Climate Crisis here ♦ Communism means Health here ♦
Capitalism, not “Consumption,” Drives Climate Crisis
March 2024 was the hottest month on record. It was the 10th consecutive month setting a new global heat record. April, Earth Month, will likely continue this trend as greenhouse gases in our atmosphere continue to grow exponentially.
The main story we’re told about the climate crisis and solutions to slow its rapid pace focuses on the individual. Capitalist society is determined on the alienation of its citizens. That is, undervaluing (or underfunding) community support networks and dismantling organized labor. Unsurprisingly, the burden of solving an issue caused almost entirely by the fossil fuel industry has been placed on the public.
Personal responsibility shouldn’t be ignored. But, often, the sole solution is framed as personal action and changing habits. Usually it focuses on consumption: buying “green” or “sustainable” products. We are instructed to purchase electric vehicles to reduce our carbon impact. This ignores the human impact cobalt mining has on Congolese workers. Meanwhile we drive to workplaces whose executives often profit from the fossil fuel industry.
This reframing of the climate crisis as a question of individual responsibility is easy to see as a larger product of executives and the political ruling class’s disinformation campaign around the effects of burning fossil fuels. We are told, and often believe, that we ourselves hold the solution to the crucial issue of climate change. So, it is not difficult for many to also believe themselves as its primary cause.
This strategy, shifting blame and pitting the masses one against the other, is nothing new for the ruling class. The global poor will pay the price for an ever-heating planet. Now more than ever we need a mass movement of workers united in demanding a dismantling of the current systems that continue to escalate catastrophic damage to our environment.
Besides the fossil fuel industry, deforestation, unsustainable and unethical animal agriculture, and more, let’s remember the dire effects of war on our planet and its inhabitants. Tens of thousands of tons of bombs have been dropped on Gaza, causing immense loss of human life. We must reflect on the poisonous effects these weapons have on the environment (both immediate and long-standing).
Ancient olive trees have been destroyed. Toxic chemicals leach into the soil. Carbon fills the atmosphere. The illegitimate occupying state of Israel should be held accountable for crimes against the environment as well as for the genocide of the Palestinian people and crimes against humanity.
We must urgently act for an immediate, permanent ceasefire that allows for the process towards a free Palestine. Radical environmental organizing cannot happen when bombs are falling and under occupation. We cannot become passive or complicit to genocide and war.
We also cannot simply limit or slow down our reliance on fossil fuels. We cannot continue to trust industries, executives, and politicians who propel us further and further downwards.
We must fight for the power to take matters into our own hands.
Some say that the best time to begin solving the issues around climate change was forty years ago, when science was just revealing the damage being done. The second-best time is today.
—Reader in Los Angeles (USA)
Capitalism Makes Us Sick – Communism Will Keep Us Healthy
Even before the deadly Coronavirus pandemic healthcare was a big issue. The real question was, why are so many people so sick in the first place? The answer is capitalism, which makes workers sick in so many ways.
Under communism people will be much less sick, much less often. I believe this will be true of all kinds of illnesses. It doesn’t take much medical knowledge to see this.
For a start, life under capitalism is extremely stressful for workers. Workers never have enough money, even when they have jobs. They must worry about paying the rent or mortgage, buying food, paying for gas, buying clothes for the kids … you know the story.
Stress aggravates almost all illnesses, from diabetes to depression. Reducing stress will, after struggle, all but eliminate the harmful addictions that workers contract trying to compensate. No (street) drugs, or smoking, or alcoholism, or eating disorders.
Work itself will become joyful because we will be working together to satisfy peoples’ needs. Workers will do a variety of activities, even on the same day. No one will wear out body parts doing the same motions day after day.
Learning also will be joyful and will be mixed with working. Students will not spend long hours sitting motionless cooped up in a classroom. They’ll learn by doing.
People will not be lonely anymore. Most activities will be communal. Loneliness is a known health risk factor – as harmful as smoking or obesity.
Good food is vital to good health. We can make sure we eat well (if simply). Nutrition-based diseases like diabetes will all but disappear.
Under communism, even the air we breathe will be healthier. We’ll eliminate all the poisons that choke us every day. We’ll do this mainly by vastly reducing the use of fossil fuels and all but eliminating the private automobile, a major source of this pollution. Workers will travel mainly in clean, safe, public transportation – buses and trains. And the switch to public transportation will eliminate most traffic accidents.
People will also walk more, or ride bicycles. Physical activity, including participatory sports, will be a priority.
Good housing, including sewage and clean drinking water, is also vital. We’ll do away with both junk food and junk housing, not to make money but to make workers happier. And a lot healthier.
Life under communism, once capitalism is gone for good, will above all be peaceful. No more nations and no more bloody wars. And without private property, no more crime.
Of course there will still be healthcare under communism. And it will be great for those who need it.
I predict that, thanks to the communist lifestyle, workers won’t experience illness on the scale they do under capitalism.
-Comrade in Canada
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