What a vague and silly comment, half the world’s top contributors to greenhouse gasses aren’t even capitalist countries. I get the fediverse isn’t a fan of capitalism, but you can’t just blanketly blame everything on it.
Yeah, think of it like a corporation. Instead of shares, you have votes and taxes.
Everyone in the military can vote on the actions of that military. Although, so can everyone not in the military. And the number of votes don’t correspond to how many shares you can buy, because it’s more equal than capitalism.
If you think those 2 are communist countries, you’re stuck in the last century. Let me give you some news. The Soviet Union collapsed and gave way to a capitalist oligarchy. China realized that capitalism is profitable and brings them tons of money from the west. I have no idea why tankies still simp those countries as communist (wait, I do actually - because tankies never had any principles of their own, they just wanted to be anti-west).
There is one country that needs to kickstart change for it to have any effect, it’s the US. Not only does it pollute the most per capita, it’s a huge market. My tiny ass country with fuel prices already being twice as much in the US, can raise fuel prices even more, but that won’t affect global demand. Americans no longer getting fuel for essentially free, would actually affect global demand.
There’s plenty of systems that mix both, but Russia and China aren’t actually good examples. They’re pretty capitalist.
If you want a better example of mixing capitalism with socialism, you can take a look at something like the Nordic countries, where there are tons of social services and safety nets, but there’s still a very strong (just regulated) free market.
Seems a bit silly to decide that “capitalism” is the majority contributor to climate change when the country that produces the most greenhouse gases is only “pretty capitalist” doesn’t it? If capitalism is the major contributor, why don’t more capitalist country produce more greenhouse gases?
I never set out to argue that capitalism doesn’t exist in countries that aren’t primarily capitalist.
Users are attributing climate change to “capitalism” with no evidence or reasoning to back it up. You’ve made assertions that countries that political experts don’t consider primarily capitalist countries are actually capitalist countries with no evidence to back them up. I don’t have to waste my time disproving your flaky nonsense, calling it out is good enough for me.
And what part of this conversation makes you feel like the intelligent subject matter expert here? The part where you said liberals shouldn’t use certain words? Keep it up bud, appreciate you helping me decide which communities to filter out here.
Do you think a tankie would say China is a capitalist nation? Liberalism really is worse than brain cancer. They are either an anarchist or some other shit, you just see the names of the enemies of the empire and scream, you poor ignorant Gringo.
What makes me think that two countries that have never identified as capitalist and have never been identified as capitalist anywhere except for this crazy ass community where you just go ahead and label anything you don’t like simply as “capitalism”? Oh I don’t know, just a hunch I guess!
The United States has double China’s emissions per capita, and China actually is the world leader in the production of sustainable development products like solar panels even though the USA had a 150 year head start in its industrialisation. Despite whatever criticisms you may have against China, looking only at total emissions is definitely misleading. China’s renewable power has gone up fivefold in the past 15 years in absolute numbers and double in percentage of total production. The USA hasn’t even been building hydro dams since the 80s, while China has built some 15 in the past 20 years. Since one is explicitly the most capitalist country and the other is “”“capitalist actually”“”, I think it is fair to say that capitalism has a negative correlation with fighting climate change.
Though I have no idea why you included the Russian Federation there, since it is a capitalist oligarchy created by and modelled after the USA. Do you believe that Russia is communist by any chance?
Just as there are hordes of idiots on the right who call anything they don’t like “socialism”, there are a few idiots - primarily teenagers - on the left who call anything they don’t like “capitalism”.
After the supreme court invalidated Roe v Wade, I attended a rally. I walked away when one of the speakers started shouting “We know what the real problem is…capitalism!” and all the university kids started cheering.
I love the enthusiasm and your heart’s in the right place but y’all are dumber than a bag of bowling balls.
You can have industrialized production and consumerism without capitalism. Not that I’m defending capitalism, I just think our problem is deeper than what you make it, and human nature combined with unchecked technological ability to remodel out planet would yield the same outcome, no matter the dominant flavor of our economical structure.
I’d recommend looking into how indigenous people have historically dealt and wish to deal with climate change before claiming much about “human nature”. A lot of so-called “human nature” is just the universalisation of European capitalist values. I suggest starting by reading about the Red Deal, specially if you’re from the USA.
