Capitalism is an extinction cult

On Trump’s first day in office he signed an executive order - “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” - allowing exemptions to the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act to expedite fossil fuel production and other extractive industries. While these laws were not perfect, they did put limits on industrial impacts on the environment. But with an erratic scrawl of his pen, Trump has preserved the right of corporations to profit from burning fossil fuels - and to push more and more species to the brink of extinction. Including human beings.

 

Trump Nation?

 

Trump is not alone in his drive to extinction. Doug Ford’s new government won a tepid election by claiming to protect Ontario from Trump’s attacks. But who will protect Indigenous peoples, endangered species and workers from the Ontario government?

 

At the opening of the Ontario legislature, the government tabled Bill 5 - the “Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act.” This allows the cabinet to declare “special economic zones” where laws that protect Indigenous rights, worker safety, and endangered species would no longer apply. All in the interest of fast tracking economic development.

 

With the stoke of a pen, considerations for the redside dace, a tiny minnow endangered by industrial developments like Highway 413, will no longer be protected. The concerns raised by the Land Defense Alliance of First Nations over “critical mineral” mining on their traditional lands in Treaty 9 territory would be swept aside, as well as safety concerns for workers. The burying of nuclear waste at Chalk River and another site near Dryden, Ontario could go ahead despite widespread resistance. This also allows housing developments on Green Belt land to be opened up again, despite the victory won by grassroots movements across the province against Bill 23.

 

Ford’s Tory government is also weakening provincial laws that protect endangered species. They are changing the definition of habitat from “an area on which the species depends, directly or indirectly, to carry on its life processes, including ... reproduction, rearing, hibernation, migration or feeding” to “a den, nest or other similar place, that is occupied ... for the purposes of breeding, rearing, staging, wintering or hibernating.” Only Ford’s cabinet understands how species can survive without migrating or feeding!

 

Carney and Poilievre’s extinction duet

 

Trump and Ford are not alone in their drive to extinction. During the federal election campaign, both Carney and Poilievre called for fast tracking developments deemed in the “national interest.” These include new oil and gas pipelines, mining projects, and other industrial developments.

 

Competing nationalisms are helping to drive the process and, once again, Indigenous Land Defenders will be tasked with slowing the destruction. It is urgent that we build solidarity with Land Defenders struggles. 

 

The so-called “red tape” that all these measures seek to remove are regulations and rights that have been won by struggle. The right to “free, prior and informed consent” enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples only exists because of global coordination of Indigenous struggles worldwide. Environmental regulations only exist because of struggles by environmental campaigners. Labour regulations only exist because of workers’ struggles.

 

The enemy is capitalism

 

We are in the fight of our lives and the fight for the web of life within which humanity exists.

 

The enemy is capitalism and its agents - the Trumps, Fords, and Carneys - who would drain the planet’s life force to the dregs for the sake of profit for a tiny minority.