From a post about the Scottish Socialist Party.
The reality is, as the SSP argues, that you need to be red to be green. In other words, only a challenge to planet-trashing corporate power can lay the basis for green collective solutions on issues such as energy supply, public transport, health and housing.
Precisely. The underlying economic structures are what need to change. Then environmental issues can be seriously dealt with and fixed. As long as short-sighted corporate greed (backed by governmental power) is allowed to be the primary economic force, then attempts at remediating environmental problems like global warming will be piecemeal and mostly ineffective.
The self-interest of private corporations should not be allowed to trump the interests of the population as a whole. In a socialist system, corporations do not dominate the agenda and the short-term focus on profit is absent. Once that happens, then you really can work towards reversing global warming. Global problems require global solutions.
Playing devil’s advocate, from what I’ve read the environmental records of the USSR, Eastern Europe, or China are hardly models for a greener world. China is currently building lots of coal-burning power plants, and I believe their air and water are currently far dirtier than ours. And I disagree about the global solutions; globalization is a big part of the problem. Local economies, using local resources and local labor, use far less energy.
Yet the solution has to be global, else capitalism will simply move the polluting whatevers to another area with less rules or more easily bribed.