About environmentalism

As an organization we must present a position on various aspects of ecology in the alarming situation of the environment which we live. From ecology it is possible to deal with many issues that can be grouped into two main issues: conservation and sustainability of biodiversity together with the study of ecosystems and the ecology of resources, wich would cover energy sources and raw materials.

In the period of imperialism in which we find ourselves, more than ever monopolies and bourgeois states act within a limited frame only by an ethic of exploitation and maximum benefit in front of natural resources to its detriment for its misuse. They themselves, by detachments of the UN, such as the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change United) and UNEP (the UN Environment Unit) will set their own restrictions on gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides, ozone or chlorofluorocarbons; degrading restrictions with possibility of dilatating conditions thateven are subsequently broken.

Since the mid-twentieth century, environmental organizations that theoretically advocate for environmental struggle have been consolidating, existing most of them, among which have gained prominence mainly Greenpeace and WWF. It’s imperative to fight the sensationalism that corporations as these can trigger. These are international companies that can actually have real activists committed with environmentalism, but they are basically just bourgeois instruments that exploit the environmental plight to recruit more members, revenues and grants. Moreover the workers that fuel these companies are heavily exploited and work with deplorable conditions, many of them locking with subcontractors. It’s important to point that they have a strong anti-war stance, wich is totally counterproductive for working emancipation.

Clearly the capitalist mode of production is not an example neither for the sustainability of natural resources nor for fair distribution. Natural resources, especially non-renewable sources such as natural gas, oil or minerals are a major economic focus for those interested in an imperialist state, oppressors of the peoples who own those resources that become dependent countries. Other examples such as United Arab Emirates or Qatar, the national bourgeoisie exploit oil and natural gas resources, operating with foreign affiliates for processing, refining and transporting products. The exploitation of these resources have a relatively short time period, because their consumption rate is higher than the renewal process of them and its use is one of the major contributors to an ecological catastrophe.

The capitalist economic interests and all automotive and oil monopolies do not allow the full development of renewable and initiating aspects of sustainability and balance process. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat where bourgeois interests are exterminated is much more feasible industrial and technological development led to the use of renewable natural resources, compatibility between economy and ecology would only be possible in the socialist camp.

Another aspect that generated a lot of controversy are the energy sources used for electricity supply. The most commonly given is nuclear energy, because of the lower costs they involve in short-term capitalist regimes. The process carried out in reactors of a power plant, is the nuclear fission in which an element such as uranium is subjected to neutron bombardment at the core producing its fission into two, releasing energy but generating subproducts such as plutonium, potentially radioactive . Hence, the nuclear waste is the main problematic, they remain active with an average of 240,000 years.

In a socialist state, it is necessary to replace progressively nuclear energy by all environmental drawbacks that it entails, and so introducing other energy alternatives. The other side of nuclear energy use is the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is therefore necessary to assess what would be the scope of such weapons to overcome bourgeois resistance. At no time liberation of the working class should be left unprotected, anything that represents an improvement in arms to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat and defeat the imperialist states needs to be positively valued.

Only in the future communist society a sustainable balance of natural resources will be truly developed and the conservation of biodiversity adressed, along with characteristic behavior change that would emerge in humans.

Reconstrucción Comunista November 2013