Latin America is once again demonstrating the social
poison of “democratic socialism,” the ideology that won Bernie Sanders more
than 13 million votes in the Democratic primaries. Socialism –
democratic or otherwise – is not only destructive of a nation’s economy, as
history proved over and over again during the twentieth century; it is also
ecological poison. After the worldwide collapse of socialism in the
late 1980s/early 1990s, we got a first look at what a country’s environment
under a socialist system that banned private profit-making for decades looked
like. In a word, it was a catastrophe, as described in books with
titles like “Ecocide in the U.S.S. R.”
The world learned that the socialist countries dumped
untreated sewage into their rivers, streams, and lakes for decades; the Volga
River in Russia was so polluted that boat were equipped with signs warning
against throwing cigarettes in the water for fear the chemical-laden water
would catch fire; factories had no pollution controls whatsoever; massive
fish kills were routine; and the Polish Academy of Sciences reported that by
the early 1990s one-third of the Polish people lived in areas of “ecological
disaster.”
The old theory that the pursuit of profit in an unregulated
economy is the root cause of pollution was shattered. Unlike capitalist
countries that hold polluters legally responsible for the damage they cause
to others, in socialist countries politicians who are responsible for
polluting nationalized industries bear little or no responsibility for it.
Government ownership of natural resources means, in effect, no one owns
them, and when resources are all one big commons they are inevitably
overused, abused, and exploited. The absence of property rights and a
sound liability law system is a recipe for ecological disaster, as all
socialist countries have proven and continue to prove.
When a horrible accident created a deadly oil platform
explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, privately-owned British Petroleum
immediately created a $20 billion fund that it knew it would need for payment
of damages. In contrast, when the Mexican government creates far worse
environmental and human disasters in the Gulf of Mexico it routinely does
nothing by claiming “sovereign immunity.” In the first five months of
2015 alone Pemex, the Mexican nationalized oil company, caused three
catastrophic oil rig explosions that resulted in several deaths, numerous
injuries to platform workers, and air and water pollution. The
Mexican government incredibly claimed that there were no oil spills, which
was quickly proven to be a lie by satellite images of a three-mile-long oil
slick provided by Greenpeace Mexico.
Television coverage of the Summer Olympics in Brazil is about to showcase
the horrific pollution problems in that country, which has been ruled for
many years by the “democratic socialist” Workers Party, which proudly
proclaims “revolutionary socialism” to be its defining ideology. In addition
to creating some of the worst poverty in the world, the Brazilian government
has turned that country’s once-beautiful beaches into stinking cesspools.
An August 2 article in the Daily Mail by Gareth Davies reported
on a study of pollution in Rio de Janeiro on the eve of the Olympics which
found the following:
- Athletes have been told not to put their heads under
water.
- Viral levels in Guanabara Bay, where the triathlon will
take place, are 1.7 million times higher than health-hazard levels in
the U.S. and Europe.
- Rubbish in some of the bays is so thick that you cannot
see the water and rats live on top of the floating rubbish.
- A floating corpse and a severed arm were recently
spotted floating in Guanabara Bay.
- There are extremely high levels of viruses in the sand
on the beaches.
- The virus level in Gloria Marina, where the sailing
races will begin, are several thousand times higher than danger levels
in the U.S.
- “Black tongues of fetid, sewage-filled water” are
“common” on “tony” Ipanema Beach.
-
Vast islands of sewage sludge are seen at low tide, dumped there by
residential high-rise apartment buildings.
- Many rivers are “tar black” from pollution.
Such ecological nightmares have become common in other Latin American
“showcases” of “democratic” socialism. Venezuela suffers from massive
deforestation and its Lake Maracaibo is heavily polluted with 10,000 gallons
of sewage per second dumped into it from the two million residences
that surround the lake. More than 800 companies, mostly related to the
government’s nationalized oil industry, are permitted to dump industrial
waste into the lake. Massive Lake Valencia is also said to be
“massively polluted,” and the government-run oil company, PDVSA, has
reportedly filled more than 15,000 oil pits with contaminated sludge from oil
wells that will inevitably seep into the ground water.
One lesson that all the Bernie Sanders-following millennials need to learn
is that “democratic” socialism can not only destroy their economic future; it
can also inflict irreparable harm on their natural environment.
Socialism is always and everywhere an economic and environmental
disaster.
