Year in and year out we release millions of tonnes of CO2 and methane gases into the atmosphere. Every year acre upon acre of tropical rainforests are destroyed or seriously degraded. So, at the same time, we are destroying the plant life that uses carbon dioxide and converts it into oxygen. The result is global warming. Many of the dangers are well understood but nobody knows for sure and nobody can predict with certainty the critical tipping points when any combination of such changes might produce a sequence of further rapid changes which would be catastrophic from a human point of view. It must be obvious that a set of problems that are global in scale, affecting populations across the entire planet, can only be effectively tackled by cooperation between all peoples. You can’t have the world divided up between rival capitalist states — all riven by economic competition both within their boundaries and between each other and all driven by the economic pressures of profit and class interests, with a good many of them at actual war with each other — and expect to be in a position to solve the problems of the global environment. Effective action has got to be based on world cooperation.

To get the cooperation we first have to get rid of the present system which is based on economic competition. We need to establish a system based instead on common ownership, a world where all means of producing and distributing goods and all productive resources are held in common by the whole community. This means the end of the wages system through which workers are exploited for profit and the end of producing goods for sale so as to get that profit. It means people living and working in the community in a relationship of direct cooperation with each other, producing the goods and running the services that we need. This is a way of organising the community where the use of money will be entirely redundant.

If we establish common ownership, if we set up a society that is run solely for human needs as a result of people cooperating together, we are at last in a position where we can control our actions. Under capitalism, we are at the mercy of economic forces that nobody can control. Get rid of these economic forces and we are at last in a position to make democratic decisions about how best to use production for the benefit of the community.

Socialism is not the instant solution to problems but the means by which we can resolve problems. In socialism, we get the release of all productive resources — machinery, transport, raw materials, energy and labour — for the benefit of the community, but as, to start with, there will be a great deal to do we would have to make choices. We would have to make decisions in line with agreed priorities of action.

We’ve got to supply a lot more food, so that has to be increased. We’ve got to supply decent housing for everyone and that is an enormous world project. The mention of just these two priorities of action means that we would need a lot more energy and, as we know, the supply of energy is one of the worst villains in this problem of environmental damage.

It is clear that socialism will have to do two things at the same time: increase the supply of energy and do it in ways that protect the environment.

Do we keep on using nuclear generators knowing that inevitably this leads to what we do with their radioactive waste?

Do we keep on burning oil, knowing that oil is an immensely useful material that can supply thousands of very durable products? The burning of oil in power stations is in fact the kind of profligate waste that only capitalism could go in for.

What about coal, do we keep on burning it? There is no doubt that the burning of coal can be made less damaging by the installation of pollution-abatement equipment but it is expensive. In socialism, money would not be a factor. So we could if we wished to go on burning coal in a less damaging way and, of course, there are immense world reserves of this. Or simply,  we could agree to keep coal in the hole.

However, most people would agree that the most desirable way of producing energy is with the various renewable, benign methods such as solar, wind and wave power etc. This is clearly where the future lies.

Socialism would be free to go in for rapid development of these ecologically-benign methods. With the establishment of socialism, we will throw off the economic shackles of the profit system and break through into the freedom to use all our talents, skills and energies to solve problems through cooperation and collaboration.

 Child marriage robs girls of their childhood and threatens their lives and health.

And girls who marry before 18 have worse economic and health outcomes than their unmarried peers, which are eventually passed down to their own children, further straining a country’s capacity to provide quality health and education services.

Child brides often become pregnant during adolescence, when the risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth increases – for themselves and their infants.

The practice can also isolate girls from family and friends and exclude them from participating in their communities, taking a heavy toll on their physical and psychological well-being, 

The following facts and figures, which have been compiled by the two main world specialised bodies -UNICEF and UN Population Fund (UNFPA), should suffice to unveil such a flagrant human rights violation.

— Child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child.

While the prevalence of child marriage has decreased worldwide – from one in four girls married a decade ago to approximately one in five today – the practice remains widespread.

— Child marriage can lead to a lifetime of suffering. Girls who marry before they turn 18 are less likely to remain in school and more likely to experience domestic violence.

— Young teenage girls are more likely to die due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s, and their children are more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

— Infants born to teenage mothers are also more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

— Wherever they occur, harmful practices rob girls of their childhood, deny them the chance to determine their own future and threaten the well-being of individuals, families and societies.

 

… And the figures

— Globally around 21% (over 1 in 5) of young women were married before their 18th birthday.

— 650,000,000 girls and women alive today were married as children.

— 12,000,000 girls under 18 are married each year. And more than 150 million additional girls will marry before their 18th birthday by 2030.

 

Where most?

