[lbo-talk] "Global Warming Has Stopped"

[Joseph Green]

Somebody Somebody wrote:
> 
>  Whether or not the right plays games with the issue - there's still the 
matter of whether global warming should be a central issue for the left. 
There's still a question over whether socialists should shove their 
traditional core issues aside and become an appendage of bourgeois 
environmentalism. Is it left-wing to join in with the right and tell the 
working class: guess what, remember how we talked about liberating the 
productive forces and advancing from where capitalism left off? Forget all 
that - now austerity and anti-consumerism is the order of the day, because 
mother earth takes priority over human interests. 
> 

Refusing to deal with global warming in the name of "traditional core issues" 
is like refusing to deal with an ongoing world war; it means betraying the 
working class. The point is whether the working-class has its own program for 
dealing with global warming.

Any serious program to deal with global warming would strike at neo-
liberalism, and would call for integrating planning to deal with the economic 
security of the masses with planning to rescue the environment. It would not 
mean lauding austerity, but would reinforce the fight against the ravages of 
the international economic crisis, the cutbacks, and the sacrifice of the 
masses and of the environment to the rich. By way of contrast, the advocacy 
of market measures, whether carbon trading or the carbon tax, does in fact 
mean "becom(ing) an appendage of bourgeois environmentalism." Similarly the 
reduction of working-class interests to simply hoping for "green jobs" is 
nothing but trickle-down economics. 

So, for example, Al Gore is right about the dangers of global warming, but  
wrong about what to do about it: his "solutions" would lead us to our doom. I 
wrote about this in, for example, the article " '24 hours of reality' about 
global warming, but continuing fantasy about market-based measures" 
(www.communistvoice.org/46cGore.html).

-- Joseph Green