 So, yeah, basically, like Scott said, I'll be talking on de-growth and neo-malfusionism. And I think, yeah, this actually is quite a timely talk, even though it kind of appears but maybe the events of 2020 have kind of like overshadowed the climate crisis. But I'd say nothing really overshadows a crisis, which concerns kind of life itself and the future viability of humanity in our planet. Before the pandemic even began, you know, 2020 began with wildfires in Australia, floods in South Asia, and now we're seeing the worst wildfires on record, ravaged the West Coast in America. And millions of people had to evacuate their homes as a result. Photos from the West Coast definitely look like the set of a dystopian film, but this is, in fact, obviously the reality facing humanity in our planet. And therefore, many have drawn the conclusion that something has to be done. So last year, obviously, these people, they really something had to be done. Six million young people from across the globe took part in the climate strike on Fridays for future movement, and it occurred in almost every country on Earth. And it's young people who have put the climate crisis on the order of the day frustrated at the inaction on this question. But it's not, this inaction doesn't stem from a lack of consciousness of the environment. You know, the modern liberal environmental movement, as we know it, gained momentum in the 1970s, and this was the time the question of the climate began to kind of enter general consciousness. Greenpeace was founded in 1971, and it was kind of around this time as well, that the UN began to hold conventions on the environment. Since then, the environmental movement has encompassed many organizations, political leanings and classes, and has attempted to offer solutions to this crisis. But in 40 plus years, nothing has really changed. If we know that anything, the crisis is getting much worse, simply because those responsible have not been fundamentally challenged or gotten rid of. There's been an eclectic mix of solutions proposed, and this ultimately stems from the fact that none of the various trends of the environmental movement can even agree on the root cause of the crisis in the first place. Most mistake basically affect the cause. Believing like climate change stems from too much civilisation, too much industrialisation, individual overconsumption, overpopulation and so on. And at present, the leaders of the movement can't even agree on the cause or a solution, and therefore it remains largely impotent in the face of the task ahead, which might potentially spawn that the energy of millions of young people and workers who want to actually tackle the crisis. And it's therefore the task of all masses and socialists to point the finger squarely at the cause of this crisis and expose the reactionary nature of some of these so-called solutions. And we must challenge the dominant ideas of this movement and be capable of articulating the real socialist alternative. And we must also be part of building the movement of the working class, which is ultimately capable of overfiring capitalism. So kind of one of the ideas that has appeared, or should I say reappeared in the movement, it might not at first be very like obvious in what capacity does the environmental movement of 2020 reflect the ideas of an 18th century economist, Thomas Malthus. But anyone familiar with Malthus' ideas will see remnants of these ideas within certain layers of the environmental movement in his essay on the principle of population. He basically puts forward the theory that population growth is potentially exponential, while the growth of food supply and other resources is linear and therefore limited. So in essence, the earth has a carrying capacity and it's only equipped to handle so many people before we see negative potentially devastating effects. In biology, the carrying capacity is defined as a maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained in that specific environment, given food, habitat, water and other resources available, which seems pretty sensible and logical. And therefore, many people believe that a large global population would lead to hunger and scarce resources. And I think you can see why so many people actually believe that because we see hunger and poverty around us every single day. In 1968, the population bomb by Paul R. Elrich actually brought Malthus' ideas back into vogue, which was obviously around the time that the modern environmental movement started up as well. And basically this work catastrophised further population growth and it actually sold millions of copies. And this book stated that a growth in population was not only related to food insecurity, but also to environmental damage and climate change. And one of the most high profile advocates for this outlook is the esteemed, I guess, a cherished biologist, David Attenborough, who basically believes overpopulation is the main driver of the climate crisis, poverty and hunger as well. And this is a view shared by the World Economic Forum, who believes that the countries with the fastest growing populations are contributing the most to global overshoot. That is, these countries are using resources quicker than they can be replaced. And this logic itself has bled into the environmental movement, and many believe overpopulation is responsible for the overexploitation of Earth's resources and it therefore comes down to a question of our individual consumption and choices. We can choose to consume less and use less of these resources. We can choose to have smaller families. And in many cases, some activists have chosen voluntary childlessness, citing that it's one of the most impactful choices you can make for the environment. And yes, it's true. The population is growing, and it's true that millions around the world go hungry. And the climate crisis actually does lead these people much more vulnerable than ever to food scarcity as extreme weather events actually threaten their food