LIS statement on the environmental disaster in Australia
It's not the weather, It is the system. End capitalism before the end yet. A true environmental catastrophe hits Australia. Since late September, what is known as the "fire season" has become a real hell out of control. The international press and organizations that activate in the country agree that the historical magnitude of the disaster: 6 million hectares scorched by fire and smoke affected area as large as Europe, 23 people dead and more than 200 missing, thousands of homes destroyed and almost 500 millions of dead animals, a true ecocide.
The states of South and Southeast Australians, They are concentrating the population, They are the most affected and evacuees are thousands. The images that travel the world show a similar picture to that of disaster films. Unfortunately what happens in Australia is not science fiction nor, by the way, a "natural phenomenon": we face a new and devastating sample of the abyss to which the imperialist capitalist system is pushing our planet. It is a dramatic new warning to stop this course and turn the page on a new course.
Australia is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita in the world. Its economy is essentially extractive and 6 major 30 firms in the country are related to mining and hydrocarbon production. Coal represents 15% of export earnings. The neoliberal government Scott Morrison has been and remains, even before these brutal evidence, an active Holocaust denier of climate change. Supported by extractive corporations and military cooperation agreements with the US, homophobic and reactionary court, rather than intervening before the fire he has prioritized sporting events seeking to hide the crisis. But the population points out as the main culprit that has reached this point, not only to encourage and to bring the extractive model limits but above all for acting late and inefficiently to the disaster: leanest delay intervention and allocates resources, while in other spending areas indiscriminately.
And it is not only the ruling ruling: all Australian regime is held on the basis of the "consensus of coal". Why liberals and Labor resist the recognition of climate change, or if they do it without change proposals- and they intend to continue the same model that has led to the current disaster. Australia achieved two temperature records 2019, the drying process takes place for ten years and is endangering the main watershed of the country. Its combination with the so-called Indian Ocean Dipole, A similar phenomenon to the "child" of the Pacific, fosters an extended period of heat and drought. But all these "natural" phenomena are exacerbated by the devastating effects of the emission of greenhouse gases that increase the temperature of the planet.
While in Australia there was always fire, what is happening now has to do with new conditions generated by capitalist greed and the accelerated process of global warming. Both, it is accompanied by a growing disinvestment in all areas of control and social support necessary. As noted by fellow Socialist Alternative in Australia in a note published in Red Flag: "Firefighters must comply with pathetic paper masks, while the government donates 12 billion dollars each year to fossil fuel companies (29 billion if indirect subsidies are counted)”. It is where to be found the causes of what is happening in Australia, as well as the recent fires in the Amazon or California, where it burned nearly one million hectares in each zone. It's not about multiple events to chance, but of the consequences of an unfair and predatory system that is putting life in the entire planet at serious risk. From these causes, ways must be sought to begin to reverse this crisis, obviously starting with emergency measures, which in turn must be shackled with substantive action to end once and for all with the capitalist ecocide.
From the International Socialist League (LIS) We support organizations that require response to the government and the State of Australia: the immediate provision of all necessary resources to stop fires and providing relief to the millions of inhabitants, as well as the fauna and flora in danger. To this must end and it all subsidies to corporations and requisarles any useful structure for fire fighting, withdraw all military initiative outside the country and dump all those resources to effective action against disaster.
As applicable rely on the same political institutions that are responsible for what happened, It is key to establish a strict social control over all procedures to ensure that resources are sufficient and arrive on time and where should. At the same time, the international community should support urgent and, instead of feeding various military actions, allocate all the technology and tools available in a broad international campaign to fight fires and stop the catastrophe.
Faced with these situations, all imperialist governments reveal their role as guarantors of the interests of corporations and their absolute inability to ensure the minimum conditions of survival of the planet. In the eyes of millions expose their priorities and their reactionary character, demonstrating clearly that this system, its institutions and parties are outmoded and must be completed before the end yet. Revolutionary maintain an alternative exit: a transition to a different model based on social needs and the harmonious development with the environment, a model deeply democratic and egalitarian where workers and popular masses are the protagonists. This separate system, socialism, It is the only way out of capitalist barbarism.
Since the LIS, with fellow Socialist Alternative Australia, We call environmental organizations, human rights, youth and popular of all countries to put in place an international campaign of solidarity in order to realize these urgent measures against fires in Australia and, on that road, to strengthen ties internationalists needed to advance the structural changes needed.
