Biofuels Destroying the Planet Because of Capitalism
skepticl1
About the time when capitalism was first putting humanity on the road
to the global warming we face today, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "Modern bourgeois society with its
relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that
has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is
like a sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the
nether world whom he has called up by his spells."
Over 150 years later, the truth of this statement still stands out
sharply when confronting the issue of global warming and the
particularities of the deal between BP and UC Berkeley. The workings
of the capitalist/imperialist system, with its lopsided and distorted
social relations, private ownership, and its relentless drive for
profit stands in the way of using scientific knowledge to address the
needs of humanity.
Biofuel, the subject of the UC Berkeley/BP venture, refers to fuels
derived from recently living organisms, or their metabolic byproducts.
Today this is mostly in the form of ethanol that can be produced from
plants such as sugar cane, soybeans, and oil palm. While there are
many technical problems in the production of biofuels-specifically
they often use more energy to produce than they contribute-many
scientists hope that these problems can be solved and that biofuels
can replace much gasoline used today. Because the carbon (the
substance that causes global warming) in biofuels comes from CO2 that
is taken out of the atmosphere by the living plants, some scientists
argue that biofuels could contribute much less to global warming than
fossil fuels. And, unlike oil, the supply of which is limited,
biofuels could be grown year after year.
Other scientists question the sustainability of biofuels saying that
they require the use of fertilizers, which increase CO2, replace other
plant life that were also using CO2, deplete the soil, and are very
water intensive.
Regardless of the debate over the sustainability of biofuels, in
today's world the use of biofuels has led to horrific consequences for
the people of the world and the environment.
A key feature of imperialism is the division of the world between a
handful of rich imperialist countries and the rest of the world.
Eighty percent of the world's resources are absorbed by the advanced
capitalist countries, which make up 15 percent of the world's
population. Imperialism has produced a wasteful and destructive
pattern of economic activity and industrial development.
This division of the world has meant, and will almost certainly
continue to mean, that the growing of crops for fuel-mostly for export
to Europe, Japan and the United States-is being done on large-scale
plantations in the third world. In order to make room for these
plantations ancient forests are being cut down, threatening extinction
for many species. Reduction of greenhouse gases is lost when carbon-
capturing forests are cut down to make way for biofuel crops,
worsening the problem of global warming.
In Malaysia, the production of palm oil for biodiesel is a major
industry. According to a recent report by Friends of the Earth,
"Between 1985 and 2000 the development of oil-palm plantations was
responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in
Malaysia." In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest
have been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares
are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5 million in
Indonesia.
In the Guardian newspaper George Monibot writes: "Almost all the
remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting national
park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The
orangutan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos,
tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other
species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have
been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been
tortured when they tried to resist. The forest fires which every so
often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm
growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable
oil field." (Guardian, 12/6/2005)
And in an editorial in the Berkeley Daily Planet, UC Berkeley
Professor Miguel Altieri and Eric Holt-Gimenez of the group Food First
wrote: "Hundreds of thousands of small-scale peasant farmers are being
displaced by soybeans expansion. Many more stand to lose their land
under the biofuels stampede. Already, the expanding cropland planted
to yellow corn for ethanol has reduced the supply of white corn for
tortillas in Mexico, sending prices up 400 percent. This led peasant
leaders at the recent World Social Forum in Nairobi to demand, 'No
full tanks when there are still empty bellies!'"
These peasants, along with those displaced by other forms of
imperialist domination and environmental devastation, are then forced
to become virtual slaves on these large-scale plantations.
Capitalism cannot deal with the environment in a sustainable and
economically rational way for three basic reasons: First, its logic is
"expand-or-die": to cheapen cost and to expand in order to wage the
competitive battle and gain market share. Companies like BP are locked
in fierce competition with other companies. An article in the business
section of the New York Times writes, "For investors in alternatives
to oil and gas, the driving force has been the belief that whoever
develops the next great energy sources will enjoy the spoils that will
make the gains from creating the next Amazon.com or Google seem puny
by comparison." (3/16/2007)
Second, the horizons of capitalism tend to be short term. They seek to
maximize returns quickly. They don't think about the consequences in
10, 20, 30 years. In the development of biofuels this means that they
do not pay attention to long-term effects like soil depletion, water
usage, and cutting down ancient forests, or even increasing global
warming.
Third, capitalist production is by its nature private. The economy is
broken up into competing units of capitalist control and ownership
over the means of production. And each unit is fundamentally concerned
with itself and its expansion and its profit. The economy, the
constructed and natural environment, and society cannot be dealt with
as a social whole under capitalism.
In the article "Capitalism, the Environment, and Ecology Under
Socialism" in Revolution #52 (6/25/2006) Raymond Lotta wrote, "So
capitalism is incapable of addressing environmental issues outside its
framework of private ownership and production for profit, and its
blind logic of expansion. And on a world scale, we see the effects.
But socialism can address environmental issues in a sustainable,
rational, and socially just way: because ownership of the means of
production is socialized as expressed through the proletarian state
and this makes it possible to consciously plan development; and
because economic calculation is radically different."
The debate over these issues-how the world has gotten to the point
where the very survival of our species and the planet is being called
into question, and what must be done to change this-is too often ruled
out of order. In the name of realism, opponents of the system too
often end up in debate over how to work within a system that is itself
the problem. The debate over these issues needs to be pried open as a
crucial part of the struggle to save the planet.