sources. However, at the same time, it's actually been estimated that we produce enough food for 10 billion people. So why then do so many people go hungry? You know, at the beginning of the pandemic, millions of animals were slaughtered in the US. Of course, animals are slaughtered every single day, but they were slaughtered simply because the industry couldn't remain open. Bosses could not ensure the safety of workers, social distancing PPE, while continuing to basically make a profit. So why care for animals which can't be raised and killed for profit, basically? Meanwhile, the demands for food bags in the US doubled over the course of the pandemic, and many of the food bags actually face shortages. And therefore, using ideas, as I just highlighted, can't actually account for these real dynamics of capitalist production. And despite kind of the resurgence of these ideas, they've actually long been disproved. Engels combated what he deemed to be the eternal laws of food or our economics, which hadn't been able to progress past the economic forms of the animal kingdom. According to Malthus, obviously, population is always pressing on the means of subsistence. So as soon as production increases, population increases in the same proportion, and that is the inherent tendency of the population to multiply in excess of the available means of subsistence. I mean, if that was the case, we'd have to admit that the world was overpopulated, even if there was only one person. And Malthus understand that economic laws such as Malthus, i.e., that only a certain population size can be supported by the planet, are not laws of nature, but are themselves historical. They appear and disappear, and Earth's population has increased with a productivity of labor, meaning that Earth's finite resources have been able to be multiplied and shared among a greater population. But this is actually currently being limited by capitalist society, which cannot produce these resources sustainably or share them equitably, as it's really just not profitable to do that. Malthus' theory of overpopulation doesn't reflect an objective and eternal reality, but simply reflects the limits of a modern bourgeois society and is based on a society of class rule and exploitation. Engel summarizes why scarcity will basically continue, no matter the size of the population under capitalism. He says, not enough is being produced. That is the root of the whole matter. But why is not enough being produced? Not because the limits of production have been reached, but because the limits of production are determined not by the number of hungry bellies, but rather the number of purchases with full purses. Visual society has no desire and can have no desire to produce enough. Those impenetrable bellies, the labor which cannot be used for profit, full prey to the mortality figures, and the conclusion is, therefore, always a reactionary one. When there are too many people they have to be disposed of in one way or another. Either they must be killed by violence or they must starve. And in practice, this logic was employed by the British Empire during the Irish famine of the 1840s to basically justify their own action, simply stating that a reduction in population would rid Ireland of its poverty and backwardsness. But Ireland in the 1840s, as with many other countries in the world, which face hunger today, are actually net exporters of food. They do produce enough to feed their own populations, but they don't control or own its distribution. So put simply, we can't just apply the laws of biological look like. So we can't apply the biological laws of an animal society to the question of the climate crisis, such as the concept of a carrying capacity to a human society, which operates not only according to the rules of nature, but also has its own laws, morality, custom and mode of production. Human society is very different to bacteria in a petri dish, owing to our own evolution. And, you know, at a critical point, the bacteria is going to run out resources within the limits of the petri dish and die. However, human society may expand, move beyond its locality. In addition, all of human history has proved our ability to use technological innovation to maximise what we can produce of a given resource. But in bourgeois society, this capacity is limited by bourgeois relations, which leads to an over exploitation of resources rather than using technology and our own knowledge of natural laws to produce according to the needs of ourselves and our planet. And the claim that overpopulation is the root of the crisis is itself a red herring, which simply divides humanity and obscures the role of the bourgeoisie in exploiting these natural resources for profit. But this, you know, malnutritionism is not really the only trend in the environmental movement, nor is it really a popular one, and not everyone really agrees with it. The environmental movement remains kind of split into two camps, which actually cuts across a political divide of left and right. One idea that kind of finds support, both left and right, is this idea of degrowth. And I think, therefore, it kind of needs to be explored in a bit more detail. Degrowth, degrowth origins is not in left wing or socialist politics, but it was actually popularised by the club of Rome, a group of politicians, UN officials and economists. Their first publication, which came out in 1972, the limits of growth is still actually the best selling environmental book of all time. And the conclusion of this book is that the limits to growth on Earth would become evident by 2072. That would lead to a sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. Therefore, to avoid such a scenario, we must save industrial capitalism from itself and its tendency towards environmental destruction in the name of profit. Simulate, you may have heard the phrase uttered by many socialists. There's no infinite growth on a finite planet, which is the cornerstone of degrowth. But this phrase originates