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Socialists, whether cloaked in globalist business suits, hippie Marxist garbs, or impious ceremonial cassocks, all cringe at the superiority of capitalism’s performance on ecological and humanitarian matters. There are conflicting scientific viewpoints on all environmental theories, including those that believe in global cooling, global warming, climate change, and even green “sustainability.” These are all theories open for discussion, but only when the debate is at a minimum evidence-based.
Fewer people have died from that the ill side effects of the Industrial Revolution, Capitalism’s offspring, than those who have greatly benefitted from the improvements in global food supplies, potable water access, housing improvement, medical novelties, and overall poverty reduction—all products of the free enterprise system (a/k/a Capitalism). In other words, Capitalism has saved, by geometric proportions, a vaster number of lives by way of its innovative genius in production methodology and subsequent output, than its ideological foe, socialism.
The free enterprise system’s superiority has not been limited to feeding and housing populations, and astoundingly reducing the world’s poverty levels. Capitalism has been better for the environment than socialism. This is something the ongoing 26th UN Conference of Parties (COP26) should take note of. However, they will not.
There is no coincidence that the climate change summit COP26 resembles Socialist International. The conference, postponed from last year due to the Wuhan Virus pandemic, began on October 31 and will last until November 12. Judging from its initiation, agenda and monolithic submission to collectivist ideologies, the COP26 will be a 21st Century adaptation of Communist International, only this one is methodologically choreographed to heed attention to socialism’s ecological front.
Greta Thunberg, a caricature that resembles a fused combination of Mao’s Red Guard and a Hitler Youth, remains the unofficial pinup person in the climate change monologue for the U.N. and revolutionary climate change activists. The environmental fundamentalist is showing signs of her radicalization to the delight of her U.N. and other socialist puppeteers. From her infamous 2019 “How dare you?” rant, Thunberg has now upped the ante by going fully grotesque yelling at Glasgow, “No more exploitation, no more blah blah blah. No more whatever the f**k they’re doing inside there.” So dull is this spectacle, that even President Joe Biden, a card-carrying member of the eco-socialist movement, fell asleep during the diatribes.
Eco-socialism has gone from a fringe radical movement dating back to the 1960s to one of the left’s biggest victories. Incorporating the conflicting theory—which is inspired by Classical Marxism and Neo-Marxism’s Critical Theory deconstruction principle into a speculative ecological narrative—green socialism has made great strides since it extended its hegemony into the cultural production forces (media, Hollywood, Big Tech, academia, law, etc.). Scientific evidence and argument are of secondary concern. Postmodernism, the current intellectual framework of the time, adamantly rejects objective truth. It was to be expected that left-wing ideologues would annihilate the conservation movement, a genuinely conservative enterprise.
If the environment was the real concern, the COP26 conference would take notice of what has worked. In the last 10 years, the United States reached the largest reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in all history. It did this, not through the politicized dictum of socialist bureaucrats, but with the usage of optimal technology in abundant energy resources. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published data that ascertains that emissions have declined in the United States by over 17%, while simultaneously managing to increase energy output. “Almost 800 million tons”, according to Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, have been reduced.
The development of hydraulic fracturing technology (fracking) between 2010-2011 greatly enabled a massive increment in the production of crude oil and natural gas. Shale, fine-grained sedimentary rocks found to be a rich source of natural gas and petroleum, has been viably accessed by way of fracking. This “shale revolution” helped make America energy independent, while this clean energy released lessened the emissions of toxic material into the environment. Since 2007, as per the U.S. Energy Information Agency, shale gas production has increased an astounding 1,876%.
One would think that, given this impressive record, the Biden-Harris administration would get the picture. No, the exact opposite. Instead of paying attention to the empirical evidence and facilitating free markets and capitalistic solutions to environmental maladies, real or perceived, they are promoting agendas consistent with some of those practiced by the world’s biggest historic contaminators, communist regimes such as China and the USSR.
The “Green New Deal”, a disguised eco-socialist mammoth project designed to nullify capitalism as we know it, abridge freedom, and ultimately, overhaul the American republican model, is Biden-Harris’ proposal. The real existential climate “crisis” is the climate of liberty, self-government, and prosperity.
Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.