Although interesting, I don’t think your link is the gotcha counterexample you think it is. Previous civilizations caused environmental collapses without having capitalism to blame for it. We could switch overnight to soviet style communism and that would not solve anything if our expectation is to provide everyone on earth with their today’s living standards. We could blame greed, selfishness and that would take us closer to the truth, but even that would be very shortsighted. We would need all humans on earth to be united around a same goal and same path forward, and share the same willingness to sacrifice. No sect or religion has ever achieved that and never will (we are just so many, and spread that wide).
Looking at the world from the lens of an economic ideology alone only gets you so far. Wrong tool for the job.
Not sure what you’re talking about on “sect or religion” when referring to different cultures doing things differently. The link is not some “gotcha” Reddit moment, it is a good source for you and others to start questioning this notion of “human nature” given that lots of humans have been questioning this very same “human nature” dogma since it was imposed on them by Europeans starting 500 years ago and continuing to this day. Notably you shifted the discussion to talk about the Soviet Union, which has nothing to do with my point and doesn’t even exist anymore. Just because nameless “previous civilisations” caused uncited “environmental collapses”, doesn’t mean that every civilization works by the same rule. Specially considering this current environmental catastrophe is on a whole different level and we have current day civilizations that would love to prevent it, if only they got their Land Back.
Mind telling me what this One Goal of yours might be and how it could be possible within capitalism? The ones who have the most to sacrifice are those at the top, ghettoised minorities will go mostly unharmed in most actually practical solutions.
Looking at the world while compartmentalising the overarching mode of production will only get you solutions from that overarching mode of production. You were quick to dismiss it as the wrong tool, but what is the right tool then?
The power of parternship is another good resource for breaking the notion that humans are just greedy and domineering by nature. A Western myth used to justify Western harms, not the truth of human nature.
We’re on a open source website built almost exclusively to build spaces for communities with barely any profit, and people come here to tell us that greed is what motivates people. Frankly bizarre.
Is it weird that I have the feeling that I’m arguing with a bot? I don’t see what’s hard to understand: the whole premise of this thread is that the cause and solution to climate change is inherently bound to capitalism, and my point is that taking this approach to explain and remedy it is very limiting because capitalism itself is no basis to describe how societies impact their environment (it only describes who owns what in an economy).
When I talk about human nature, it’s because I’m convinced that (and there’s anthropological evidence for) any larger society to inevitably contain selfish individuals with exploitative and sociopathic tendencies, and individuals who can’t get enough when someone else has more than they have (same reason there are cold blood and serial killers all around the world). My opinion is that any rule of law society has the means to limit the power and negative impacts of those individuals, and this extends to corporations who are ultimately led by humans who we should collectively make accountable for their actions on behalf of the organization they lead. There is absolutely no need to bring capitalism into this, and colonialism even less so.
When I talk about sects and religions, it is to emphasize the fact that humanity has never been a uniform species and probably never will be. Tackling climate change in this context in a relevant time-frame will require to exert the current power structures no matter what.
And I don’t pretend to have a solution for climate change, all I’m sure about is that the actual solution is more elaborate than blind antagonism.
It sure is weird since chatGPT is not as advanced as me yet. It also doesn’t like communism. Sadly bots are made by the very same corporations I have issues with.
Compartmentalising the impacts of a mode of production in a society is usually how we get into a bind on trying to tackle problems that arise from them. They are not just “who owns what” but also dictate how humanity and society produces and therefore reproduces. Large urban factories were not a possibility nor desirable under feudalism or North American indigenous collectivism. When one says that “capitalism is the root of the problem” it means that the climate crisis we are living now is a clear consequence of our society’s organisation over production.
So here’s some examples to illustrate. Due to the arbitrary concept of “private property” inherent to capitalism, lithium mines in the Lithium Triangle can be owned by foreign corporations. That means that despite those mines directly affecting the lives of the local communities (which includes most workers there), they are kept there and protected by world governments no matter how much they protest. That is an anti-democractic use of the local resources that can’t easily happen under either communism, anarchism or collectivism and yet is the norm under global capitalism.
Another example is the production of sugar, which relies on both work conditions akin to slavery but also constant burning of the plant that wrecks the local ecology. Populations who work producing sugar cane (in particular slaves) have revolted against that in favour of self-sustainable agriculture since sugar monocultures have been a thing, and yet they have had little power to change that economy without also locally abolishing capitalism. These often come with foreign invasions, as was the case of Haiti.
