When it comes to environmental disasters, who do you generally imagine is responsible?
We generally tend to think of an evil rightwing industrial capitalist with a top hat and monocle. Some lad who looks like the Monopoly man, laughing maniacally and twirling his moustache as his money machine pumps toxic fumes into the upper atmosphere. Right?
That’s what environmentalist groups like Extinction Rebellion say, and that’s generally the image portrayed in the media.
Do we need to replace capitalism to keep Earth liveable?https://t.co/IuXIGIarEw
— Extinction Rebellion Global (@ExtinctionR) October 7, 2021
But stereotypes, as we know, can be misleading.
It would probably surprise most people to know that, when you look at many of the biggest environmental catastrophes in the past century, there’s often a leftwing or Marxist government standing nearby with a petrol can and a box of matches.
Let’s look at just a few major examples.
We hear a lot about Chernobyl as the worst nuclear disaster in human history to date, which is, of course, true. The part we often forgot is that it was a result of Communist incompetence.
In 1986, after a failed experiment and subsequent series of blunders by Soviet scientists, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor core experienced a partial meltdown, resulting in vast amounts of radioactive contamination being launched into the atmosphere and carried around the world by air currents.
Between 50 and 185 million curies of radioactive chemical elements were released into the air – several times more radioactivity than that created by the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs.
Millions of acres of farmland and forest (containing hundreds of thousands of people) were contaminated. For years to come, animals, plants and human beings in the surrounding area were born deformed, and thousands of radiation-induced cancer deaths were experienced.
To this day, the “Chernobyl Exclusion Zone” is an area spanning 30km in diameter, and is uninhabitable by human beings. It is still among the most radioactively contaminated regions on earth, 36 years after the initial catastrophe. Scientists estimate that the area will remain highly radioactive for as long as 20,000 years.
Venezuela is a country that has seen better days.
As a nation which is extremely rich in oil, in 1950 Venezuela was the 4th richest country in the world per capita. Today, after a few decades of socialist governments, they are 159th.
Regardless, President Nicolás Maduro of the United Socialist Party does benefit from the country’s natural oil reserves. It’s just unfortunate that a lot of it also ends up in the ocean.
Between 2020 and 2021, the country’s State-run oil company has caused what Reuters described as “constant oil spills” – at least 9 in the space of 2 years.
This is not evil CIA propaganda spread to discredit the revolution mind you: Venezuela’s main science academy admitted as much. 26,730 barrels of oil spilled into the ocean in just July of last year alone, killing huge amounts of marine life.
“Along the coast, hydrocarbon spills and the discharge of waste by the oil industry happen with greater frequency every day,” said a report from the country’s scientific authority.
The Aral Sea, until relatively recently in historical terms, was the world’s fourth largest lake. That is, until the Soviets got to it. It is now viewed as one of the quintessential examples of ecosystem collapse.
The Soviets, in an attempt to produce more cotton, needed a steady supply of water. And so they built massive irrigation canals which pulled between 20 and 60 cubic kilometres of water out of the lake per year.
Between 1960 and 1987 – just 27 years – the lake’s level dropped by as much as 13 metres, and its area decreased by 40%. Most of the lake’s life was killed, causing a catastrophic domino effect for the surrounding ecosystem. Some believe it even changed the climate of the region, making it more arid and rain less frequently.
The Aral Sea in 1985, 1997 (the year after I first visited), August 2010 and August 2021. 🏜️🇺🇿🇰🇬 Images: NASA pic.twitter.com/utmD2WeP2u
— Spencer Wells (@spwells) March 22, 2022
Today, the lake is a barren husk of what it once was, and has declined by around 80%.
During China’s communist “Great Leap Forward” under Mao Zedong, one of the first actions taken was the Four Pests Campaign from 1958 to 1962.
In short, Mao ordered every Chinese citizen to hunt down any rat, fly, mosquito and sparrow they could get their hands on, and kill them. The goal was to prevent them from eating the State’s food supply to increase yield.
However, this centrally-planned nationwide extermination campaign went so well, that it ended up causing catastrophic ecological imbalance. There was huge deforestation as Chinese pest control cut down trees to force sparrows out of their environment. Locusts, with no sparrows to eat them, started to swarm, ultimately leading to the Great Chinese Famine, which killed up to 55 million people.