UNICEF and UNFPA also report that, across the globe, levels of child marriage are highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where around 4 in 10 young women were married before age 18, followed by South Asia, where 3 in 10 were married before age 18.

Lower levels of child marriage are found in Latin America and Caribbean (25%), the Middle East and North Africa (17%), and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (11%).

Among a raft of alarming statistics, a UN report has just found that children account for around 28 percent of trafficking victims globally. And that Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America and the Caribbean have the highest share of children among detected trafficking victims, at the rates of 64 and 62 percent, respectively.

Let alone that girls are forced by traffickers and smugglers to sexual exploitation. “Sexual tourism has a child face. No country is untouched and no child is immune.”

Child Marriage – 800 Million Girls Forced to Be Mothers | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 

Food waste is not only caused by forgetful consumers and accidents in food supply chains. 

In fact, food systems research has shown that food waste is a core, and even profitable, feature of food systems today. But as it is so often the case with environmental hazards, the profit motive trumps preventive action, and the issue of food waste is only superficially addressed.

Industrial food systems create industrial-scale food waste.  Several studies have shown that large-scale food waste is an inevitable outcome of the competition, speed, and growth-driven market mechanisms which rely on overproduction to generate profit at the expense of people and the environment.

Currently, up to half of the food produced globally is never eaten.

It represents 8-10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

None of us wants to think that our food systems might be designed to be wasteful, especially given that the world’s resources are being depleted at an alarming rate, and that up to a quarter of our fellow humans are going hungry.

 The abundance of calories produced by our food systems (in the United States, up to 4,000 calories per day for each person) presents a glaring contradiction to the scarcity and hunger manufactured alongside it.

United Nations’ Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) Action Track 2, titled Shift to Sustainable Consumption Patterns, focussed partially on the issue of food waste. But it stated “eliminating wasteful patterns of consumption” and “building consumer demand for sustainably produced food”, as the main goals in this arena, rather than addressing root causes of wastage.

Emily Mathiesen of FIAN International notes that “the UNFSS overlooked structural inequalities and human rights abuses that perpetuate food insecurity and hunger”.

Campaigning group Feedback Global’s executive director, Carina Millstone, blames the summit’s shortcomings around the issue of food waste and the food system in general on the disproportionate role corporations played in its organisation.

Millstone was part of the food waste working group of Action Track 2, but she says she realised early on that the group was dominated by a “handful of organisations intent on promoting voluntary, business initiatives and citizen action for food waste above all else”. Like hundreds of others that boycotted the summit, Feedback Global, which has worked on food waste issues since 2013, stepped aside “as it became clear the recommendations would skirt around identifying and addressing the root causes of food waste – profit-driven corporate agribusiness”.

At the farm level, research by Feedback Global showed how unfair trading practices and power concentration in food systems allow major agribusinesses to transfer the risks and costs of food waste to farmers. The consolidation of the manufacturing and retail sectors ensures that large food corporations control the conditions of trade, including prices, aesthetics, cancellation and volumes. Farmers, especially those growing monocultures, are therefore pressured to meet strict buyers’ requirements, and overproduce.

That so much food is being wasted while so many are going hungry is an undeniable sign that our economies of food are lacking justice. But it is misguided to suggest the problems of hunger and food waste can simply be resolved if we invest more in food redistribution.

 The global expansion of charitable solutions like food banks cannot fix the underlying economic inequalities that produce hunger. In what food security expert Andrew Fisher calls the “hunger industrial complex”, food waste, hunger and corporate interests collide to maintain the status quo. Beyond the laudable efforts of thousands of volunteers, extensive corporate sponsorship of the global expansion of food banking hints that this model is not about transforming and preventing wasteful systems, but primarily managing, perpetuating and even justifying excess.  

Research shows that food charities in many countries often struggle to handle large-scale donations due to a lack of sufficient storage, cooling and transport infrastructure.

The global advocacy group This Is Rubbish highlights in its Plenty To Share campaign, tackling root causes of food waste and hunger means tackling global wealth inequalities while preventing further corporate control over our food sources.

‘Big Food’ at the UN table: A recipe for big waste? | Opinions | Al Jazeera

 The poorest 50%, however, will be most severely impacted by climate change.

 India is cutting the taxes on petrol and diesel to “further spur the overall economic cycle”, the government said. However, the move is also expected to boost demand for fuel as countries try to curb fossil fuel consumption. The tax cuts are also expected to increase consumption of petrol and diesel even as global leaders, including Mr Modi, have been gathering for the COP26 climate change conference to tackle the global economy’s reliance on fossil fuels.

 

It is a safety net

Last year, 10.8% or 14.3 million workers, belonged to unions according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 1.7 million workers were covered by a union contract though they did not say they were union members. Union membership was down in 2020 from 20.1% or 17.7 million in 1983, the first year with comparable data.