And finally in the case of the Paris Accords, the big majority of Unitedsadians supported staying in it, and yet the USA left it either way. The people who will suffer and die due to ecological crises of any scale are usually the workers and not the owners. That means that if the workers are in charge of production rather than the owners, it is easy to see how they’ll be more willing to change that production to prevent harm to themselves, even if you ascribe to individualism as a natural human trait.
There is absolutely a need to bring capitalism into this, and even more its birth in colonialism and descent into imperialism. There can be no “accountability of the bourgeoisie” if we live in a dictatorship of this same bourgeoisie. The slave masters didn’t bend over backwards to help the slaves, and the kings have routinely sent levies en masse to their deaths. We shouldn’t expect any different from our current rulers. One obvious example of a communist (“anti-capitalist” if you object to that label) nation that has done the most to combat climate change is the PRC. On the other hand the übercapitalist United States is historically the worst at that. This is not coincidence.
And on the matter of “human nature”. As I’ve pointed out before and that you’ve not acknowledged, many natural human societies parallel to European and settler ones have long pushed back against this backwards pseudoscientific notion. In order to make any universal rules for whatever domain you’d need to have complete information about it. However not a single person knows all known history, and all known history doesn’t even include all actual history. It is typical of those who know little history to make bold proclamations about how “humans have always been a certain way” against humans that are a different way right before one’s own eyes.
Your position seems to have softened to say that the issue is “selfish people controlling corporations”, but that assumes that corporations themselves are universal concepts. Either way, the existence of selfish people doesn’t automatically imply that all modes of production and equally vulnerable to it, and liberal capitalism in itself exists on the principle that all people should focus on self-interest and selfishness. It is no surprise that a system that was developed to effectively colonise a land, genocide its people, exploit workers and extract every local resource only for short-term profit will end up doing just that.
If you yourself don’t have any solution and yet feel your opinion is relevant you are the one engaging in contrarianism. The very least you can do is read (and by that I mean actually read in depth) of those who actually have ideas. The Red Deal link is meant only as an introduction for something which I assume is from your country, feel free to develop your understanding further in whichever direction you want. Even if you come up with a solution under capitalism, it’ll be a start. Just don’t come back with no solutions while complaining that others’ solutions are not good enough.
When one says that “capitalism is the root of the problem” it means that the climate crisis we are living now is a clear consequence of our society’s organisation over production.
good that you and OP are convinced that “our society’s organization over production” links climate change to “capitalism”, but my point is that it is probably not as simple as you make it to be, and I still don’t see any evidence of causation for this exceptional claim.
My “hot take” is that we are not doing anything new or different now than we did thousand of years ago (so, before the advent of capitalism and globalization) when it comes to destroying our environment. The main difference is the scale at which we do it now, which is leveraged by our progress in science which permits the usage of large amounts of readily available energy.
The good thing about this discussion is that I only need a single counter-example to disprove your thesis (but you can find many throughout history). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf02664569 : here you see how ancient Chinese dynasties caused environmental collapses forcing large populations relocations. You may not want to call this human nature, but humans have since forever poked at things without understanding consequences, and with ever larger populations and techniques, the bigger the blowbacks. Capitalism had nothing to do with that: it didn’t provide the means, it didn’t provide the motive, it didn’t provide the opportunity.
And yes, I understand how tempting it is to look at the problem under the lens of current ideas and ideologies, but this is just cheap presentism.
To close on the subject, I am not a climate change denialist, and I am certainly not a capitalism apologist. I am a strong believer that people in future generations will keep poking at things without understanding the consequences. All I hope is that those future generations will be wise enough (i.e. have enough understanding of the world/advances in science, and enough safeguards against demagogic and other unsound ideals) to mitigate the negative impacts.
If you yourself don’t have any solution and yet feel your opinion is relevant you are the one engaging in contrarianism.
Fair. I cannot pretend that I have a single “cookie-cutter” solution for a complex global issue that’s been going on for centuries and whose effects and remedial actions will affect every single individual on earth. I still think I stand higher than those that claim to have such a solution while having their nose and mouth delved into local political matters of no global relevance. I have listened to the whole podcast you linked and the Red Deal offers nothing of substance, just more opinions, as it has no predictive value (it doesn’t try to show quantitatively how much of the problem is remediated under which circumstance).
My “hot take” is that we are not doing anything new or different now than we did thousand of years ago (so, before the advent of capitalism and globalization) when it comes to destroying our environment.
