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.
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.