumps on 8,500 military facilities. Over 30,000 tons of deadly chemical weapons await destruction. Environmental clean-up will take years and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The Naval bombing range on the island of Vieques is so contaminated from years of shelling that it is uninhabitable. Rates of cancer and heart disease are higher than other areas. There are tens of thousands of land mines built by US corporations scattered around the globe that pose a deadly risk to millions of people.

Putting the ‘merchants of death,’ the military corporations out of business, ending the testing and production of nuclear weapons and outlawing their use and cleaning up this mess make the fight for peace an environmental question.

The anti-environment president

The Bush administration is widely recognized as the most across the board anti-environment in history. The dominant forces driving the Bush energy policies are the monopoly corporate extractive industries of oil, coal, nuclear fuels, etc., the military industrial complex, and the automotive industry. Because of the high profits to be attained, these gigantic transnational corporations structure society’s energy economy around carbon based fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal. The over riding factor determining these methods is maximum profits. Carbon-based energy production is more profitable than the use of solar or wind power.

The US produces over 25% of the world’s greenhouse gases. 80% of greenhouse gases are produced by just 122 corporations. Worldwide, fossil fuel burning power plants, mainly coal, produce 60% of all greenhouse gases. By far the largest of the greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide. Burning fossil fuels accounts for 75% of the carbon dioxide increase, deforestation another 20%. In the United States coal burning power plants produce 40% of the carbon dioxide.

These monopoly corporations dominate the Department of Energy and are in conflict with the enforcement duties of the EPA. The head of the energy department, Andrew Card, is from the nuclear industry.

They wrote the Bush energy policy totally disregarding all climate science. Their only aim is to protect markets and increase profits. The coal industry, and particularly Peabody Energy, the largest coal producing company in the world, was a key player in the energy task force. The policy calls for building 1,300 additional coal burning power plants to meet projected US energy needs. They blocked any consideration of alternative energy production including solar and wind power.

These corporations, acting through the administration and congress, are gutting regulatory restraints on corporate polluters. Just this week, the EPA announced new rules that would allow the worst power plant polluters to go on polluting without penalty. This ruling will gut the Clean Air Act. Many career officials, no longer able to do their jobs, are being forced out of the regulatory agencies.

These corporations are among the most corrupting forces in politics generally. They influence elected officials in both parties, although primarily the Republicans, and are corrupting scientific research. They are the chief forces responsible for blocking the signing of the Kyoto Treaty, which while containing many flaws, is the only meaningful international process underway for solving the crisis of global warming.

Out of frustration, some states have begun to impose their own mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. There is a big fight in the California legislature over this issue.

Majority concern for the Earth’s future

The growing ecological crisis is producing a mass concern in the United States for the future of the planet. This concern has historically been intertwined with struggle against the corporations. Behind nearly every act of environmental destruction stands an act of corporate greed. There is strong anti-corporate sentiment throughout the environmental movement.

This makes the environmental movement a key part of the anti-monopoly people’s movement. Because the energy corporations are among the most powerful and reactionary sections of monopoly capital it is also a key issue for building the anti-ultra right coalition and in defense of democracy. It will again be a key electoral issue. It will also be a powerful factor in the development of mass socialist consciousness.

The early conservation movement in the US was shaped mainly by middle class forces in response to the unrestrained corporate degradation of our natural resources. Early urban environmental movements targeted sanitation and public health and won many important victories. The established environmental organizations in the past tended to focus on conservation and ignored the affect on workers and people of color at the workplace and in the community.

Many of the largest environmental groups also get funding from some of the biggest corporations. They have tended to rely on lobbying and legal strategies which are increasing limited because of the domination of the courts by the right wing and pro-corporate forces.

Because of the limitations of the established environmental organizations, many grassroots community and workplace based environmental movements against corporate polluters developed independently in the 1970s and 80s. These struggles brought labor, the African American, Latino, Native American and other racially oppressed communities into the environmental movement. They include the struggles against hazardous workplace chemicals that led to the creation of OSHA, the exposure of the dangers of lead paint and its banning, the banning of lead in gasoline, the use of pesticides and their effects on farm workers, and countless community struggles against toxic waste sites particularly in working class, African American, Latino, other oppressed communities.

These struggles have come together to form the Environmental Justice movement. This movement has had an important impact on the whole environmental movement, including the older established environmental organizations. But problems persist of influences of racism and anti-working class attitudes that undermine unity.

Many other radical environmental groups have emerged and youth and students play a big role. The Green Party and Campus Green chapters have exploded across the country. The Nader vote is an indicator of the extent of the environmental consciousness.

The environmental crisis and the crisis of globalization

The world-wide environmental crisis has been brought on by the policies of imperialism. Underdevelopment, poverty and environmental degradation go hand in hand. The weakest anti-pollution laws and enforcement are in developing countries, which are dumping grounds for criminal transnational corporate polluters of hazardous industrial wastes and landfills mainly from the developed capitalist countries. Insecticides long banned as a result of mass movements in the developed capitalist countries are still routinely applied in third world agricultural fields (e.g. both DDT and leaded gasoline are still sold by corporations in developing countries). Natural resources, agricultural lands and forests are being pillaged and ruined as a result of transnational policies. Advanced soil erosion is spreading along with desertification. The world environmental crisis is a crisis of the new stage of capitalist globalization. Overcoming underdevelopment is an environmental question.