A thousand years in the past there weren’t people in Europe/North America waging massive wars to protect their sources of oil across the world. Global imperialism is essential to this global crisis and no country would be exporting most of its resources to some foreign power to the detriment of its own people if they were not organised in a capitalist fashion. We already have many measures like hydro power that would be much less harmful to the environment but are not as profitable to the property owners as oil and therefore are not properly explored. “We” is already a loaded term because humanity was incredibly diverse in its organisations of society before the 19th century, but this whole crisis is caused mainly by our production methods, not their scale.
The good thing about this discussion is that I only need a single counter-example to disprove your thesis (but you can find many throughout history).
I think I see the misunderstanding here. The point is not that ecological catastrophes are only caused by Capitalism, but this one in specific is directly caused by it. If people owned the means of production they wouldn’t force themselves into a catastrophe we all know is happening. We already understand the consequences in this current case, but just so happen to be ruled by a bourgeoisie that is more interested in fleeing to Mars than actually solving these issues. I fail to see how there could be any solution to this crisis without ending the control of a select few over the entire production of the world to our detriment, which is capitalism.
And for you to claim that something like this is “human nature” you don’t need to just provide a couple of historical examples of ecological catastrophes caused by humans (even ones they knowingly did it), but to show that there has never been the case where humans changed course to avert one, or something of the sort.
I have listened to the whole podcast you linked and the Red Deal offers nothing of substance, just more opinions, as it has no predictive value (it doesn’t try to show quantitatively how much of the problem is remediated under which circumstance).
It would be pretentious to predict the economic effects in a manifesto from those who are not (and will likely never be) in power. If you want actual numbers you can look at how China has been leading the world in green energy production. As I said before, that one was specifically to push back against “human nature” causing this crisis when some very natural humans want to do the exact opposite but can’t specifically because of settler capitalism. Humans want to fight the climate crisis, except for those few property holders who see this as an “opportunity.”
Also what’s with “opinions”? Do you expect some lab somewhere to do an experiment proving if redacting landlords has positive or negative correlations with emissions? Social decisions are based on historical analysis which would be too long for a 30 minute interview. Since you got so interested you replied to me 8 days later and want more of those juicy facts, you can go read their actual whole book on it their positions in depth. Part 3 does a better job explaining it than I could in a single lemmy reply.
It’s not a full solution, but I’d love to see more use of compostable single-use plastics coupled with municipal biochar facilities.
It’s an excellent cycle that harnesses capitalism and materialism. People buy single use plastics, then throw them away. Municipal garbage (a utility company paid for by ratepayers), picks it up, and brings it to a biochar facility. The facility pyrolizes it, making syngas (which they burn for energy which is then purchased by consumers) and biochar, which is sold as a soil amendment and happens to be carbon-negative. Excess biochar can be buried.
It’s a typical capitalist create-consume economy except it’s carbon-negative (when paired with decarbonized transportation like electric trains and delivery vans, and hydrogen powered garbage trucks). The more you consume, the more carbon you actually suck out of the air.
There’s a few proposed loops like this which instead of fighting consumerism actually harness it to make carbon negative actions. Another one that I’m very interested in is making HVAC filters that also passively absorb carbon from the atmosphere. With electric heat pumps we already have an HVAC technology that is minimally emitting. Pair that with carbon negative filters and you’re golden.
Or concrete using injected co2. It’s a real thing that exists, it just doesn’t have price parity with traditional carbon-intensive concrete. Imagine if just by building a building you could be carbon negative.
Again, it’s not a total solution but I wish I could see more use cases like this instead of the “consume less” narrative. People are not going to consume less, that’s not how people work. The only way to get people to consume less is by raising prices (which is a necessary part of the solution of course).
capitalism can’t solve climate change :(
Nope, especially since it’s the biggest contributor to it.
What a vague and silly comment, half the world’s top contributors to greenhouse gasses aren’t even capitalist countries. I get the fediverse isn’t a fan of capitalism, but you can’t just blanketly blame everything on it.
The US military is the single largest polluter organisation on the planet - do tell me how we can’t blame capitalism again?
And just for your information - that other gigantic capitalist country you falsely believe isn’t capitalist? Guess what? It’s capitalist.
The US military is the world’s largest socialist organization. Universal health care, pensions, free college and job training, free housing…
Oh, do please explain to us how worker ownership of the means of production works in the US military.
Wait, don’t answer yet… I quickly have to get some popcorn. This is going to be good.
