The capitalist system has introduced dramatic disturbances in the relationship between Humanity and Nature
The greedy exploitation of natural resources and of man by man, and the lightheaded deregulation and liberalizing policies associated with global commerce, based on increasingly irrational material and energy flows have intensified the confrontation with the limits of the environment. Therefore, the worsening of natural disasters is another element of capitalism’s structural crisis.
We know capitalism is not green, but we also know that it will not topple unless it is pushed.
Which also demands a struggle for immediate objectives that create a shift in environmental policy.
An environmental policy that preserves the balance of Nature and its ecological systems, respecting the “precautionary principle” in the face of new threats and problems, to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change and guarantee the democratization of access and fruition of Nature, fighting against the commodification of the environment and its ideological and political instrumentalization by big capital. A policy that guarantees the reinforcement of State resources and structures to develop a true policy to ensure the conservation and regeneration of Nature, ensuring a democratic management of Protected Areas.
We are also aware that it is hard to tell apart the differences between policies from successive PS, PSD and CDS governments regarding climate.
Financialization and commoditization are their mottoes. In order to open up new business areas and guarantee profits.
PS promoted the enactment of “green financial products”, “attractive to citizens wanting to invest their savings”, the PSD/CDS minister announced the handing of the management of Climate Fund to people from the “area of fund management.”
We are aware that making climate policies depend on market-based instruments will always be a dangerous and false solution.
Market mechanisms will aim, firstly, to ensure financial interests and never environmental safeguard.
It is essential to reject old and new ways of appropriating natural resources and processes of energy, and technological transition driven by the interests of big capital.
It is fundamental to recognize that every country and all peoples have their own right to produce and have sovereignty over essential sectors, such as food production. The struggle to preserve Nature and Environment is necessarily against war, which implies the denouncement of imperialism and its role in the arms race, as well as rejecting the promotion of a “war economy.”
Clear policies are urgently needed to adapt to climate change’s effects, which implies investment in scientific research, preventing the effects of heat waves, preventing pests, diseases and invasive species, protecting the coastal zone, protection against floods, as well as adapting urban areas, namely with the integration of the concept of adaptability into urban planning policies.
Intensifying efforts to mitigate climate change are needed, namely by lowering greenhouse gas emissions, which requires another climate policy in our country, by reinforcing human and material means of public management structures and climate monitoring, encouraging public control over strategic sectors, promoting public transportation and replacing individual means of transport, valuing local production and consumption and implementing measures to shorten and rationalize production and distribution chains, as well as ensuring Rational Use of Energy and raising energy efficiency, through the promotion of public domain energy alternatives, in which renewable energy favors collective interests instead of energy business sector interests.
Guaranteeing also public control over water and sanitation services, by deepening policies to reduce waste and planned obsolescence. Developing a water resource policy that, based on a new Water Law, can guarantee its use as an inalienable right of the population, that preserves and deepens its public management and prevents its commodification and a waste policy that favors reduction and promotes recycling and reutilization, by enacting public-based, rational and integrated waste solutions, based on the interests of the population and evaluation of its environmental impacts.
Comrades,
Faced with severe environmental problems, they want to convince us that only by opening up new business opportunities will these problems be solved.
We reaffirm. Capitalism is not green! We must save Nature, not capitalism!
Long live the Portuguese Communist Party!