Union membership increases the household wealth for workers overall, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, which analyzed data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances from 2010–2019. It gives a particular boost, increasing earnings, offering access to retirement savings and bolstering other benefits essential for financial security, according to the report.

White union households had almost twice the median wealth of white households that did not include a union member, according to the report, which analyzed the survey data gathered from thousands of U.S. families who answer questions about their earnings, balance sheets, benefits and demographics.

But the difference in wealth was most striking among some workers of color, the report concluded, with Black union households having three times the median wealth of Black families without a union member, 

And Hispanic union households having five times the median wealth of their non-union counterparts.

The report attributes the difference in resources between those in a union and those who are not with potentially playing a crucial role in bridging a financial gulf in which white families have roughly ten times the wealth of their Black peers, and over eight times the wealth of the median Hispanic family.

David Madland, senior fellow with the Center for American Progress and co-author of the analysis, explained, “Unions boost wealth for everyone .. but they provide even more of a boost for Black and Hispanic households, and because of this greater boost they help close the racial wealth gaps in a significant way.”

The analysis from the Center for American Progress is also in line with data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and other studies that found union members make more than those not in unions and have more access to employer provided health insurance.

Full-time workers who were represented by a union in 2020 had typical median weekly earnings of $1,138 compared with non-union workers who had median weekly pay of $958, according to the BLS.

And an August 2016 review of the Current Population Survey by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a progressive think tank, found Black workers who belonged to unions earned wages that were 16.4% higher on average than their Black peers who were not in unions.

A September 2008 CEPR survey of the data, which is compiled by the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, found union membership increased Latino workers’ wages on average by 17.6% as compared to their peers. And Latino union members were 26% more likely to have employer-provided health care than their Latino counterparts who were not in unions.

“The differences in household wealth for Black and Hispanic households are largely due to the retirement benefits and job stability afforded by a union contract,’’ says Misael Galdámez, research analyst for social mobility and economic opportunity at UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

The typical Black union household has more than $100,000 in wealth while the typical non-union Black household has less than $30,000 in wealth, Madland says. Among Hispanic households, the difference is $124,000 as compared to $24,000.

“This is a lot more dollars in people’s pockets and bank accounts that we’re talking about,” he says, adding that those additional resources can fund a child’s college tuition or seed a rainy day fund.

Union members are also more likely to have a pension or other high quality retirement benefit, as well as employer provided health insurance, both pillars of financial security, Madland says.

“Retirement is a key way people accumulate wealth over their lifetime and health insurance is a way to protect the wealth they accumulate so if they go into the hospital they don’t eat into their nest egg as much,” he says.

Unions can also safeguard jobs and provide protections that make workplaces more palatable, Madland says. 

“What unions do for job stability is they provide an avenue for workers to have a discussion about workplace conditions which tends to mean that the environment is better and workers want to stay longer,” Madland says. “And they have protections. The employer can’t just fire them for no reason.”

‘I joined as soon as I was hired’: Black, Hispanic workers benefit from unions, study shows (yahoo.com)

 In 2020, disasters, primarily triggered by weather-related hazards, resulted in 30.7 million forced movements. 

That is more than three times the number prompted by conflict and violence.

 In 2020, disasters, primarily triggered by weather-related hazards, resulted in 30.7 million forced movements. 

That is more than three times the number prompted by conflict and violence.

 

It seems common sense that the more people there are in the world it means fewer resources to go around for everybody else.

If we say that population growth is the main cause of mass starvation and environmental ruin, we play into the hands of the ruling class who wish to divert blame to the victims.

Concentrating on population confuses symptoms with causes while simultaneously validating apologists for the system. Population growth arguments fit in with the ideological needs of the system rather than challenging them and are the primary reason that they receive so much publicity.

It also makes sincere ecologists unintentionally allies with the racists and bigots who seek to make “too many” foreigners the culprits.

It is perfectly admissible for the apologists of capitalism to put the cause of ecological crises on the number of people rather than upon the capitalist system.  

But not to sound crude and crass they resort to a justification a little bit more sophisticated – the carrying capacity of the planet and carbon footprints.

What the argument ignores is there is no environmental reason for people to go hungry, now or in the future.

 There is no need to use any more land to sustain humanity — increasing land productivity using existing technologies can boost global supplies and leave more land for nature.

Improved stewardship could sustain current and anticipated human populations.

The World Socialist Movement speaks of socialism in terms of abundance but our critics claim that human wants are “infinite” and interpret this to mean that socialism will lead to ever-increasing personal consumption, of people consuming more and more material things.

It is not a reference to some orgy of consumption, but simply to the fact that it is technically possible to produce more than enough to satisfy everyone’s material needs, thanks to technology and mass production.

