Environmental Posturing for the 2019 Federal Election

The People Must Not Give Up Their Own
Thinking, Interests and Voice

Climate march in Vancouver, September 8, 2018, demands problems of the environment be resolved in a manner that favours the people and the future of the planet.

"Economists like to argue, about climate change as much as anything else. [...] But on the
biggest issue of all they nod in agreement, whatever their political persuasion. The best
way to tackle climate change, they insist, is through a global carbon tax."
- The Economist, November 28, 2015

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says those who support the carbon tax are pro-environment while those opposed are anti-environment. Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer says those who oppose the carbon tax are pro-people, while those in support of the tax are anti-people. They declare the die is cast, the agenda is set for the 2019 federal election. Let the electoral farce begin!

It is a prime example of how the financial oligarchy and its representatives and media speaks definitively and in doing so it attempts to deprive everyone of the right to take up politics of social responsibility and speak in their own name. Regarding climate change, the ruling elite want everyone to give up their own thinking, interests and voice and divide according to whether they support a global carbon tax or not.

On this issue, the science is persuasive that the world faces an environmental crisis to which human activity has contributed. The problem poses itself as an increasing global average temperature due in part to an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which trap heat. Scientists say human activity plays a role in this rise of temperature. Changes in the economy and way of life must occur to restrict global warming to no more than one and a half degrees centigrade above the level of the year 1850.

The imperialist world has responded not with real solutions but with carbon taxes, carbon credits and allowances traded as derivatives, state subsidies for "green" projects, and other pay-the-rich schemes to entrench the status quo and make the people pay for the problem. The ruling financial oligarchy refuses to own up to the mess it has created with its anti-conscious pursuit of maximum profit at the expense of the working people and social and natural environment. The oligarchs seek to pass the burden of the problems they have created onto the backs of working people and ensure that the control, social wealth, power and class privilege of the ruling elite go unscathed and are even enhanced.

The political representatives of the financial oligarchy within the cartel Party system are attempting to impose environmental posturing as the agenda for the 2019 federal election. The electorate is being forced to line up for or against the Trudeau carbon sales tax. Pundits in the mass media have already announced that this will be the issue on which the people will divide and either vote yes for a Trudeau carbon tax or no with Andrew Scheer's Conservatives.

The Trudeau Liberals and others in the NDP and Green Party are pushing carbon sales taxes in an effort to posture as pro-environment and capture the people's concern about global warming. They proclaim that anyone opposed to carbon sales taxes must be anti-environment. The Scheer Conservatives and Bernier's People's Party say the issue in the federal election is the Trudeau carbon sales tax and declare a vote for them is a vote against increased taxes.

The Saskatchewan and Ontario Conservative Party governments have split with the federal Liberal government and do not want Trudeau telling them what to do. They have launched a constitutional challenge to Trudeau's carbon tax and have united with federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer to defeat Trudeau, the NDP and Greens in the October 2019 federal election.

Is this true? Is this the agenda on which people should participate in the 2019 election and make their vote count? Within this constriction, does this mean that if you are concerned with the state of the natural environment you must be for a carbon sales tax? Or, if you are concerned that another sales tax, carbon or otherwise, imposes yet more hardship on working people, and that pay-the-rich subsidies to green oligarchs drain the public treasury to enrich a few, does this mean that you are against taking action to mitigate climate change?

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is calling on Canadians to make their vote count in 2019 by setting their own aims and agenda, and intervening in events as they unfold in an organized manner. This is achieved by deliberating on the matters at hand, drawing warranted conclusions and taking stands that favour their interests, not the interests of those who have usurped power by force. It is done by building the political unity of the people based on a political vision of a society that serves them. Far from accepting the state of affairs imposed on the people, CPC(M-L) calls on the working people to unite in action, uphold social responsibility, speak in their own name and represent themselves.

The ruling elite frame the problem of environmental degradation and climate change in such a way that the people must bear the burden of increased taxes and in other ways while the class privilege, control and social wealth of the oligarchs are strengthened. This reflects the basic truth that the imperialist oligarchs will not willingly agree to any measure to solve problems that would reduce their expropriation of profit from the value workers produce or weaken their control over their empires and socialized economy.

Human release of carbon into the atmosphere has accelerated with the development of the modern system of industrial mass production. The science and ingenuity that gave rise to this advance can also find solutions to the problem but the motive and outlook to do so must exist within the social class in control. The absence of a motive and outlook to address the problem at its source within the social relations and methods of production and distribution and way of life is found in the fact that the actual producers, the working people, have no control over the political and economic system. Without mass political mobilization and organizing themselves as a coherent force, the working people have no power to bring in a new direction to the economy and solve problems.

This is a real election issue.

This article was published in

Volume 49 Number 2 - January 26, 2019

Article Link:
Environmental Posturing for the 2019 Federal Election: The People Must Not Give Up Their Own Thinking, Interests and Voice

    

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