not from the ideas of socialism, but from a quote from a liberal economist called Kenneth E. Bolding. However, such critiques, obviously, logically lend themselves to left-wing and anti-capitalist politics. One degrowth organisation describes degrowth as an idea that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation and environmental destruction. The degrowth movement of activists and researchers advocate for societies that prioritise social and ecological wellbeing instead of corporate profits, overproduction and excess consumption. And as such, this idea has been particularly popular with left-wing anti-capitalist leaders of the environmental movement who reject liberal environmentalism and malfusionalism. And they see capitalism as driven by its desire to grow infinitely at all costs. One of these anti-capitalist degrowth advocates is George Mombio, who's a regular contributor to The Guardian, I think people may know him, who basically believes we can't decouple growth and economic catastrophe. He rightly identifies growth as an effect of capital accumulation and that capitalism's attempts at green growth have been ineffective. But ultimately, he believes that any economic growth on a finite planet is doomed to destruction. Similarly, Eric Pino, who's a degrowth anti-capitalist academic, believes that any attempt to solve this contradiction and grow in a more sustainable way using technology will also basically reach a dead end and still result in environmental damage. And I think this is half correct. Many sustainable technologies have been innovated and we still see the climate crisis. But this is not because the technology itself is incapable of creating a means for sustainable growth, but instead because the technology poses a fraught profit-making. In this article from the Economist in 2017, they wrote, the more that green energy is deployed, the more it lowers the price of power from any source. And that makes it hard to transition to a carbon-free future during which many generating technologies, clean and dirty, need to remain profitable with the lights that stay on. And it's because capitalism cannot profitably employ such technology on a large enough scale to tackle the crisis, not because the technology itself is inherently ineffectual. And degrowth ideology, it rightly identifies capitalism as the source of the crisis. But by extension, it concludes that all economic growth, i.e. any increase in production, leads to environmental destruction or catastrophe. And while it's true, capitalism needs to grow because of its tendency towards capital accumulation. It's not motivated by growth. It's solely made motivated by the need for profit. Obviously, we know capital is enhanced by value-forming labour. It can create surplus value, which can then be used to create more capital. It can then therefore not only reproduce itself, but capital can expand and grow and realise even greater profits off the back of that growth. But under capitalism, when profit seems to be made, growth itself will stop and the whole system will enter into crisis, as we're seeing. It's therefore the profit motive, which motivates the accumulation of capital and by extension growth. A desire to grow profits itself is also driven by competition and private ownership. But, you know, that is the cause, profit, and growth is merely the effect and from the standpoint of the catalyst, the only limits there are to production is not the planet's resources, but it's the limits of its own markets. And because production is geared towards an accumulation of capital and not the meeting of our needs, inevitably more is produced than can be consumed by the working class. Capitalism doesn't produce in the first instance for our consumption, but for profit. And that's why capitalism, like capitalist companies, spend millions advertising things to people that they don't want or need. And humans aren't indemnically over consumers, nor do we naturally desire the tons of crap that they churn out. And I think competition between capitalism also drives waste and obsolescence as they try and cut corners to ensure that they can outcompete each other, basically. And I think there's a logical error in identifying growth and not capital accumulation as the cause of the climate crisis. And I think that means that many deep growth advocates, while courting to be anti-capitalists, don't actually believe in a socialist alternative. And many of them actually reject Marxist critique of capitalism. George Monbeau, I think that's how you say it. He does admit that he doesn't at present know of a realistic alternative to capitalism, just that capitalism itself is causing harm to the environment. He instead states, we should identify the best proposals from many different thinkers and shape them into a coherent alternative. And I think this might go some way to explain why there's still so much eclecticism in the environmental movement. One group even believes that in the need to relocalize economies, that is return to feudalism in which production is local and small scale. And by extension, that will reduce our consumption and essentially advocating for a reduction in our living standards. And so without fundamentally facing the ownership and control of production in the hands of workers, socialism, any cause for the growth within the present system would be a promotion of a reduction in living standards, something which the go the working class globally has faced for the last 40 years while climate change has continued to accelerate during the course of the pandemic. Global emissions have only dropped by eight or nine percent, despite a few, sorry, despite a fall in consumer demand and economic collapse. Many of they weren't already have been plunged into poverty. On a capitalist basis, if this trend were continued, we would be able to reduce our emissions by 50 percent by 2030. But this would necessitate plunging billions into deprivation. And that would be the reality of degrowth into capitalism