Taxes
Is there any other way?
Taxes? That’s how the working class owns the means of production in the US military?
Am I talking to a damn chatbot here? It sure as hell sounds like it.
Yeah, think of it like a corporation. Instead of shares, you have votes and taxes.
Everyone in the military can vote on the actions of that military. Although, so can everyone not in the military. And the number of votes don’t correspond to how many shares you can buy, because it’s more equal than capitalism.
Also, non-capitalist countries tend to be low emitters because they are failed countries whose people live in miserable poverty.
What non-capitalist countries?
Cubas pretty green for what its worth.
China is the number one greenhouse gas contributor, Russia is near the top of the list as well. Fuck off tankies.
If you think those 2 are communist countries, you’re stuck in the last century. Let me give you some news. The Soviet Union collapsed and gave way to a capitalist oligarchy. China realized that capitalism is profitable and brings them tons of money from the west. I have no idea why tankies still simp those countries as communist (wait, I do actually - because tankies never had any principles of their own, they just wanted to be anti-west).
There is one country that needs to kickstart change for it to have any effect, it’s the US. Not only does it pollute the most per capita, it’s a huge market. My tiny ass country with fuel prices already being twice as much in the US, can raise fuel prices even more, but that won’t affect global demand. Americans no longer getting fuel for essentially free, would actually affect global demand.
Yes, of course, because political systems are binary and there’s only capitalism and communism lmao
There’s plenty of systems that mix both, but Russia and China aren’t actually good examples. They’re pretty capitalist.
If you want a better example of mixing capitalism with socialism, you can take a look at something like the Nordic countries, where there are tons of social services and safety nets, but there’s still a very strong (just regulated) free market.
State companies and state-connected companies own more than half of each one’s economy. More than in Nordic countries.
Seems a bit silly to decide that “capitalism” is the majority contributor to climate change when the country that produces the most greenhouse gases is only “pretty capitalist” doesn’t it? If capitalism is the major contributor, why don’t more capitalist country produce more greenhouse gases?
I never set out to argue that capitalism doesn’t exist in countries that aren’t primarily capitalist.
Sooo… a capitalist state?
Sooo… another capitalist state?
You don’t know what a tankie is, do you?
I knew it was a bad day when we allowed liberals access to that word.
Oh gross, you’re one of those
You walked blindly into this argument with absolutely zero understanding of the subject matter at hand, didn’t you?
Users are attributing climate change to “capitalism” with no evidence or reasoning to back it up. You’ve made assertions that countries that political experts don’t consider primarily capitalist countries are actually capitalist countries with no evidence to back them up. I don’t have to waste my time disproving your flaky nonsense, calling it out is good enough for me.
And what part of this conversation makes you feel like the intelligent subject matter expert here? The part where you said liberals shouldn’t use certain words? Keep it up bud, appreciate you helping me decide which communities to filter out here.
Do you think a tankie would say China is a capitalist nation? Liberalism really is worse than brain cancer. They are either an anarchist or some other shit, you just see the names of the enemies of the empire and scream, you poor ignorant Gringo.
We’re past that like 3 comments ago, try to keep up.
Those 2 are literally capitalist countries. Also tankies are the ones who commonly say China is not capitalist.
Lol the fuck, no they aren’t
What makes you think that?
What makes me think that two countries that have never identified as capitalist and have never been identified as capitalist anywhere except for this crazy ass community where you just go ahead and label anything you don’t like simply as “capitalism”? Oh I don’t know, just a hunch I guess!
The United States has double China’s emissions per capita, and China actually is the world leader in the production of sustainable development products like solar panels even though the USA had a 150 year head start in its industrialisation. Despite whatever criticisms you may have against China, looking only at total emissions is definitely misleading. China’s renewable power has gone up fivefold in the past 15 years in absolute numbers and double in percentage of total production. The USA hasn’t even been building hydro dams since the 80s, while China has built some 15 in the past 20 years. Since one is explicitly the most capitalist country and the other is “”“capitalist actually”“”, I think it is fair to say that capitalism has a negative correlation with fighting climate change.
Though I have no idea why you included the Russian Federation there, since it is a capitalist oligarchy created by and modelled after the USA. Do you believe that Russia is communist by any chance?
I just wanna know what exactly you think a tankie is
You don’t trash China at every opportunity unprovoked? Damn tankies!
Was isn’t a capitalistic country? North Korea?
