Resistance!

A satirical group of Wollongong “billionaires” and representatives of the fossil fuel industry gathered in the city centre on June 10 for a “Stand up for Big Polluters” rally. They demanded “profits before people and the planet”.

Green Left Weekly’s Chris Peterson spoke to Indian student and Resistance activist Ajay Kumar who took part in the 5000-strong anti-racist protest in Melbourne on May 31.

In a time of climate crisis, logic dictates we should be cutting carbon pollution and ending our reliance on burning coal for energy. Yet the opposite is happening in Australia.

We all know about the government and big business’s so-called “solutions” to the climate change crisis: “clean” coal, carbon trading schemes, etc. But what are some real world solutions to the climate crisis and what real action is being taken?

On May 4, Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) head Don Henry said: “We have achieved a significant step forward on climate change.” The achievement was convincing the federal Labor government to merely consider adopting a target of a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

The climate is changing faster than we thought. Changes we believed would happen in 100 are starting to happen now.

The federal Labor government wants to introduce its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), otherwise known as the emissions trading scheme, in July 2011.

In Australia and the rest of the capitalist world, production is decided by privately owned businesses on the basis of the “profit motive”. That is, companies decide what and how much is produced based on what will achieve the greatest profit and consequently the most money for the company owners.

“Climate change has placed all humankind before a great choice: to continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path of harmony with nature.”

The threat of climate change means that for the first time humanity is faced with the very real possibility of extinction. The root cause of the ecological crisis is capitalism’s drive to maximise immediate profits above all else.

The Australian government and coal industry’s push for so-called “clean coal” technology is justified on the grounds that if we can keep burning and selling coal, but in a “sustainable” way, many Australian jobs will be saved. This is pure propaganda.

Scientific agreement on the need for drastic action to combat climate change has prompted the search for ways to ease humanity’s increasing burden on the planet, including consideration of population growth and consumption habits.