since so many degrowth advocates reject socialism outright and they don't pose a realistic alternative to capitalism. They fall into a trap of believing, ultimately, that existing governments can be convinced to kind of adopt these ideas. But what if, you know, what if capitalist governments were to adopt these ideas? Zero growth or degrowth in a capitalist system is a recession. And it's the working class and the poor who were often made to pay. And in essence, it would be an argument for permanent austerity. So instead of focusing on growth in the abstract and the question of consumption, we need to focus on production, i.e. who owns and controls it. The limits to growth at present are the limits to capitalism. Objective limits are not imposed by our finite planet, but by a socioeconomic system and dominant mode of production in combination with nature. For example, under feudalism, living standards and production were limited by a socioeconomic system based on agriculture and localised production. Capitalism too, sorry, is limiting our ability to progress further. History has proved our ability to harness nature and transform it and transform production as well. But we have yet to harness masses of energy such as we don't even really haven't really even capitalised on solar energy yet, alone energy that we can harness from our solar system because it's not profitable to do so while burning coal is. The real objective limit to growth is that imposed by capitalism. So while many degrowth advocates don't share the view of hardcore primitivists and eco-faches, they share ultimately the idea that there is an objective limit imposed on humanity by nature, that we can't change, which has led some sections of the movement to draw much more reactionary conclusions. These reactionary conclusions stem from seeing resources, production and population as directly proportional to one another. Eco-fascism promotes an idea of deep ecology. That is the only way to preserve life on earth is to drastically, forcefully, if necessary, reduce the human population. But in a catar system, through what means do we reduce population and who even gets to decide how we do that and who's subject to that? When the world's population can control production and can actually plan it, we can become conscious of all aspects of it, including its environmental impact. We could invest in sustainable energy to power production and produce only for need and that would eliminate tons of waste. And we could also eliminate waste in production itself by innovating production. Catars and present can't even do that because any investment in the productive forces is only done on the basis of it being profitable. And there is a future in which living standards can be raised while we also tackle the climate crisis. And we must be clear that it's workers control over production, which will not only tackle this question of the climate, but also ensure that the majority of the world's population don't suffer as a result of such measures. And that any program that is implemented is done with people and planet in mind. Arguably, I'd say both mouth usingism and degrowth, even though that's obviously the subject of this talk, actually do remain on the fringes of the environmental movement. And I'd say it's largely dominated by those still seeking compromise with the establishment hoping that appealing to the moral sense of the bourgeois will basically ensure more realistic and effective change. You know, since the 1970s, we've seen many international protocols and agreements and many in the movement have welcomed these agreements as being an important step forward. And they rightly recognize that any endeavor to tackle the crisis would need to involve global cooperation. How if they kind of remain inadequate in the face of this crisis because they fail to identify the root of the crisis that is capital exploitation of the environment for profit. And they instead rely on the voluntary participation and goodwill of bourgeois states. The UN itself even advocates for a mix of market and non-market approaches in tackling the crisis. So what is clear is that we can't actually rely on bourgeois, on the bourgeois and their governments to tackle this crisis. And calling for international cooperation of these parties is, you know, next to useless in an era of trade wars, protectionism, private property and a global economic downturn. You know, recently we've seen funding for sustainable projects cut in the EU rescue deal, essentially to save the biggest European economies such as France and Germany, which have basically seen their economies shrink by 20% this year. And even if bourgeois governments claim to be green and take measures on the environment, we've seen in many cases that it's simply just a greenwashing of austerity measures. In 2018, as some of you might remember, Emmanuel Macron demonstrated that any capitalist measure to tackle the crisis would be placed onto the shoulders of the working class. He announced that he'd introduced the green fuel tax to discourage the use of personal vehicles. But importantly, there was no major plans to invest in public transport. In Austria, despite being the favoured party of the youth, kind of galvanised by the climate movement, the Greens have entered into a coalition with the Conservative People's Party, which is a racist and pro-austerity party in exchange for some very paltry promises, such as a target of zero emissions by 2040. That's a decade later than the EU's own target. And the leader of Austria's Greens, Werner Kogler, gleefully proclaimed at his PI conference earlier this year that big fat sinking diesel SUVs are going to get more expensive. In exchange, the Greens have agreed to support the People's Party in its plan to ban the Islamic veil and brutalise asylum seekers in addition to other austerity measures. So such collaboration with Conservative and Reactionary forces in exchange for tinkering around the edges will do little to solve this crisis because