Workshop condemns imperialist devastation of the environment PCAIG Conference, LOS ANGELES -- A MIM supporter was a featured speaker at a workshop here on multi-national corporations and the environment. Cesar Taguba from BAYAN-International was the other featured speaker. The workshop focussed on how imperialism destroys the environment and the implications for the masses. In the Philippines, for example, toxins left behind by the u.$. military have already begun to harm people living near the old u.$. military bases. The true extent of the harm is unknown at this time, because the united $tates and the puppet Philippine government will not fund the necessary studies. What we do know is largely the result of canvassing by activist volunteers. Recent pro-imperialist structural adjustment programs opened up the Philippine mining industry to foreign monopoly firms. Aside from selling off the country's natural resources -- foreign mining firms have exclusive mining rights in as much as 2/3 of some provinces -- the programs relaxed environmental restrictions. Several mining disasters have followed. One forced the evacuation of 1,200 residents and caused sickness in over 150 people.(1) Workshop participants noted that environmental devastation is built into imperialism -- and capitalism generally. Capitalism places profit before the needs of the masses. There is no long term planning under capitalism which is not tainted by the profit motive. Long-term, broad consequences of strip mining, deforestation, and pollution can't enter into capitalists short- term, narrow profit calculations. The unequal distribution of resources characteristic of imperialism also prevents those most affected by environmental destruction -- the colonies and neo- colonies -- from solving their own problems. Thus, the environment is not a supra-class issue. Unchecked environmental destruction may indeed spell the end of the entire humyn race, but the only way to prevent this is to overthrow imperialism and capitalism. Participants agreed that we -- anti- imperialists, socialists, and communists -- need to make the environment ITAL our END issue. Many people in the imperialist countries are angry about environmental problems. We need to raise their consciousness of the class and national issues involved, lest they seek false solutions which preserve a self-indulgent, clean-environment faŤade at home, while continuing to dump millions of tons of hazardous waste in the oppressed nations. Such chauvinist policies will fail even for the people in the imperialist countries, as environmental devastation does not recognize political borders. Participants also refuted the Malthusian lie that overpopulation causes resource scarcity and environmental destruction. The problem is not absolute scarcity, rather how resources are distributed. Cesar Taguba correctly turned the Malthusian shibboleth on its head: Population is not a liability, it's an asset. Do oppressed nations have to wait for imperialist monetary and technical aid to clean up their environments? No! These problems could be solved in relatively short order if the masses were allowed to mobilize to meet their own needs. The alternative to imperialist environmental destruction is liberation for the oppressed nations, self-reliant development, and socialism. Under socialism, the Chinese were able to unleash the creativity of the masses to solve problems in sustainable agriculture, industrial waste management, and so on.(2) Overthrowing Amerikan imperialism will eliminate the greatest enemy of the world's peoples, and it will free up massive resources for reparations and aid. ITAL For more on the Maoist approach to environmental problems, see MIM Theory 12, which contains the important essays "On Capitalism and the Environment" by MIM and "On the Issue of the Environment in the World and in the Philippines" by the Communist Party of the Philippines. END Notes: 1. MIM Notes 118, 15 Jul 1996. 2. See ITAL Science Walks on Two Legs END (available for $5) or essays by Chinese revolutionaries at http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/classics.html.