Working Class Environmentalism

This piece was written in January 2007 in a Facts for Working People Issue. I thought it was relevant to post seeing as how companies that drop bombs and make poison are now "Going Green". Say anything to trick the workers! Some workers are discouraged from environmental politics because some of the movement ( publicized by teh media) seems anti-working class. still we workers have a stake in this planet and hopefully this Environmental Issue addresses it.


Our Alternative for the Environment
End Capitalism’s poverty and earth-destroying policies
End poverty

A democratic socialist world could:

-Immediately end unemployment
-Immediately cut work week to 30 hours
-End world Hunger within 3 months
-Establish healthcare for all people of
the world within 6 months
-Provide housing for all within 1 year

Everybody in the world could have access to clean water, food, housing, health care and education for $80 billion per year, according to the UN. The world’s seven richest people have $1.54 trillion between them. We believe in ending the private ownership of the world’s biggest corporations and developing systems of energy and goods production, housing, and transportation to end worldwide poverty and global warming. Agriculture and Food Production

-Promote local, organic food production to decrease
wasteful cross-continent and cross-hemisphere shipping.
-End the environmentally damaging practices of factory farms, mass cattle production, genetically modified foods, and use of pesticides and hormones in food production.
-Increase wages and workforce on farms to offset the increased labor needed to produce healthy, organically grown food.
-Increase focus on organic community gardens to provide fresh, healthy, and local produce.

Pollution
-Making many of the discussed changes would significantly decrease overall ongoing pollution.
-Put resources into environmental cleanup.
-Focus on eliminating the need for landfills by using recyclable materials and implementing mass scale composting and recycling programs.
-Establish community-based libraries and circulation centers for things such as furniture, household items, tools, clothes and toys.

Transport
-Create an efficient mass transit infrastructure of buses, trains, subways,and boats that provides
people with a feasible alternative to driving.
-Give the public free access to this system, making private cars less
desirable.

Water
-Emphasis on clean and renewable water sources.
-Develop infrastructure to provide a safe water supply where needed.
-Prohibit new development in areas without the water to support it.
-Eliminate unnecessary water uses and focus on recycling water as much as possible.
-Turn residential lawns into vegetable gardens and use household runoff water for watering
-Provide housing with the ability to catch and use rainwater.

Housing
-Base new housing development on society’s needs and not on market speculation.
-Reshape existing communities for more collective living by adding shared public space including community kitchens and laundries.
-Provide good affordable housing for all.
-Increase housing density in areas near where people work,
-Provide access to well planned outdoor community space and community gardens.
-Develop a system of stores to distribute goods and services within communities and reclaim land currently used for shopping malls and parking lots for open space and
other community resources.

Energy
-Take complete public control of the energy industry to develop cleaner power resources and distribute energy to the public without profits.
-Investigate and further develop solar, wind, tidal and renewable alternative energy sources
-End the corporate-driven disposable culture that makes it more expensiveto fix many things than to buy new ones.
-Focus on decreasing overall energy

Socialism
A democratic socialist plan of production and conservation under the control of working people would immediately unleash the creative talents, energy and skills necessary for ecological repair and an end to poverty.