such green measures in the last instance place the blame on individuals and their choices rather than taking on the big polluters. Big polluters such as BP, which also has a role in kind of deflecting its own responsibility. It's a multinational oil and gas company, as you probably know, but they actually popularise the term carbon footprint and they've encouraged consumers to calculate their own contributions to the climate crisis. Very generously, they've offered tips on how we can reduce our carbon footprint as well. So while they try and pass the blame onto us, they themselves, as we know, cause unimaginable harm to the environment. And we know that they're continuing to expand their activities in oil extraction, not reduce them. And I think it may therefore kind of be tempting to buy from companies which produce environmentally friendly products in the hopes that consumer demand will push the polluters out of business. Companies such as Oakley, you may have heard of it, Oak Milk, has capitalised off the ground for the plant-based consumer who mostly do so for environmental reasons. They claim to strive to produce the most sustainable, responsible products on the market. But they've recently been exposed for having received investment from private equity firms who have also invested in the arms trade and have leased to the deforestation of the Amazon. Oakley has defended its decision to get investment from such characters, claiming we need to speak the language that capital markets can understand. And if Oakley can create super profits, capitalists will be more likely in future to invest in environmentally friendly alternatives, and that will be the source of change. And I think this scandal has clearly shown the link between kind of ethical and eco companies to the same capitalists that exploit the planet for profit. The capitalists have been more than happy to get behind the environmental movement and environmental companies and things in recent years. But this is not out of a genuine concern for the environment, but I think they're kind of seeing the writing on the wall that the majority of the world's population actually really want to do something about climate change. You know, the ruling class went along with young people and praised them, you know, and it basically also drained them of their revolutionary energy. You know, they invited Greta Fumberg to talk on their platform, and she attacked them, and basically they just, you know, they clapped. And, you know, off the back of the movement as well, Fridays for Future, many governments, including the UK, have declared climate emergencies, and it got cross-party support. In Denmark, the majority of the parties also supported a 70% reduction target in emissions as well, and many within the movement have almost claimed this as a victory without really considering if these promises are real or even if they're going to be kept. You know, I just used the example of Denmark. They've excluded from its data emissions from import, export, and air transport and offshore shipping, which counts for 50% of their emissions. And I think this is very much a clear attempt to fleece people. You know, the Climate Act itself only covers a fraction of emissions and openly states that it probably won't reach this target anyway, even though they've cut out loads of contributing factors. They also said that they would use flexible mechanisms and other means to achieve their targets. This essentially is quota manipulation, and obviously we know that changing a number on a page does little to really change anything in the real world. And, you know, green NGOs, charities, organizations through their activism and their historic criticism of these same governments for their inaction, they've actually gained authority within the movement, but have increasingly become kind of an extension of the establishment, and they've gone out of their way to basically marginalize more anti-capitalist and radical voices within the movement. You know, we know Friday's for Future began as a radical spontaneous movement, and it was quickly co-opted by kind of a better organized and established leadership of groups such as Greenpeace. Using the example of Denmark again, the leadership of Friday's for Future, which included a lot of people from Greenpeace. They banned all political flags, banners, symbols, and they banned leafleting. And they basically made the movement apolitical, but that's actually shrunk the movement and has basically, yeah, made it ineffectual. And this has inevitably led to growth of groups such as Extinction Rebellion within the climate movement. And I think that itself reflects some radicalization of the movement, actually, and a frustration with open collaboration with basically the same governments and companies that are responsible for climate change. 30 minutes. So XR very much has a focus on direct action, doing something now telling the truth. And many seeking radical solutions were very much taken in by such rhetoric. In essence, their demands and methods boil down to the same class collaboration with Catalyst and NGOs which they criticize. They say that we must move beyond ideology. They say to unity, beyond division to collaboration on the question of the climate. And they hope that making politicians and companies aware of their impact will force them to support measures which are necessary. And essentially they call for the same deep politicization of the movement as the NGOs do. They even went so far as to distance themselves from a group of activists who held up about socialism or extinction. And essentially they're trying to paper over the class divide, which I think is the most instrumental question of the climate. The line between those who are economically exploited are actually going to suffer from climate change. And the latter who are the capitalists, who are the ones who exploit people and the planet for their own profit and just want to maintain their current way of doing things. But I'd