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EARTH DAY 2000 - CORPORATE DOMINATION THREATENS OUR PLANET
By Kimball Cariou
(This article is from the April 16-30/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
THIRTY YEARS AFTER the first Earth Day, protection of the global ecology seems to have made "one step forward, two steps back." Some major successes have been achieved, and popular awareness of the issue is higher than in the past. But in many parts of the world, problems such as deforestation and the destruction of wildlife habitat are worse than ever.
Even more critical, dangerous processes like global climate instability and the decline of the ozone layer remain unchecked. In particular, commitments made at the 1997 Kyoto Summit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being ignored by governments under intense pressure from the corporate sector.
A brief sampling of recent ecology issues covered in the Canadian mass media gives some idea of the scope of this problem.
For the first time, residents of Arctic Canada are getting sunburn during their brief summers. While scientists predict that global average temperatures may rise between 1 and 3.5 degrees in the coming century, Arctic regions will be 5 to 7 degrees warmer, and it's started already. In Churchill, Manitoba, temperatures have been above freezing much of the time since an unheard-of rainfall in February.
A new report by the Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development shows that in 1997, nine of Canada's top fifteen corporate producers of greenhouse gases were actually pumping out more carbon dioxide than ever. The 15 companies all joined a voluntary reporting program after Canada made a commitment at the Rio de Janeiro environmental summit to stabilize emissions at 1990 levels. Instead, by 1997 their collective emissions rose 7%, to a total of 162 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and equivalent gases.
The worst offender is Calgary-based Husky Oil, which increased its CO2 emissions by 76 percent, from 3.7 million tonnes in 1990 to 6.6 million in 1997. Some publicly-owned corporations were nearly as bad; SaskPower, for example, emitted 14.4 million tonnes in 1997, a 36 percent jump from 1990 levels.
The total Canadian emissions of greenhouse gases is expected to hit 694 million tonnes this year, 15 percent above the 1990 level. To reach the year 2010 targets Canada agreed to at Kyoto, we would have to reduce total emissions by 26 percent, a sharp reversal of the last decade's trends.
Governments and corporations are doing their best to bury this issue, arguing that the need for "economic growth" ties their hands. Once again, corporate greed is trumping the long-term needs of people and the environment.
It's not quite that simple, of course. This winter's steep jump in fuel prices has hit hardest at working people, pushing truckers into bankruptcy and costing homeowners and renters a fortune in higher heating costs. The big energy corporations, naturally, will make an even bigger fortune from the rapid shifts in oil and gas prices.
Putting strict controls on the corporations which dictate energy prices might reduce some immediate problems caused by the anarchy of the capitalist market. But a real solution to our society's addiction to fossil fuels calls for a drastic shift in economic goals and planning, a change which looks increasingly difficult to achieve under the present system.
In "green" British Columbia, for example, the provincial government and municipalities remain fixated on improving roads for private cars and trucks, at the expense of less polluting forms of transportation. Engine exhaust is a huge pollution problem in the Lower Mainland, yet public transit fares are going up by over 15% on June 1. Trees are being chopped down in Stanley Park to help gas-guzzling SUVs save a few minutes on the commute to downtown from wealthy West Vancouver.
On April 22 - Earth Day 2000 - Canadians should think hard about the dangers of our present course. Today all the key decisions affecting working people and the global ecology are being made in corporate boardrooms, where maximum profit is the only concern. Leaving the future to capitalism means leaving our children and grandchildren a devastated world.
But Earth Day (like May Day which follows days later) is also a day to mobilize for alternative policies: for cleaner air and water; for economic policies based on full employment and shorter work time, not the destructive spiral of consumerism; for social policies to reverse the robbery of working people by the rich; for an end to the shocking gap between the imperialist powers of the North and the neo-colonies of the South. Earth Day and May Day are important occasions to link the struggles for these immediate demands with the need for a socialist system that would put the interests of people and the environment before private profit.
It won't be easy to turn things around. But this is a struggle that must be won!
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