Friends of the Earth takes counter-productive trade stand

by MC5 

Flattering the national chauvinists in the United $tates who are 
the majority there, the FoE is opposing world trade agreeements 
specifically on the grounds that they undermine U.S. laws that are 
environmental reforms. Such laws can be stricken down by trade 
agreements that hold that they become unfair trade barriers when 
one country has such a standard and another does not.

The FoE never sides with the other country involved in a trade 
dispute with the United $tates. Considering that the United $tates 
is the most polluting country in the world per capita and also in 
a total sense, FoE should reconsider why its top story on 
investment and trade is calling on the United $tates to stop 
pollution in state-capitalist China.(1) It is possible to talk 
about real problems, but always in a one-sided way that fails to 
represent a truthful picture of the world's real environmental 
problems. State-capitalist China and other countries the United 
$tates has trade relations with were a reason that FoE endorsed 
Bill Bradley over Al Gore in the Democratic primaries. Al Gore is 
for free trade with China.

FoE says about the World Trade Organization (WTO), "Since the WTO 
operates by consensus, one country can thwart reforms sought by 
others. Environmentalists worry that China will take a leading 
role in blocking efforts to make the WTO more open and to address 
its effects on the environment."(1)

MIM is not surprised that the same organization that endorsed Al 
Gore and negotiates away non-negotiable survival rights also 
believes China is the leading obstacle to global environmental 
progress. FoE is not a thoroughgoing environmentalist 
organization, just a half-baked excuse for national chauvinism. 
Given the low political level of the membership of the lobbying 
groups for the environment in the United $tates, MIM is not 
surprised.

Last MIM checked, the Gulf War which Gore endorsed and continued 
in the White House, is not good for the environment. MIM also 
learned from World War I and World II how they started over trade 
blocs and such economic irritations between nations before 1914. 
FoE is encouraging the kind of cross-national hatreds that lead to 
wars, a leading cause of environmental devastation, perhaps the 
ultimate possible cause of environmental devastation in this 
nuclear age. It's another reason why only an organization such as 
MIM that places first priority on internationalism and anti-
militarism in the imperialist countries can truly stand up for the 
environment.

FoE's members are too politically undeveloped to know that they 
are heavily influenced by the social-democrats who led the 
European peoples into World War I. They instinctively restrain 
themselves from knowing too much of the political truth for fear 
that it may rock the boat for the self-satisfied middle classes of 
Amerika looking down on countries around the world such as China. 

If FoE wants to help China combat pollution, then FoE should join 
MIM in calling for an abolition of private property. Then China 
can use the most environmentally favorable technologies without 
worrying about whether it can afford to import them -- a situation 
where the answer is often "no" -- even moreso in poorer countries 
such as India or Bangladesh.

FoE says, "Through our Green Investments program, we're working to 
improve the capacity of the global marketplace to foster 
sustainability by taking the environment directly to Wall 
Street."(2) This is not surprising for a middle-class organization 
typical of a movement that has not taken account of whether its 
class status and alliance with imperialist capitalism is fruitful 
for the environment. Rather than go to Wall Street and say that 
production should be organized only in scientific ways beneficial 
to the environment of people -- without regard to profit for 
individuals -- FoE holds that it is possible for individuals to 
place their investment in environmentally responsible 
corporations. FoE dodges the question of whether any investor has 
the right to do otherwise. MIM says no, investors do not have the 
right to undertake production that kills others with unnecessary 
pollution, because we are for the dictatorship of the proletariat, 
which in today's languages means non-negotiable environmental 
survival rights. No lobbyists, paid lawyers, hired pens or other 
lackeys of polluting capitalists should have any say in fooling 
the people or coercing their way to profits. The life and death 
issues concerning the environment must be non-negotiable, but only 
a proletarian movement, the movement of the class with no stake in 
property, has the correct perspective toward this question. The 
middle-classes will instinctively sell environmental issues short, 
in effect compromising with their own propertied status, often in 
the guise of attacks on other countries and classes with a less 
decisive role in pollution.

Notes:

1. http://www.foe.org/international/wto/china.html

2. http://www.foe.org/international/corp_acc/