say, yeah, you know. Yeah. And they've also tried to pass the blame on to individuals again, rather than taking, you know, the more structural approach, you know. In their report, Emergency on Planet Earth, they blame not the capitalists for the burning of fossil fuels, but they blame humanity in general believing that the destruction of our environment is somehow endemic to us. And that we're somehow all responsible or play a role in the destruction of our planet. But in truth, we're not responsible for the damage done to our planet. But the only thing we are responsible for is ensuring those who are the capitalists are quickly deprived of the means to exploit the planet and people as soon as possible. Yeah. Sorry. Many people in my experience are quite confused by the presence of Marxists and socialists on climate demonstrations, or just generally in the environmental movement. I remember one of the first youth strikes that I went on. Someone remarked to me, we need to sort out climate change and then worry about socialism. And I think this mainly stems from a misunderstanding rather than hostility because I think the genuine ideas of Marxism have been so distorted and it's been essentially turned into a lifeless dogma basically. But Marx and Engels were extensively on the environment and our relationship to the world around us and can actually offer a clear path forward to achieving harmony between humanity and the environment. Unlike groups such as XR or other radical environmental ideologies, Marxism sees humanity not as antagonistic towards nature or separate from it but as objectively part of the natural world. Marx explained, the man lives on nature. It means that nature is his body and he must remain in continuous interchange if he's not to die. Man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature and that simply means that nature is linked to itself. For man is part of nature. But we don't just live off the direct products of nature. Obviously for a course of evolution we were able to transform the world around us and ourselves and pursue life activity. That is conscious activity to produce our means of subsistence. And that is what separates humans from other animal species and is in turn to help our own evolution. Such activity obviously developed our dexterity, tools and even language. But the appropriation of surplus value in any class society not just capitalism and control of production in private hands by a small minority has actually severed this relationship to the natural world. Labour is objectified and humanity becomes alienated not only from our basic means of survival but our life activity as well. Work. It just becomes a survival for existence rather than the pursuit of activity which helps us gain a greater understanding of the world around us. Natural resources which are once collective comes under the ownership of a small minority who exploit these and human labour for their own benefit and neglect our relation to it. Engles outlines that we by no means rule over nature to the foreign people. We do belong to nature and exist in its midst. All our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. It's taken thousands of years to even gain a primary understanding of production on nature and yet we're kind of unable to even advance beyond this at this moment in time. Engles again outlines all existing modes of production which have been the most immediately and directly useful effect of labour. The further consequences which appear only later and become effective through gradual repetition and accumulation were totally neglected and it's maximisation of surplus which has been valued over how we produce for our needs while minimising our impact on the environment. And class society and I'd say in particular capitalism actually in its inability to understand nature has said that while we've advanced greatly nature is actually now taking its revenge. Through over cultivation deforestation and other practices they've unleashed untold effects on the environment and have disrupted this innate harmony of nature and again because it disrupts nature it disrupts humanity as well. Thanks to the research of many scientists we're actually beginning to understand what regulation and production will be needed to actually begin reversing some of the effects of climate change not even start reversing but just begin to bring it under control. As Engels explains this regulation on its own is not enough it's not enough just to know it it would require a complete revolution in our existing mode of production and a revolution in our whole contemporary social order. And it would require that humanity truly understands the effects of our actions on the environment and that would require every work to be in control of production. When we eliminate profit and private property we can actually use all available means to us to ensure this and further study nature. It's fussing the interests of humanity and the environment to basically rectify our estrangement from not only production but to the world around us. A planned democratic and socialist economy would be the first step in ensuring this. And it's not an inherently green ideology I'll be very honest about that but abolishing private property and implementing democratic ownership of a production would go a long way in beginning to address many environmental questions. Private ownership means that large scale productive forces and natural resources are kind of at the winds of a handful of individuals who themselves only seek to maximise profits and on the grounds of private ownership they can never actually ever be meaningfully challenged. Work is control would basically ensure democrat accountability and that decisions regarding production are made in the interest of everybody and in addition it would remove the basis for private ownership altogether. A socialist economy would not be based on growth or degrowth but on production for need so that all humanity can develop productive forces and