EDITORIAL
Global warning
New scientific reports underscore the environmental dangers
humanity faces from industrial development under capitalism.
They also expose the impossibility of profit-driven bankers and
industrialists to take rational steps to avoid an oncoming
disaster.
A prestigious scientific panel, the National Research
Council, issued a warning about vast climate changes over a
short time period with calamitous results for humanity. This
relatively conservative panel is a sub-committee of the
National Academy of Sciences.
One might think that when an authoritative scientific body
issues such a warning there would be a big reaction from the
government. At least authorizing further study of the question.
But to compound this problem, the group now in charge in
Washington wontake steps unless they either increase U.S. power
relative to the rest of the world or immediately lead to
increased profits for their cronies.
This scientific warning went a giant step beyond past
predictions about the consequences of a gradual increase in
average temperatures. Even these increases of a few degrees a
century bring harsher storms, floods and droughts with more
loss of life and damage. The strong possibility of danger from
global warming finally brought a small reaction from the
worldwide ruling class with the Kyoto agreement.
The National Research Council gently raised the possibility
that these small changes from global warming will build up and
could trigger a drastic change, on the order of 10-15 degrees
in a decade--and with it a disaster of enormous proportions.
Its report mentions a 1,000-year-long ice age introduced by
some natural drastic change about 13 millennia ago.
But, though last year's average world temperature was the
second highest on record, Washington refuses to go along with
taking even small steps to deal with these warnings. The White
House gang is showing once again that even a threat to all of
humanity does nothing to shake them from their path of letting
the drive for profit determine every move they make.
Will the U.S. lead the world in finding alternative energy
sources that reduce the dependence of capitalist production and
its military machine on fossil fuels? Not likely. The Pentagon
military aggression in Afghanistan and the Middle East
demonstrates the huge commitment U.S. finance capital is making
to oil and the profits it generates.
It will take a massive struggle to separate humanity from
the profit system. And ultimately, that is what will enable
humanity to begin to deal with the problems capitalism has left
it with.
Reprinted from the Dec. 27, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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