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Just as there are hordes of idiots on the right who call anything they don’t like “socialism”, there are a few idiots - primarily teenagers - on the left who call anything they don’t like “capitalism”.
After the supreme court invalidated Roe v Wade, I attended a rally. I walked away when one of the speakers started shouting “We know what the real problem is…capitalism!” and all the university kids started cheering.
I love the enthusiasm and your heart’s in the right place but y’all are dumber than a bag of bowling balls.
You can have industrialized production and consumerism without capitalism. Not that I’m defending capitalism, I just think our problem is deeper than what you make it, and human nature combined with unchecked technological ability to remodel out planet would yield the same outcome, no matter the dominant flavor of our economical structure.
I’d recommend looking into how indigenous people have historically dealt and wish to deal with climate change before claiming much about “human nature”. A lot of so-called “human nature” is just the universalisation of European capitalist values. I suggest starting by reading about the Red Deal, specially if you’re from the USA.
Although interesting, I don’t think your link is the gotcha counterexample you think it is. Previous civilizations caused environmental collapses without having capitalism to blame for it. We could switch overnight to soviet style communism and that would not solve anything if our expectation is to provide everyone on earth with their today’s living standards. We could blame greed, selfishness and that would take us closer to the truth, but even that would be very shortsighted. We would need all humans on earth to be united around a same goal and same path forward, and share the same willingness to sacrifice. No sect or religion has ever achieved that and never will (we are just so many, and spread that wide).
Looking at the world from the lens of an economic ideology alone only gets you so far. Wrong tool for the job.
Not sure what you’re talking about on “sect or religion” when referring to different cultures doing things differently. The link is not some “gotcha” Reddit moment, it is a good source for you and others to start questioning this notion of “human nature” given that lots of humans have been questioning this very same “human nature” dogma since it was imposed on them by Europeans starting 500 years ago and continuing to this day. Notably you shifted the discussion to talk about the Soviet Union, which has nothing to do with my point and doesn’t even exist anymore. Just because nameless “previous civilisations” caused uncited “environmental collapses”, doesn’t mean that every civilization works by the same rule. Specially considering this current environmental catastrophe is on a whole different level and we have current day civilizations that would love to prevent it, if only they got their Land Back.
Mind telling me what this One Goal of yours might be and how it could be possible within capitalism? The ones who have the most to sacrifice are those at the top, ghettoised minorities will go mostly unharmed in most actually practical solutions.
Looking at the world while compartmentalising the overarching mode of production will only get you solutions from that overarching mode of production. You were quick to dismiss it as the wrong tool, but what is the right tool then?
The power of parternship is another good resource for breaking the notion that humans are just greedy and domineering by nature. A Western myth used to justify Western harms, not the truth of human nature.
We’re on a open source website built almost exclusively to build spaces for communities with barely any profit, and people come here to tell us that greed is what motivates people. Frankly bizarre.
Is it weird that I have the feeling that I’m arguing with a bot? I don’t see what’s hard to understand: the whole premise of this thread is that the cause and solution to climate change is inherently bound to capitalism, and my point is that taking this approach to explain and remedy it is very limiting because capitalism itself is no basis to describe how societies impact their environment (it only describes who owns what in an economy).
When I talk about human nature, it’s because I’m convinced that (and there’s anthropological evidence for) any larger society to inevitably contain selfish individuals with exploitative and sociopathic tendencies, and individuals who can’t get enough when someone else has more than they have (same reason there are cold blood and serial killers all around the world). My opinion is that any rule of law society has the means to limit the power and negative impacts of those individuals, and this extends to corporations who are ultimately led by humans who we should collectively make accountable for their actions on behalf of the organization they lead. There is absolutely no need to bring capitalism into this, and colonialism even less so.
When I talk about sects and religions, it is to emphasize the fact that humanity has never been a uniform species and probably never will be. Tackling climate change in this context in a relevant time-frame will require to exert the current power structures no matter what.
And I don’t pretend to have a solution for climate change, all I’m sure about is that the actual solution is more elaborate than blind antagonism.
It sure is weird since chatGPT is not as advanced as me yet. It also doesn’t like communism. Sadly bots are made by the very same corporations I have issues with.
Compartmentalising the impacts of a mode of production in a society is usually how we get into a bind on trying to tackle problems that arise from them. They are not just “who owns what” but also dictate how humanity and society produces and therefore reproduces. Large urban factories were not a possibility nor desirable under feudalism or North American indigenous collectivism. When one says that “capitalism is the root of the problem” it means that the climate crisis we are living now is a clear consequence of our society’s organisation over production.
