15 Oct 2012

To tackle both austerity and climate change we need to create an alternative economic logic.

Money needs to be used to fund alternatives to extracting oil. Solutions based on bringing a halt to extraction are always condemned as unrealistic, but they're the only way to stop sawing away at that branch.
Business as usual is rapidly becoming impossible. But simply halting extraction could leave all of us in trouble since we're so dependent on fossil fuels.
We need a just transition, with workplace conversion to create alternatives to the polluting industries.
The present approach, doing little or nothing, leaves future generations with an impossible bill to pick up.
The logic is just the same as with the banking crisis. Here too, short-term thinking and a system based on greed led to disaster in 2008, yet the debts created are being forced on the poorest in the form of austerity cuts.
Do nothing or accelerate the damage until it's too late - then make the rest of us pay for the mistakes of the rich and powerful.
It's an approach that must be challenged across the board.
To tackle both austerity and climate change we need to create an alternative economic logic. There's no contradiction between opposing cuts and protecting the environment. We all need a future that works.
That's why this Saturday October 20 I'll be marching with the Climate Bloc on the TUC demonstration. As the Climate Bloc says: "The climate crisis and the economic crisis have the same root causes in an economy rigged in favour of the richest 1 per cent."
We'll be backing the TUC campaign for a million "green" jobs and from defending indigenous peoples fighting climate change to workers fighting for an alternative to climate chaos we'll be marching for it.
We're meeting at 11am at St Paul's. Please join us.
Derek Wall is international co-ordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales.

MORE HERE 

No comments:

Imperialism Is the Arsonist: Marxism’s Contribution to Ecological Literatures and Struggles

Derek Wall ’s article entitled  Imperialism Is the Arsonist: Marxism’s Contribution to Ecological Literatures and Struggles , argues that Ma...