enjoy a good standard of life and a good standard of life in term relies on a safe environment green spaces, clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. It would mean freeing science and technology from a profit motive which is so far stifled innovation. In a planned system technology can be utilised and realise its full potential instead of being funded by big multinational and fossil fuel companies it could be publicly funded and you know we can start bringing these big energy monopolies into workers control and that can actually be the first step in actually phasing them out. We can undertake a programme of social house building and also improving the houses that people already live in. Bring transport back into public ownership say back it's not really ever been publicly owned but a free public transport system which is coordinated and integrated so people wouldn't need to rely on personal vehicles and depending on how long this goes on could maybe also social distance as well. And we could put all natural resources including lands, mines, rivers, forests under workers ownership and democratic control and basically kick out the people at the top who basically use it and destroy it for profit. And while socialism has not historically been an environmental movement a harmonious development between humanity and nature is only possible on the basis of a conscious socialist plan and with a consciousness of the effects of human activity on the world around us. In 1976 the Lucas plan showed the creativity of the working class in dealing with such crisis. It combined the best scientists, the skills of workers and basically demonstrated how democratic workers control basically could use technology that already exists that's being used in the arms industry and it can basically be repurposed for renewable technology and healthcare equipment and that was in 1976 you know, I'm sure at least some things have developed since then and I think such creativity could basically be replicated across all industries and workplaces but I think, yeah you know, but this is only possible once the means of production are taken away from the capitalist and I think Marxism therefore unlike other ideologies gives a really clear explanation of how we've gotten to this point but I think it also ultimately proves a route out of it a wise man once said that all history is that of class struggle all previous socioeconomic systems have been brought down in class struggle and capitalism won't be any different to overcome class society it's necessary for the working class the largest and most powerful class in history to go through it this would mean abandoning the confused tendencies of the environmental movement which kind of remain a hodgepodge of ideas solutions, egos and kind of replace frivolous actions such as mass arrests and stunts and replace them with methods of class struggle of the workers and oppressed layers of society that would be mass militant protests strikes occupations organized and led by the working class armed with a political program which would ultimately aim to put them in control of the economy and make way for rational economic planning the leadership of both the labour and the environmental movement have actually failed to ever make this link environmental groups such as XR and Greenpeace they're basically their whole thing is to raise awareness basically by just gaining media attention and that often just results in them performing stunts essentially for example they wanted to fly in drones into Heathrow airport basically to force it to close but actually at the same time union members in the airport were balloting for strike action and you know a strike of these workers would have been far more effective in paralyzing the airport actually not only bring attention to the question of the environment but raise the consciousness and confidence of workers all across the UK and the world potentially and that would be far more effective than the antics of a few flying drones and you know we defend the right of such groups to protest and that's recently actually come under attack from the Tories but we maintain that such movements will remain ineffectual until it takes on a mass general character that not only seeks to address the climate question but also major questions facing humanity such as housing, poverty, food and education and it's therefore the task of all socialists to root out all Malfusionism and reactionary ideas from this movement and instead give it a socialist consciousness the key question has and it will always be that production who controls it owns it and what is produced the conclusion of that is that we can't control what we don't own we can't hope to ever reign in the current excesses of production if we don't ever have a say in it if groups such as XR would like to see the public have a great assay over decision making as it advocates for and as the citizens it would need to consider why those in power are there in the first place and who they represent you know these politicians they don't vote down environmental policy because they're morally bankrupt although many of them are but they represent the interests of capital which remains antagonistic to the majority of the planet's population you know movements of workers and young people are on the rise and it's crucial that the militancy of these movements be channeled into a common struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and class society which simultaneously exploits workers and the environment it will only be with a socialist transformation of society that we can satisfy the needs of the majority in harmony with the environment instead of generating profit for a small minority the scientific knowledge and technology exist to deal with climate change and a lot of people know what needs to be done but under capitalism these forces are destroying the planet and they're not saving it and therefore it's socialism or extinction and that is the future before us