So here’s some examples to illustrate. Due to the arbitrary concept of “private property” inherent to capitalism, lithium mines in the Lithium Triangle can be owned by foreign corporations. That means that despite those mines directly affecting the lives of the local communities (which includes most workers there), they are kept there and protected by world governments no matter how much they protest. That is an anti-democractic use of the local resources that can’t easily happen under either communism, anarchism or collectivism and yet is the norm under global capitalism.
Another example is the production of sugar, which relies on both work conditions akin to slavery but also constant burning of the plant that wrecks the local ecology. Populations who work producing sugar cane (in particular slaves) have revolted against that in favour of self-sustainable agriculture since sugar monocultures have been a thing, and yet they have had little power to change that economy without also locally abolishing capitalism. These often come with foreign invasions, as was the case of Haiti.
And finally in the case of the Paris Accords, the big majority of Unitedsadians supported staying in it, and yet the USA left it either way. The people who will suffer and die due to ecological crises of any scale are usually the workers and not the owners. That means that if the workers are in charge of production rather than the owners, it is easy to see how they’ll be more willing to change that production to prevent harm to themselves, even if you ascribe to individualism as a natural human trait.
There is absolutely a need to bring capitalism into this, and even more its birth in colonialism and descent into imperialism. There can be no “accountability of the bourgeoisie” if we live in a dictatorship of this same bourgeoisie. The slave masters didn’t bend over backwards to help the slaves, and the kings have routinely sent levies en masse to their deaths. We shouldn’t expect any different from our current rulers. One obvious example of a communist (“anti-capitalist” if you object to that label) nation that has done the most to combat climate change is the PRC. On the other hand the übercapitalist United States is historically the worst at that. This is not coincidence.
And on the matter of “human nature”. As I’ve pointed out before and that you’ve not acknowledged, many natural human societies parallel to European and settler ones have long pushed back against this backwards pseudoscientific notion. In order to make any universal rules for whatever domain you’d need to have complete information about it. However not a single person knows all known history, and all known history doesn’t even include all actual history. It is typical of those who know little history to make bold proclamations about how “humans have always been a certain way” against humans that are a different way right before one’s own eyes.
Your position seems to have softened to say that the issue is “selfish people controlling corporations”, but that assumes that corporations themselves are universal concepts. Either way, the existence of selfish people doesn’t automatically imply that all modes of production and equally vulnerable to it, and liberal capitalism in itself exists on the principle that all people should focus on self-interest and selfishness. It is no surprise that a system that was developed to effectively colonise a land, genocide its people, exploit workers and extract every local resource only for short-term profit will end up doing just that.
If you yourself don’t have any solution and yet feel your opinion is relevant you are the one engaging in contrarianism. The very least you can do is read (and by that I mean actually read in depth) of those who actually have ideas. The Red Deal link is meant only as an introduction for something which I assume is from your country, feel free to develop your understanding further in whichever direction you want. Even if you come up with a solution under capitalism, it’ll be a start. Just don’t come back with no solutions while complaining that others’ solutions are not good enough.
good that you and OP are convinced that “our society’s organization over production” links climate change to “capitalism”, but my point is that it is probably not as simple as you make it to be, and I still don’t see any evidence of causation for this exceptional claim.
My “hot take” is that we are not doing anything new or different now than we did thousand of years ago (so, before the advent of capitalism and globalization) when it comes to destroying our environment. The main difference is the scale at which we do it now, which is leveraged by our progress in science which permits the usage of large amounts of readily available energy.
The good thing about this discussion is that I only need a single counter-example to disprove your thesis (but you can find many throughout history). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf02664569 : here you see how ancient Chinese dynasties caused environmental collapses forcing large populations relocations. You may not want to call this human nature, but humans have since forever poked at things without understanding consequences, and with ever larger populations and techniques, the bigger the blowbacks. Capitalism had nothing to do with that: it didn’t provide the means, it didn’t provide the motive, it didn’t provide the opportunity.
And yes, I understand how tempting it is to look at the problem under the lens of current ideas and ideologies, but this is just cheap presentism.
To close on the subject, I am not a climate change denialist, and I am certainly not a capitalism apologist. I am a strong believer that people in future generations will keep poking at things without understanding the consequences. All I hope is that those future generations will be wise enough (i.e. have enough understanding of the world/advances in science, and enough safeguards against demagogic and other unsound ideals) to mitigate the negative impacts.