Bill Thompson
China, Russia, and Central Europe provide ample evidence that the choice of
economic system is not related to ecological awareness and conservationism.
skep...@aol.com
The Soivet Union made some mistakes in particular concerning ecology.
We can do better than has been done in the past, by learning from
mistakes and building on past accomplishments. You can't fix things
economically under Captialism because trees are just Lumber to Bush
and Clinton. We need Socialism, a planned economy not based on profit
and exploitation, to address the dying planet's needs, and Socialism
has the ablity to unleash the masses to organize on a grand scale.
With Capitalism people only have time to be worked past endurance by
their 'betters' then stagger off to a cheap meal and bed.
Bill Thompson
news:1176072816.4...@w1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
That was a bit naive. No matter what type of government a country purports
to have, no matter what economic system it purports to have, after a
generation or two it becomes an aristocracy, with the people at the top
acting acording to their own best interests. If you turn the reigns of
power over to the general populace, they vote for more entitlements.
I don't think it can be helped. We have been shaped by evolution to be the
greedy selfish bastards that we are. If we genetically engineer ourselves
to get rid of that, maybe there's hope; but then we won't be us anymore.
skepticl1
> <skepti...@aol.com> wrote in message
>
> - Show quoted text -
In the first wave of Socialist revolutions, it was very difficult to
keep the Capitalists from coming back into control. No emerging epoch
develops in a straight line. It took many battles and hundreds of
years to replace Feudalism with Bourgeois democracy. In China Mao
waged the Great Proliterian Cultural Revolution to confront the
Capitalist's still inside Socialist society, and attempted to keep the
Capitalists inside the leadership of the Communist party from coming
back into power. He did this by unleashing the masses to fight them.
"Bombard the headquarters" was a slogan. There is no such thing as
Human nature Bill. Society determines what people's values are. What
you might thing in engrained human behavior, like beating women or
footbinding, can be changed in a very short time by educating people
and challenging their old ideas about the supposed inferiority of
women.
Here is a good article on Capitalism, and Socialism concerning ecology
Bill:
Capitalism, the Environment, and Ecology Under Socialism
by Raymond Lotta
Important questions are being raised about the dire state of the
Earth's ecosystems. I would like to emphasize several points about how
ecological problems would be dealt with differently by socialism:
We need to have a global perspective, understanding revolution and
revolutionary transformation as a world process. Ecological issues
must fundamentally be dealt with on a world scale. But that can only
happen on the basis of a social and economic system-socialism-that
does not treat the environment simply as a means by which to
accumulate wealth.
Eighty percent of the world's resources are absorbed by the advanced
capitalist countries, which make up 15 percent of the world's
population. Imperialism has produced a wasteful and destructive
pattern of economic activity and industrial development. The
"greenhouse" problem is primarily the result of capitalist-imperialist
development.
So a big issue that proletarian revolution has to address is the
unequal concentration of wealth and absorption of resources of the
world by the imperialist countries. But you also have to reckon with
these global environmental issues. And only socialism and communism
can really address them.
I believe economic development cannot be separated from issues of
ecology. The answer is to overturn imperialist power relations but at
the same time to recognize much more profoundly that we have to
develop sustainable socialist economies that are sensitive to these
ecological questions. This is a very important new challenge before us
in the 21st century.
Capitalism cannot deal with the environment in a sustainable and
economically rational way for three basic reasons:
First, its logic is "expand-or-die": to cheapen cost and to expand in
order to wage the competitive battle and gain market share. And
unplanned, large-scale, globally-interconnected production poses grave
threats to the environment.
Second, the horizons of capitalism tend to be short term. They seek to
maximize returns quickly. They don't think about the consequences in
10, 20, 30 years. We see that in the U.S.-they build a nuclear power
station because it looks profitable and then, ten years later, they
realize, uh-oh, their investment isn't paying off. And so then they
spend more money to try to undo it, and then go in for another big
short-term gain somewhere else.
Third, capitalist production is by its nature private. The economy is
broken up into competing units of capitalist control and ownership
over the means of production. And each unit is fundamentally concerned
with itself and its expansion and its profit. The economy, the
constructed and natural environment, and society cannot be dealt with
as a social whole under capitalism. It's all fragmented into private
parts. And each part looks at what lies outside itself as a "free
ride." An individual capitalist can open a steel mill and be concerned
with the cost of that steel mill. But what they do to the air is not
"their cost," because it's not part of their sphere of ownership. In
mainstream economic theory, this is called "externality."
So capitalism is incapable of addressing environmental issues outside
its framework of private ownership and production for profit, and its
blind logic of expansion. And on a world scale, we see the effects.
But socialism can address environmental issues in a sustainable,
rational, and socially just way: because ownership of the means of
production is socialized as expressed through the proletarian state
and this makes it possible to consciously plan development; and
because economic calculation is radically different.
Economic calculation under socialism is not guided by profit but by
social need, achieving rational balances between industry and
agriculture, reducing gaps between town and country, factoring in the
short-run, medium-term, and long-term, etc. And socialist planning is
able to take into account non-economic factors: like health, the
environment, alienation that people may experience from jobs. And all
of this must be consciously serving the advance of the world
revolution towards a communist world.