For decades now, Green Parties in Scandinavia and Western Europe have argued that, although capitalism lifts people out of poverty, it should be replaced with socialism, which they claim is more likely to protect the environment.
Convincing evidence that this is a huge mistake is provided by Dr. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, in his book Is Capitalism Bad For The Environment? He gives irrefutable examples:
- When East Germany was unified with the West, the true impact of its socialist/communist form of government was revealed to outsiders for the first time. Its drinking waters were polluted beyond anything Western nations had experienced, its lakes were dead, and its forests were damaged.
- China’s Three Gorges Dam, on the Yangtze River, is the most destructive engineering project ever built—and it was built under socialist/communist rule. It pollutes everything in its path, submerging 140 towns, 1350 villages, and hundreds of factories. It has displaced 1.2 million people in its 420-mile wake, while releasing vast amounts of toxic waste into its reservoir as well as downstream.
- 40% of China’s rivers are polluted, 55% of the groundwater supplying 200 cities is polluted beyond safe levels.
- China’s severe air pollution blocks enough sunlight to reduce photosynthesis and thereby reduce crop yields. It is estimated that in 2010 there were a total of 8,000 premature deaths from air pollution in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian.
- Deforestation in China has led to the creation of 950 square miles of desert each year.
These socialist environmental calamities are partly a result of a lack of property rights, where no one takes responsibility for the state of the environment. It is also due to the fact that socialism does not create enough wealth to afford the costs of making protection of the environment a high priority. In Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels” (CCR-II-Fossil Fuels), a 780-page report issued last year by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), it is shown “how prosperity makes environmental protection a higher public goal and provides the resources needed to achieve it.” CCR-II-Fossil Fuels continues:
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