Capitalism and Ecology - I-
The capitalism and the wild destruction of the environment
It is in the third world that the capitalism shows itself the more rough. In rich countries some measures had been taken to lower the effects namely polluting.
Rich states indeed have passed a certain number of laws because the bourgeois want to protect themselves and because it exist more means and more democratic forms.
But there are no limits in the harmful development of the capitalism in poor countries.
Natural catastrophes?
Earthquakes, cyclones,vulcanoes eruptions, droughts, floods, in Latin America, in Africa or in Asia, are reported as natural catstrophes and that's most of the time a lie.
A lie in the way that hurricenes are indeed natural but the disasters ccoming from aren't from nature alone. The poor cooountries population is is more vulnerable to such disasters than the rich countries population., its vulnerability is linked to poverty and inequalities.
An earthquake consequences aren't the same for californians for exemple than for the dwellers of Mexico.
In the Third World countries - the most vulnerable and the most exposed- to a point that they permanently live in a catastrophe context. Third World people are forced- because they have no choice- to settle on insalubrious grounds, on a slope, prone to landslides like the "favelas" of South America.
The capitalism and the forests destructions
Today the forest destruction is denounced the envirionment champions because of the possible consequences on the climate. During the 1980's , 17 millions hectares have disappeared every year. In the Ivory Coast 75% of the forests surface have disappeared in 30 years.
This phenomenon alarms the officials, the UN, talk about "planet stake".
They didn't say anything though when the american army destroyed -with its defoliants- 42% of the vietnamese forests in the south of the 17 parallel.
They also pretend to ignore that african, asian, and latin american forests have been mainly destroyed for the single-crop farming needs imposed by the colonisators then by the imperialism and intended -like the tea, the cocoa,or the hevea- to the exportation. If Brazil for exemple has lost half its forests surface compared to before the european colonisation that's because the coffee tree cultivation had been extended during the XIX century.
They equally ignore ,today, the timber commerce in the hands of big capitalist compagnies is at the 5th rank in the international commerce, the timber consumption coming from tropical forests have developed since the last war, because it cost less than the temperate forests timber.
Forests are exploited in an intensive mode which aims only at profit at short term and this is destructive : Trees are cut faster than it is possible for the others to grow to replace them.
The Amazonian forest is the most known case ; what did happen?
In the 60's, through the pretext to favor the colonization of the landless little peasants, the brazilian governments had roads done. In reality only a part of the Amazonian ground can serve for the agriculture. It was a failure. Waste? Depends for who. Authorities very quickly have decided to alter the forest , treated with defoliants , in pasturage, by sowing some artificial meadows and by installing some bovine cattle ranches. The great profiteers only had to pay derisory sums for huge surfaces. The meat produced is exported toward the Northern America...
We are not surprised thus that the money for the work had been "lended" by the World Bank, the American State Department, etc...which has added tooo the foreign public debt of Brazil, and making rich the big agro-business compagnies and the bankers.
This "development" of the Amazonia have costed the life of nearly all the Indians who lived there ; murdered like ecologist militant Chico Mendes by contract killers working for big land interests, or decimated by the illnesses brought by these disruptions.
The Amazonia destruction had been a totally deliberate unndertaking. In Central America too; the quarter of the forests had been destroyed to produce bovine meat for the exportation.
Manipulations:
The responsibles of the "hole" in the ozone layer; in 1985 and in the following years we were told that it was because of the gas used in the refrigeration industry, the chloro-fluoro-carbon or CFC , when in fact the CFC patents were going to fall into the public sector, and the world leader, Du Pont De Nemours, had prepared for years subsittutes and took their patents. In 1986, Du Pont joined the idea of the controlled CFC production, but the ozone layer had nothing to do with that !
The international protocol was signed in Montreal in 1987, limitating with several steps the CFC production. It was a trusts agreement for the powerful people like the capitalism always do. Its implementation was financed and controlled mainly by the World Bank and some leader directly associated with the chimical industry. It was presented as a great ecologic success, an event, because it pretended to manage for the first time a planet wide risk presumption !
Talking about the "global pollution" and of "global" responsibility of the humanity is of course a means to avoid the capitalists responsibility, even to accuse the poor countries.
These poors , we are told, are so numerous that they destroy the tropical forests and that they pollute the earth atmosphere because of their dirty coal cunsumption. Poor countries aren't explicitly accused , they rather the "North" and the "South" .
How explainig the over population theory still maintains today ? The UN demographers forecasted not so long ago a world population of 12 billions for 2000, in other words the double of the present number, they today forecast 8 billions in 2050 then it will start to go down.
But nothing avoids the threat of food-producing shortage or an "food crisis" to show up periodically. We can be skeptic and remember the oil "shortage"in 1973 to make the prices rise. Today the gas and oil stocks estimations are higher than ever.
The "oil crisis" in the same way that we are talking about about the "food crisis" hides some political or commercial manoeuvres.