Link to this page: https://secure.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/1146/32991
From The Socialist newspaper, 8 September 2021
Socialist change, not climate change
Dave Nellist - Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition chair and Socialist Party national committee member - wrote the following letter to the Observer in reply to the Green Party Baroness Natalie Bennett's call for capitalist reforms to halt catastrophic climate change.
Natalie Bennett calls for 'system change, not climate change' (Your Letters, 22 August) but then proposes solutions that hardly challenge the vested interests of the existing economic system and its owners.
To move climate heating industries to zero-carbon emissions requires urgent national and international planning and significant investment. There are two problems. Firstly, we can't plan what we don't fully control, and we don't fully control what we don't own. Secondly, private investment in a market-based system is constricted by the expectation of its owners making a profit.
The fundamental system change needed is public ownership and rational economic planning in a democratic socialist system. Unfortunately, we don't yet have a major political party arguing for that.
Leaving society in the continued control of millionaire politicians being told by billionaire business owners not to threaten their profits won't fundamentally change anything.
Save the planet - make capitalism extinct
Heather Rawling, Leicester Socialist Party
Listening to the radio the other day, I heard a grandmother's account of why she was on the recent Extinction Rebellion protest in London.
The interviewer asked her what she thought the solution to climate change was. This question would've been a gift to a socialist.
We would have explained that there is no solution under capitalism, even if the capitalists genuinely want to find a solution.
Capitalism operates on the short-term drive for profits, with owners and nations in competition with each other.
Until the working class and poor of the world own and democratically control the world's resources, we will not have a satisfactory solution.
Instead, the spokesperson for XR said that they weren't 'solutionary', they were just alerting people to the problem.
I think the majority of us know that climate change is happening and it's urgent that humanity addresses the threat.
I appeal to people concerned about the threat of climate change to fight for socialism, as the only way we can tackle the threat, democratically, on a world scale.
The Socialist Party says socialist change to stop climate change: Take over the major corporations so we can democratically plan the use of the world's resources, for need and not profit.
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In The Socialist 8 September 2021:
NHS and social care
NHS and social care - make the rich pay, not the workers
Workers shouldn't pay for health and social care plans
End service cuts and care charges
Families demand rights for care home residents
Whipps Cross hospital workers reject the 3%
What we think
A pivotal moment for the trade union movement
Socialist Party news and campaigns
Socialist Party national council - members enthused by excellent in-person meeting
Why I joined the Socialist Party
Education
Union action needed to make schools Covid safe
Fighting NEU leadership needed to tackle school funding crisis
Schools funding crisis fails vulnerable children
University bosses push through pension cuts proposal
9/11 twenty years on
9/11 and the 'War on Terror' twenty years on
Workplace news
Bexley bin workers win big gains after six-week strike
Equity protest to save arts centre forces talks from Newham Council
DWP: Demand safe working and more jobs
DHL workers to strike against wage theft
Youth Fight for Jobs
Organising to defend our future: 9 October- Youth fight for jobs day of action
Building Youth Fight for Jobs in the South West
International news
Libya - ten years after Gaddafi's overthrow
US Supreme Court refuses to challenge Texas abortion ban
Keep fascists out of Portland: Build a mass movement to fight the right
Readers' opinion
Socialist change, not climate change
Vigil: A nuclear sub murder mystery
Obituary
Obituary: Roger Henshaw, comrade and class fighter
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