Ultimately the government was forced to resort to bizarre measures, such as importing a quarter of a million sparrows from Russia to try to restore some kind of stability to the environment.
We hear that China is a super polluter, which is, of course inarguable. But China is not just another country – China is an explicitly Marxist country, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Marx's Capital was published on September 14, 1867.
In 2018, Xi Jinping spoke on the legacy of Marx on his 200th birthday:
"Marxism is not scholarship to be confined to a study, but rather it was founded so as to change the people’s lot in history."https://t.co/oymVrjMh8v pic.twitter.com/qN28KsYE5m
— Qiao Collective (@qiaocollective) September 14, 2020
https://twitter.com/JoshuaYJackson/status/1474444878918602753
China is also by far the number one worst country on earth for carbon emissions bar none. They produce more CO2 than every other country in the developed world combined.
Report: China emissions exceed all developed nations combined https://t.co/JFgodTyvSF
— BBC Asia (@BBCNewsAsia) May 7, 2021
China’s air pollution is so bad, that the amount of pollutant in the air is six times higher than what the WHO deems to be acceptable limits. Poor air quality is believed to be responsible for over a million Chinese deaths annually.
They are a leader in mercury pollution, buying illegal timber products from criminal logging, and they are the world’s biggest generator of plastic waste. At least 13% of China’s domestic plastic is simply dumped directly into the environment as pollution, which amounts to millions of tonnes per year.
They’re also well known for trading in illegally poached exotic animals like African elephants and white rhinos, resulting in such species being hunted to near extinction, as well as massive overfishing.
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These are just a few small examples – there are many more which could be pointed to.
There are obviously plenty of environmental problems in rightwing countries – and all countries for that matter. Oil spills and the like take place in all kinds of countries and political systems – no question about it.
But at best, all you could say is that the environment is harmed under capitalism, socialism and all other forms of government. Doing away with capitalism would have absolutely no bearing on the state of the planet.
And in fact, one could argue that far-Left socialist governments are more conducive to environmental abuses.
In market economies there is generally regulation of private enterprise. An oil company, for example, knows that if it has a spill, it will not only lose the profits of the lost resources, but be heavily fined, sued, and possibly face criminal prosecution. There are serious consequences for harming the environment.
Take, for example, the BP oil spill in 2010. While undoubtedly a disastrous blunder, the company was severely punished accordingly under law.
In 2012 BP was forced to plead guilty in US court to 14 criminal counts, including manslaughter, obstruction of Congress, as well as violations of the Clean Water Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
They were forced to paid a $4.5 billion dollar criminal penalty – the largest criminal resolution in US history to that point.
They also had to pay out civil settlements to the US Justice Department and Gulf coast states, which totaled over $20 billion. Another $20 billion was paid in damages to companies and individuals harmed by the spill, and around $15 billion was paid n cleanup costs.
In total, you’re looking at over $65 billion in financial ramifications for harming the environment. A devastating loss for any private company.
BP Takes $1.7 Billion Charge on Deepwater Horizon; Costs Now Top $65B | National News | US News https://t.co/eZDW9J0C5s
— Counsel Financial (@AttorneyLending) January 16, 2018
By comparison, take the Venezeula example, where they had years of constant spilling on an ongoing basis.
As Reuters reports:
I’m not aware of a Western oil company that had 9 major spills in 2 years – let alone one that got away with it scott free. Yet Venezuela’s government does all the time.
And therein lies the issue.
When Irish boats over fish according to EU law, we suffer financial penalties.
EU withholds €14m from Ireland over fishing law breachhttps://t.co/00eynJugSI
— Brian Mahon (@_BrianMahon_) September 15, 2020
When a Socialist government like China, or the Soviets, or the Venezuelans, or whoever else harms the environment, who keeps the State in check? Who is there to regulate the government and its behaviour?
What were the consequences for the Soviets draining the Arral Sea? Or when they overfished antarctic sealife? When China dumps plastic in the ocean, who stops them?
When you’ve done away with the concept of private property, and everything is under State ownership, then the State is beholden to nobody but itself. And so there is no deterrent or accountability.
Whether one agrees that Socialism is a cause of environmental malfeasance, one thing is clear: this is definitely not a “capitalism” issue.