There are many young people who, with their creative and expressive contribution to the fight in defense of the environment, as in the demonstration on the 12th of November in Lisbon, know that capitalism is not green.
As much as capital tries to whitewash the incompatibility of the capitalist mode of production with the promotion of environmental balance, a system that sacrifices resources, exploits the peoples of the world and artificially creates new needs and business areas, all to increase the profits of a tiny minority, is not and will never be green.
The environmental problems are real and serious, however it is not enough to identify this reality, it is necessary to denounce the false solutions that only intend to revitalize profit rates and capital accumulation in the face of the deepening of the structural crisis of capitalism.
Capital decision-making centers do everything to hide their responsibilities for environmental degradation, a strategy that includes yet another United Nations Summit on Climate Change, COP 27, in Egypt.
They develop financing schemes, such as those set out in the COP, which put developing countries in debt and deliver bulky subsidies to large economic groups, invest in individual accountability, tax individual behavior and develop new/old ways of appropriating natural resources.
They do everything to spread the message that countries and peoples all have equal responsibility, as if the 100 largest economic groups were not responsible for 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions, as if, per capita, the USA emit twice as much GHG as China and eight times as much as India.
This is not a conflict between a global north and south, nor a generational conflict, narratives that, by putting victims and culprits in the same bag, exploiters and exploited, only serve to discredit those who profit from attacks on the environment, big business.
Environmental problems cannot be solved by increasing the consumption of so-called green products or reducing certain products, regardless of the production system used.
Capitalism, more or less “fossil”, is capitalism, for which sustainability or the defense of the collective interests of humanity will always be unknown and therefore the extreme needs of so many contrast with tons of goods wasted every day.
Green products, green consumption or green technologies are false solutions. The greenest of technologies and even the recycling and waste management industries, in a logic of profit, instead of contributing to ecological sustainability, serve to create new vehicles for accumulating value, through new energy expenditure and of materials, thus becoming a constitutive part of the problem.
Green taxes, carbon taxes, Green Taxation, advances the financialization of the environment, while workers and peoples are penalized, accentuating the contradiction between the time of nature and the time of capital and not contributing to alleviate or solve environmental problems.
A different policy is needed, and in the case of Portugal a shift in environmental policy is needed.
A policy that defends national and local production, the only way to reduce consumption cycles and eliminate unnecessary pollution resulting from transport and packaging.
That combats planned obsolescence, the introduction by companies of characteristics that deliberately cause a shorter shelf life of devices than technology and materials would allow.
That rejects militarism, war and the arms industry, responsible not only for the most brutal atrocities against the youth and peoples of the world, but also for the devastation of ecosystems and the destruction of resources and heritage (the US army alone emits more GHG than than 140 countries).
That it denounces that paying to pollute is not a solution, on the contrary, it benefits the large economic groups that can continue to pollute and even speculate with emission licenses.
One of the measures with the greatest environmental impact in recent years was the achievement of the social pass at a reduced price, achieved through a proposal by the PCP, reducing emissions from individual transport. It is urgent to go further with more offer, timetables and quality in public transport, and even aim at its being free as a way of defending the environment and guaranteeing everyone’s right to mobility.
Political alternative that gains more strength with the organized struggle, with emphasis on the youth struggle, which has taken the lead in this fight.
A fight that cannot be based on fear and catastrophic, immobilizing and irrational speeches, but on the confidence that a better world is possible, of harmony between human beings and nature.
Struggle around concrete problems of our people. It is not necessary to change hemispheres to find aggressions to the environment. The pollution of the Sorraia and Almonda rivers, in the district of Santarém, the abandonment of the Pinhal de Leiria after the tragic fires of 2017 or the dominance of intensive agriculture in the Alentejo are examples of problems that are not alien to the population. It is in defense of its interests and with its organized force that it will be possible to initiate the necessary transformations.
The texts in this section reflect the personal opinion of the authors. They do not represent the VISION or reflect its editorial position.