Worldwide, the modern day environmental movement has emerged as a powerful force in the anti-globalization fight. In its essence it is anti-corporate, and anti-imperialist. With the struggle over NAFTA and criminal corporate polluters, the environmental issue is a key issue in the globalization movement and has brought greater unity between labor and environmental groups worldwide. Who could forget ‘Teamsters and Turtles’ in Seattle.

In the U.S., while this movement is strongly anti-corporate, or sees the corporations as the source of the environmental crisis, the dominant tendency is to see corporate reform as the solution. The bulk of the movement does not yet see the corporations as forming a system, and that it is the capitalist system of production that is the problem.

In alliance with labor and the racially oppressed communities

Today’s environmental movement is a multi-class, multi-racial and international movement. As the AFL-CIO has taken a lead in work place and community environmental issues over the past few years, a greater unity has developed between labor and the established environmental organizations and the Environmental Justice movement. Many unions have built labor-community alliances in contract battles and organizing drives, especially with oppressed communities on this issue. Unions have reached out overseas for solidarity.

The Republican rightwing recognizes its candidates and Bush himself are vulnerable on this issue. They have made many efforts to forge splits between labor and environmentalists. They have mainly used the fear of job loss and the lure of new jobs to influence the UMWA, the UAW and Laborers. But one wonders whether or not the Teamsters have jumped on board the Bush policy in exchange for getting the government out of the Teamsters. These splits have shown themselves most notably in the debate around ANWAR and global warming.

The UMWA took the initiative to form a group of 10 international unions, including IBEW, Teamsters, UFCW, called Unions for Jobs and Environment. They succeeded in getting the AFL-CIO to oppose the Kyoto Treaty.

However there are many important pro-environmental alliances that have been built. The Union of Concerned Scientists has carried on a dialogue with UNITE, SEIU, AFSCME, USWA for several years to come up with a strategy to reduce global warming and preserve jobs. They call it the Blue-Green working group. In February, they along with the Sierra Club and NRDC joined together to denounce the Bush climate plan and offer alternatives that would create jobs.

The Economic Policy Institute and Center for Sustainable Economy released a study which called for reducing US emissions of carbon dioxide by 27% below projected 2010 levels and by 51% by 2020. The changes in production would increase the number of new jobs by 660,000 in 2010 and 1.4 million in 2020. It would provide full income replacement – for up to five years – for workers who may become dislocated during the process. This is a program we should promote.

Increasing the fuel economy of new cars and light trucks to 40 miles per gallon by 2012 will result in an increase of 183,000 new US jobs, including 41,000 new jobs in the motor vehicle industry. People would save $28 billion annually on gas by 2020.
Despite the role of the UAW in opposing the Kyoto Treaty, polls show a majority support in Michigan, including among auto workers, for restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and more fuel efficient automobiles.

Just like NAFTA, the struggle against the FTAA offers an important opportunity for building broader and deeper unity between the environmental movement, labor and the racially oppressed communities.

Basic contradictions between capitalism and ecology

We need to do a lot more to explore the fatal contradictions between capitalism and the ecology, why capitalism is incapable of sustainability, and why it is driving environmental destruction. I just want to mention one here.

Marx, based on Liebig’s research, showed long ago that capitalist agricultural methods were leading to the exhaustion of the soil. We can see in our own history how the slave economy exhausted the soil in the south through over cultivation of tobacco and cotton. It is said that it took three years for tobacco cultivation to exhaust the soil in Virginia.

The 1992 Earth Summit reported that the mineral content of the world’s farm and range soil had dramatically decreased over the last 100 years, including over 75% in North America. Soil conservation is totally neglected in developing countries because of drive for max profits by the transnational corporations.

Soil erosion and nutrient depletion may be undermining the long term productivity of 50% of the world’s agricultural lands. Worldwide an area the combined size of Mexico and the US is experiencing severe soil depletion. There is a slowing growth in food production because of land degradation as the world’s population grows.

In the US over two billion tons of top soil were lost to wind and water erosion on cropland in 1997. One-third of cropland is considered highly erodeable. This degradation is a precursor to desertification if not stopped.

Added to this, the long distance transport of agricultural products makes the restoration of the soil with natural nutrients that much more difficult. Soil, in the form of crops that result in food and clothing, is not returned to the farmland at the same rate it is removed. Until recently human wastes were dumped into rivers and oceans. To make up for the depletion of soil, capitalist agricultural techniques use greater amounts of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers.

Because of struggles against ocean dumping of sewage, much of the human waste was incinerated and then buried in land fills. But this produces deadly dioxins. So today one-third of the 5.3 million metric tons of sewage sludge produced each year in the US is now dumped on farmland and forestland.