Fair. I cannot pretend that I have a single “cookie-cutter” solution for a complex global issue that’s been going on for centuries and whose effects and remedial actions will affect every single individual on earth. I still think I stand higher than those that claim to have such a solution while having their nose and mouth delved into local political matters of no global relevance. I have listened to the whole podcast you linked and the Red Deal offers nothing of substance, just more opinions, as it has no predictive value (it doesn’t try to show quantitatively how much of the problem is remediated under which circumstance).
A thousand years in the past there weren’t people in Europe/North America waging massive wars to protect their sources of oil across the world. Global imperialism is essential to this global crisis and no country would be exporting most of its resources to some foreign power to the detriment of its own people if they were not organised in a capitalist fashion. We already have many measures like hydro power that would be much less harmful to the environment but are not as profitable to the property owners as oil and therefore are not properly explored. “We” is already a loaded term because humanity was incredibly diverse in its organisations of society before the 19th century, but this whole crisis is caused mainly by our production methods, not their scale.
I think I see the misunderstanding here. The point is not that ecological catastrophes are only caused by Capitalism, but this one in specific is directly caused by it. If people owned the means of production they wouldn’t force themselves into a catastrophe we all know is happening. We already understand the consequences in this current case, but just so happen to be ruled by a bourgeoisie that is more interested in fleeing to Mars than actually solving these issues. I fail to see how there could be any solution to this crisis without ending the control of a select few over the entire production of the world to our detriment, which is capitalism.
And for you to claim that something like this is “human nature” you don’t need to just provide a couple of historical examples of ecological catastrophes caused by humans (even ones they knowingly did it), but to show that there has never been the case where humans changed course to avert one, or something of the sort.
It would be pretentious to predict the economic effects in a manifesto from those who are not (and will likely never be) in power. If you want actual numbers you can look at how China has been leading the world in green energy production. As I said before, that one was specifically to push back against “human nature” causing this crisis when some very natural humans want to do the exact opposite but can’t specifically because of settler capitalism. Humans want to fight the climate crisis, except for those few property holders who see this as an “opportunity.”
Also what’s with “opinions”? Do you expect some lab somewhere to do an experiment proving if redacting landlords has positive or negative correlations with emissions? Social decisions are based on historical analysis which would be too long for a 30 minute interview. Since you got so interested you replied to me 8 days later and want more of those juicy facts, you can go read their actual whole book on it their positions in depth. Part 3 does a better job explaining it than I could in a single lemmy reply.
Capitalism can not solve shit.
It can only provide record profits. Thats its only goal.
a quick fix: Capitalism -doesn’t want to- solve the climate change :(
It’s not a full solution, but I’d love to see more use of compostable single-use plastics coupled with municipal biochar facilities.
It’s an excellent cycle that harnesses capitalism and materialism. People buy single use plastics, then throw them away. Municipal garbage (a utility company paid for by ratepayers), picks it up, and brings it to a biochar facility. The facility pyrolizes it, making syngas (which they burn for energy which is then purchased by consumers) and biochar, which is sold as a soil amendment and happens to be carbon-negative. Excess biochar can be buried.
It’s a typical capitalist create-consume economy except it’s carbon-negative (when paired with decarbonized transportation like electric trains and delivery vans, and hydrogen powered garbage trucks). The more you consume, the more carbon you actually suck out of the air.
There’s a few proposed loops like this which instead of fighting consumerism actually harness it to make carbon negative actions. Another one that I’m very interested in is making HVAC filters that also passively absorb carbon from the atmosphere. With electric heat pumps we already have an HVAC technology that is minimally emitting. Pair that with carbon negative filters and you’re golden.
Or concrete using injected co2. It’s a real thing that exists, it just doesn’t have price parity with traditional carbon-intensive concrete. Imagine if just by building a building you could be carbon negative.
Again, it’s not a total solution but I wish I could see more use cases like this instead of the “consume less” narrative. People are not going to consume less, that’s not how people work. The only way to get people to consume less is by raising prices (which is a necessary part of the solution of course).
Why do you think pyrolyzing random plastic waste generates biochar?
It would also never be carbon negative, since it is from oil. Best case is neutral, but some carbon is burned off in the process.
Same for concrete, it is not suddenly carbon negative.