Systemic Responsibility for the Climate Crisis: Implications for
Sustainable Social Systems and International Development

by Robert Hall

Abstract: Consideration of the climate crisis in relation to
international development naturally raises questions about national
responsibility and the role of social systems in causing the crisis. A
series of key scientific facts is enumerated as the first step in the
attempt to determine national and systemic responsibility for the
dangerously high and ever increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions
that are the primary cause of the current climate change emergency. The
presented facts indicate that the advanced capitalist countries bear
the bulk of the responsibility for high atmospheric concentrations of
greenhouse gases and that systemic responsibility for the climate
crisis lies with the capitalist modeRead More... (http://mltoday.com/2-systemic-responsibility-for-the-climate-crisis)
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an excerpt:

1) Sustainable international development requires mitigation of the
climate crisis and the prevention of future global environmental
crises.

2) Mitigation of the climate crisis and prevention of future
environmental crises requires restoration and maintenance of a healthy
metabolic relationship between nature and human society in perpetuity.

3) The restoration of this metabolic relationship demands that nature
not be treated as a mere collection of commodities or as a dumping
ground for the waste products of the production process.

4) The de-commodification of nature requires an end to commodity and
market fetishism, because fetishism blinds human beings to the
ecological and social significance of their economic activities. It
demands the end of profit maximization as the primary purpose of human
society and restrictions on the law of value.

5) Commodity and market fetishism, profit maximization, and the
unrestricted operation of the law of value are essential components of
capitalism; therefore, ending them requires eliminating global
capitalism and replacing it with a socialist system that elevates
satisfaction of human needs and maintenance of metabolic harmony
between nature and humankind to the status of primary goals of human
civilization.

6) In sum, sustainable international development depends on the
elimination of capitalism and its replacement by a global socialist
civilization. The problem of sustainable international and human
development is linked to the global environmental crisis. The health
and sustainability of the natural environment cannot be maximized
unless nature is decommodified.

Likewise, human development cannot be maximized unless human labor
power is decommodified. Sustainable social and individual development
requires humankind to move beyond a civilization dominated by commodity
production and replace it with one in which production for the
satisfaction of human needs and the needs of the natural environment
take precedence over production for maximum profit.

The decommodification of nature and the decommodification of human
beings are not two separate issues, rather they are two aspects of the
same progressive movement due to the fact that human beings are part of
nature and in no sense separate from it, except in the alienated
misconception of nature prevalent in capitalist thinking and other
unscientific modes of thought.