The self -proclaimed "climate activists" affirm that capitalism is the culprit of climate change and the destruction of the environment.Every time someone asks for solutions, they prescribe more regulation and less free market.But historical experience throws serious doubts about these supposed solutions.
Already in 1968, communist Germany included the protection of the environment in its constitution, setting this goal as a state objective.Four years later, in 1972, the RDA established its own Ministry of Environment, something that Federal, capitalist and democratic Germany would not do until fifteen years later.
The propaganda of the GDR constantly affirmed that capitalism was the culprit of the destruction of the environment and defended that only socialism, with its planned economy model and the consequent direction by the State, could guarantee a clean and well preserved environment.
But how were things really?In 1990, the Federal Foundation created in the Teuton country to evaluate everything in the GDR published a devastating study in which, taking stock of this issue, the following was stated:
According to this report, the soil of many areas of the old RD was contaminated by a wide variety of substances, either due to intensive agriculture, by industrial livestock or by the uncontrolled discharge of toxic spills in wild landfills.
Wismut uranium miners worked in extremely dangerous conditions for their health that, as a form of compensation, were offered seven liters of brandy every month.It was about helping to forget hell, misery and pollution of communist Germany...
However, no one in the area was allowed to mention the word "uranium" and even the official brochures of the regime completely silenced the works that were done with such material.The silence moved to the private conversations between the residents of the area and the employees of the largest state mining company in Europe: the uranium was never mentioned, it was always silenced.
In fact, the data related to the country's environmental performance became "classified information" on March 19, 1974, after a ministerial decision of March 19, 1974 that granted Günther Mittag, secretary of the State Central Committee for the State for the economy, Authority on the distribution of annual environmental reports and evaluations.
Since 1982, only three people received the annual environmental performance report: Mittag himself, the president of the State Council Willi Stoph and the head of the Stasi, Erich Honeyke.For the rest, there was only silence.In fact, many citizens only knew the truth about the catastrophic state of the environment after reunification, no matter how.
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Demolving data
Here are some key data to evaluate the baggage of German communism in environmental matters:
- The historian Hubertus Knabe, an expert in the history of the GDR, says that the regime was "one of the world's greatest climatic killers".Thus, "the same ones that boasted of having abolished capitalism issued in 1989 three times more CO2 per unit of GDP produced than Western, democratic and settled Germany on the free market economic system".
- Regarding air pollution, the data for 1988 shows that sulfur dioxide emissions per square kilometer were ten times higher in the GDR (48.1 tons/m2 compared to 4.6 tons/m2).If we look at the suspended particles, we see that the average load per square meter was 20.3 tons in the RD, ten times more than in the western half, where this metric was 1.8 tons per square meter.
- In homes, almost two thirds of the RDA apartments were heated with solid fuels, such as lignite briquettes, at the time the reunification occurred.
- Almost half of the main rivers were biologically dead in 1989.In fact, it was forbidden to drink water of 70% of them, before the deplorable state in which these river channels were.
- Almost half of the residents of communist Germany did not have a permanent drinking water supply. La elevadísima presencia de nitrógeno, fósforo, metales pesados y otros contaminantes en las aguas hacía imposible hidratarse con agua de grifo.
Knabe emphasizes today that many climatic activists of today, the leadership of the RDA argued that only abolishing capitalism could be solved by environmental problems, because they believed that it was the greed of corporations that led to the ruthless destruction of nature.According to this logic, profit needed to be replaced by the reason and planning of the State, for the benefit of society as a whole.It would only be possible to preserve the environment if the free market was also suppressed ".
However, as the facts described above demonstrate, the economies that operate under central planning models have been responsible for the greatest environmental catastrophes known by the human being during the last century.Therefore, it is even more absurd than the self -proclaimed "climatic activists" today are trying to persuade us to abolish capitalism and insist on putting our faith in a greater state regulation of the economy, since this will not only helpto solve environmental problems, but will contribute to aggravate them.
Rainer Zitelmann is the author of "Capitalism is not the problem, it is the solution" (Editorial Union, 2021).Considered one of Germany's most influential liberals, he is a doctor in sociology and history, a successful businessman and habitual columnist in media such as City Am, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Le Point or Forbes.
