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Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

globalpolicyjournal.com

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Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#91

Post by mrchucklepants »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #55
LatteLazy wrote: post #7

Capitalism just values what people value. If nature is worth more as a tourist attraction than a farm, that is what it will be. I am not making excuses for capitalism here. I am just saying: you can either overthrow global capitalism and replace it with some new perfect system no one knows about yet OR we can start valuing different things as a society...

“ Capitalism just values what people value. ” Capitalism values what capitalists value.

It doesn't matter what the "capitalists" value if they have no customers.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#92

Post by datadata »

fghfhgfh wrote: post #79
datadata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The valuing of economic growth seems to be almost required as a Darwinian feature of nations. Resolve as a nation to value economic growth less than your neighbors, and you will soon be overpowered by them.

Have you been to small villages in developing countries? Their lives revolve around capitalism and local markets. Everyone knows each other. I've never seen more "neighborly" places

I don't see your point? I didn't say that capitalism leads to conflict, merely that not pursuing economic growth should lead to being overwhelmed by those that do.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#93

Post by datadata »

otikik wrote: post #41
yrgulation wrote: post #24

Quoted post unavailable.

That is incredibly short sighted. The reason why you don’t see that much pollution in your country is that it has been outsourced to other countries with more lax pollution laws and less worker protection laws. This means that fabrication of an item produces more pollution than if it was built in your country (where there’s more regulation). And then there’s even more pollution due to the long transportation haul. Bu…

The fact that we all seem to agree that rich countries will pay a premium to keep their rivers clean seems to at the very least undermine the central argument of the article that capitalism places zero value on preserving the environment.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#94

Post by giraffe_lady »

yrgulation wrote: post #78
otikik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is incredibly short sighted. The reason why you don’t see that much pollution in your country is that it has been outsourced to other countries with more lax pollution laws and less worker protection laws. This means that fabrication of an item produces more pollution than if it was built in your country (where there’s more regulation). And then there’s even more pollution due to the long transportation haul. Bu…

Not at all, no. You know whats short sighted tho? Skipping the part where i said we _all_ need to do our part and that there is pollution here as well, and jumping straight into deflecting the blame on to “us” while not doing enough.

We are to blame and are not doing enough though. Your action needs to start from there or it's just excuses.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#95

Post by zdragnar »

ikinsey wrote: post #48
yrgulation wrote: post #24

Quoted post unavailable.

Did the demand for products from polluting industry disappear in the developed world or did the factories just move overseas? Shifting blame to "underdeveloped and corrupt nations" does nothing to address the fact that developed countries still demand goods from polluting industry and do little to promote more sustainable forms of economic development.

There is no such thing as a polluting industry- or rather, any industry at all could be a polluting one. Pollution is a waste byproduct of what is being produced. The act of polluting is disposing of said byproducts in an unmanaged way (out smokestacks, into rivers, etc).

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#96

Post by n8cpdx »

edhelas wrote: post #70
kieranmaine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2021 China and the Europe have the following Wind Power Capacities (MW): China: 328,480 Europe: 235,712 Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Uni... China also produces the majority of Solar PV Panels - https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manu...

China population is 1.4B Europe population is 700M What is your point ?

Probably that China subsidizes the West’s efforts to green their economies while simultaneously handling our negative externalities, AND continuing to lift their population out of poverty.

The parent claim is that the developing world isn’t pulling their weight, which is an incredibly ignorant and frankly stupid take, considering any historical context.

Ignoring all that, per capita China has a long way to go to be anywhere near the top of the list for climate impact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#97

Post by yrgulation »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #94
yrgulation wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, no. You know whats short sighted tho? Skipping the part where i said we _all_ need to do our part and that there is pollution here as well, and jumping straight into deflecting the blame on to “us” while not doing enough.

We are to blame and are not doing enough though. Your action needs to start from there or it's just excuses.

We do carry some of the blame. But we are not responsible for local politicians all too happy to accept bribes and societies all too happy to close their eyes. Why are there no strong environmentalist movements in india? Is it a democracy or not? Cant people in china see whats happening with their rivers and cities? You cant possibly have one billion people sitting idle and doing nothing to change the status quo, and then shift the blame on us.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#98

Post by Aunche »

larsiusprime wrote: post #69
otikik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is incredibly short sighted. The reason why you don’t see that much pollution in your country is that it has been outsourced to other countries with more lax pollution laws and less worker protection laws. This means that fabrication of an item produces more pollution than if it was built in your country (where there’s more regulation). And then there’s even more pollution due to the long transportation haul. Bu…

Can you back that up with evidence? I'm not sure what the situation is for Europe/the UK, but for the US it really doesn't seem to be the case that we are outsourcing our emissions: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-...

Maybe it's not to the extent that people are saying, but the charts clearly show that the EU and the US do outsource their emissions.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#99

Post by dan-robertson »

> Today’s planetary ecological crisis is due first and foremost to the increasing scale of the capitalist world economy

This is sort of true except that there isn’t some significant alternative thing which is also getting people out of poverty and improving their material standards of living with things like more and more varied food and larger houses and manufactured goods and electrical lighting and smartphones and air conditioners and cars and office buildings and suchlike. There are a few small communist states (excluding China for having a mostly ‘capitalist world economy’ system just with a lot of state ownership and meddling) and some war-torn countries and a few failed states but these are not doing much climate change.

I think I would write that climate change is mostly caused by people getting richer and improving their material standards of living. (When the USSR was around being more communist, they were also causing climate change). When you put it like that, the idea which is hinted at (but not written down and maybe not really believed by the interviewee) of ‘just stop capitalism/economic growth’ translates to ‘freeze worldwide GDP per capita at its current level’ and means either keeping poor people at their very low standards of living or having people in western countries drop to a much lower standard of living such that others may come up, and that also ignores the future growing population.

Ignoring the obvious reasons that that idea is stupid, it’s worth noting that:

- richer countries have falling emissions (even when accounting for trade/outsourcing) and still manage to grow so wanting economic growth needn’t imply climate change.

- there is also an expected need to remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere and suiciding the economy of rich countries is not going to be good for developing and paying for the solutions.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#100

Post by jerojero »

chaostheory wrote: post #58
epistasis wrote: post #49

Is every form of industrialization, from the USSR to the UK to the US to China, capitalist? Is the current energy transition, funded by massive amounts of capital, and the result of industrialization of technology, somehow less capitalistic? Are the ESG efforts somehow less capitalist? Sometimes, our mental frames are traps rather than tools for understanding the world. This essay makes me think that this person is q…

There’s no denying that capitalism is “grow or die”, but so is socialism. Like capitalism, socialism needs working adults to outnumber both retired seniors and non working age children. The only way socialism can avoid the constant growth requirement is if they have a “you only eat if you work” rule. Historically, socialism’s rate of pollution is on par with capitalism

There are a lot of people proposing models of economic development that don't necessarily rely on growth.

There's a lot of work done on degrowth and similar modes of production. Though I haven't really read too much into it (just getting into this topic recently) a lot of the authors are staunch critics of capitalism so it leads me to believe that there are other systems out there that aren't necessarily capitalists and probably align with socialism much more.

Just to give a brief example, think about private ownership of a firm versus worker ownership of it and how it would change the way that firm approaches pollution. In the first it is very easy for the owners to be detached from the pollution they produce as they can simply move to another city without the firm really be affected in any way. Whereas in the second one it wouldn't be possible for workers to move as they would be unable to continue working, so pollution affects them and their families directly in which case there are much stronger incentives for them to cut profits in order to greenify their production. First is a capitalist mode of production, second is a socialist one.

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