 But yes, socialism will involve an increase in individual consumption for much of the world’s population currently suffering hunger, disease, and slum-housing. 

Some environmentalists say this would exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity and make environmental destruction even worse.

They arrive at a figure for consumption per head, by taking the total then dividing it by the population. But this fails to give a figure for what people consume as, in addition, it includes what industry, the government, and the military consume.

It a grossly misleading to equate consumption per head with personal consumption since it ignores the fact that consumption per head can be reduced without reducing personal consumption and that this is, in fact, compatible with an increase in personal consumption.

What the World Socialist Movement proposes is to eliminate the waste of capitalism, not just of armaments and armies but of all the overhead costs involved in the buying and selling exchange economy involving socially-useless, non-productive activity so drastically reducing consumption per head statistic.

If better survival rates for babies and longer lives for the elderly contribute to “over-population”, what is the eugenic social engineers’ policy going to be? Infanticide and euthanasia?  

 

The world currently produces enough food to feed 10 billion people, and there is not yet 8 billion of us. The world has an abundance of resources and could provide for everyone’s needs.

That is a fact.

The poor suffer hunger – not because resources are scarce, but because they don’t have sufficient money nor own land.

Poverty and inequality cause hunger, not overpopulation.

We are growing, but definitely not at an exponential rate. The rate of population growth is slowing down and actually declining.

 A UN report titled “World Population to 2300” states if European fertility rates fail to rise above current levels:

“The European Union, which has recently expanded to encompass 452-455 million people (according to 2000-2005 figures) would fall by 2300 to only 59 million. About half the countries of Europe would lose 95 per cent or more of their population, and such countries as the Russian Federation and Italy would have only 1 per cent of their population left.” 

In other words, the French, German, Italians and British will virtually cease to exist.

Just to give an idea that it isn’t space itself that is lacking, every man, woman, and child on earth could each have a half-acre of arable land.

It is not a question of the number of people inhabiting our planet. It is a question of the laws of capitalism.

The economic laws prevent food from being transported to where it is needed or distributed to those who are in need.

What if the world’s population was drastically reduced to a few billion? Wouldn’t the forests still be logged to depletion, the pollutants spewed into the water, and greenhouse gases accumulate in the air? These would just happen at a slower pace, not disappear.

 

But what if we used all of our abilities for the betterment of all life instead of using it solely to empower the few at the top?

What if we united not for war and destruction, but for peace and prosperity?

What if we instead used this same potential to create sustainable technologies, beneficial products and harmonious systems that would allow humanity and the earth to thrive?

What if we united as a people stopped complying with capitalist laws and built a beautiful new world?

 The United Nations has estimated that world hunger could be ended for an additional expenditure of $30 billion a year.

 Elon Musk became the first person to attain a net worth of over $300 billion. A year ago his net worth was $115 billion.

 According to Inequality.org, America’s billionaires have a combined net worth of $5.1 trillion, which is a 70 percent increase from their combined net worth of under $3 trillion at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The wealthy class are so emotionally and psychologically stunted that they refuse to end world hunger despite having the ability to easily do so.

We’re talking about a class which could easily put a complete halt to human beings dying of starvation on this planet by simply putting some of their vast fortunes toward making sure everyone gets enough to eat. But they don’t. This same class influences the policies, laws, and large-scale behavior of our species more than any other.

 Imagine if you had seen a video clip of me calmly watching a child drown to death in a swimming pool and doing nothing to help. After watching such footage, would it ever in a million years occur to you that I am someone who should be in charge of the entire world?

I’m going to guess no. I’m going to guess that, in the unlikely event that you ever decided anyone should rule the world, after watching me let a child drown I’d rank somewhere near the very bottom of possible candidates.

Now imagine if instead of letting one child drown, it was millions.

That’s how absolutely insane it is that we allow this class to shape our civilization. And we most certainly do allow them to shape our civilization.

Take Bill Gates. After pledging to give his immense fortune away over a decade ago; his net worth has more than doubled in that time.

Nobody who chooses day-after-day to let millions of people die of starvation has any business making decisions which affect other people, much less decisions which affect everyone. The fact that the billionaire class and its lackeys make this depraved decision day in and day out permanently disqualifies them from any legitimate claim to having the empathy and compassion that would be required for such a job. They are too narcissistic and dysfunctional to be permitted to have any power or influence whatsoever, much less the ungodly amount they wield today.

Billionaires should not exist. They should have their power and wealth taken from them, and the steering wheel of humanity should be given to the ordinary people who are infinitely more qualified to navigate us through the rough waters ahead for our species.

Taken from here

Billionaires Not Morally Qualified to Shape Civilization – Consortiumnews