Jorge Jraissati
April 23, 2021•Update: April 23, 2021
CARACAS, Venezuela
Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister said Thursday that the US cannot lead the world in achieving environmental goals because the US capitalist economic model is the ultimate cause of global warming.
Jorge Arreaza made the comments during his speech at the "Rejoining Pachamama" forum, which Bolivian President Luis Arce organized to celebrate World Earth Day.
In his speech, Arreaza said the US capitalist model cannot meet “the objectives of humanity” and it must be considered “exhaustive” as a result.
He added that humanity thus has the “difficult task” of starting a new social system in which the majorities exercise power and not the big corporations, a “profoundly different system of human relations, relations of production, relations with Mother Earth.”
Arreaza argued that “If we do not make the great political and economic decisions to reverse the capitalist system and build a post-capitalist system today, our children will not have food, they will not have water, they will not have oxygen.”
Arreaza’s comments came in response to a climate summit organized by US President Joe Biden, where Biden pledged to cut US carbon emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
He said that Biden’s summit is nothing more than a farce, doubting that the nations that are the most responsible for the contamination of the planet will suddenly become the leaders of the world’s environmental goals.
“We must give a different signal to the world than the one they are giving in Washington. You cannot continue to 'makeup' the capitalist system. With makeup, capitalism will look pretty, but it will still be murderous. A white-collar killer," he added.