But this sludge can also contain many heavy metals, parasites and chemicals like chlorine, practically everything accumulated in the industrial process. In addition, chemical companies that at one time dumped their hazardous waste into streams and rivers are now turning the waste into ‘fertilizer’ and selling it to farmers for ‘beneficial use.’ This is totally legal.

Capitalism is taking us to the brink of a world-wide crisis of agriculture that will threaten tens of millions with starvation. The growing ‘metabolic rift’ as Marx called the intercourse between society and nature, is a basic contradiction that capitalism can’t overcome. Human survival depends upon overcoming this rift.

Ecology and socialism

It will take global people’s unity, all people’s unity, of the working class, the oppressed communities, and sections of monopoly capital, municipal governments, the developing countries and the worldwide environmental movement to curb the power of the transnational corporations and their pollution. This issue can’t wait for socialism. For example, a mass movement must be built to force the Bush administration and congress to adopt the Kyoto Treaty, with all its flaws.

The environmental crisis and the struggle against it has the potential to convince tens of millions that it’s root cause is not just the corporations, but the capitalist system of economic production. They will see that everything is integrally connected to the production process. To save nature and humanity necessitates a change in the mode of production.

The global nature of the crisis requires a global response, global cooperation and utilization of resources. Socialism is the system that provides the best possibilities for global cooperation without the interference of corporate drive for profit. This recognition will be a powerful factor in the development of mass anti-monopoly and socialist consciousness.

But for this to happen, we and others need to do much more. The ruling class anti-communism and socialism’s own mistakes have unfortunately created some wrong ideas about the relationship of socialism to the environment. We have to help people to understand the source of the problems, mistakes and errors, but also the great contributions of socialism. We should greatly elaborate our vision of the policies an anti-monopoly people’s government and our own image of an environmentally conscious system of socialist economic production.

During the early years of the Soviet Union the new socialist government pioneered the development of a revolutionary environmental policy. But because the Soviet Union had to engage in a forced march to industrialization and essentially organize a war economy, environmentally sustainable policies were put on the back burner.

I also believe that some distortions of Marxist theory took place during the period of industrialization. The idea that nature was there to be ‘dominated and mastered’ by human society took hold. This undermined recognition that necessity drives changes in nature and society, and that both are fundamentally interconnected. The policies of increasing production and industrialization led to a real neglect of the environment in later years.

Cuba on the other hand was forced into fundamentally different approach to the environment based on its response to the collapse of trade with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. It was forced to develop a sustainable economy. Its inability to purchase chemical fertilizers and pesticides for its agricultural industry forced it to move to adopt an organic farming approach, recycling everything. Agricultural productivity increased. The lack of gasoline forced the adoption of other modes of transit. Nearly 1 million bikes were imported from China. They are expanding research and development of solar power. Today Cuba is recognized around the world for its environmental achievements.

Nature Conservancy is working in conjunction with the Chinese government on various projects to preserve regions of rich biodiversity.

We will have to continue to develop our concept of Bill of Rights socialism, as a sustainable, environmentally conscious model; a society that will build a clean environment where we work, live and play.

Communists and the environmental movement

Communists and socialists have played an important role historically in the environmental movement. We shouldn’t underestimate the Party’s contribution theoretically and practically. Many Party and YCL comrades have been involved over the years, giving leadership to struggles in workplaces and communities. The writings of Gus Hall and Virginia Brodine and others are known in the movement.

Within the environmental movement there is very broad left and a big and growing body of outstanding work of Marxists beyond our ranks. They include Barry Commoner, John Belhamy Foster, James O’Connor, Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin to name just a few. We should do more to build working relations with these activists.

Political Affairs has had two really great special editions on the environmental crisis. The People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo editorial board is making a conscious effort to give on-going coverage already resulting in more articles. This is an important step in establishing relations with activists and struggles in the environmental movement while broadening the PWW’s appeal, especially to youth and students.

The environmental commission is working on redrafting the environmental program. We should encourage more participation in the commission, including from YCLers, ensure it meets regularly and urge it to report regularly to the National Board and other collectives.

We can and must do more to build environmental consciousness in all our collectives so we can take more initiatives. The image of an environmentally conscious and active mass Communist Party, USA can not be underestimated. This is an important part of winning the young generation to socialism and building the Party’s influence among the youth who are especially attuned to the environmental crisis. Their world outlook is being fundamentally shaped by it.

We should deepen our relations with others, and in coalitions, conferences and events, and help make the connections with other issues and other movements.

We should radically step up our involvement in the ideological discussions taking place in the environmental movement. We should issue special pamphlets, especially exposing the connections between Bush, the ultra right and the worst corporate polluters.

I want to end with some words from Marx,

‘From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the Earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the Earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, like good house keepers.’

The future of humanity is at stake. We are called upon to respond and we will, not only for our generation, and that of our children, but to ensure that nature and humanity survives and flourishes long into the future.

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