Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by sulcate » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #18

dbingham wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit of a semantic dispute, but not an unimportant one. We are causing a major extinction event that is up there with the worst ones the Earth has experienced. That said, the end result is likely to be that we either go extinct or come very close and the remaining life on Earth picks up the pieces and starts re-evolving new biodiversity from the diversity bottleneck. It's happened before and life on Earth, as…

I think we have the technology now (or in the next 100 years) to move some of our people into moon bases here on earth. If I were Musk I would be building these now.

This is irrelevant and misses the point.

Even a completely 'trashed' earth that renders billions displaced or suffering amidst ecological catastrophe is still infinitely more hospitable to life than celestial bodies that are completely devoid of that benefit in the first place.

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

#102

Post by amelius » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 10:51 PM UTC

geenew wrote: post #62

_8j50 wrote: post #26

Hear me out: "Climate change" is a terrible phrase, of course climate changes, when talking to regular people that's like saying "water flow" to describe flooding. "Climate destabilization" or something akin to that would communicate what is happening better to the people that vote.

At this point, there's been - Inadvertent climate modification* - Global Warming - Anthropogenic Global Warming - Global Heating - Climate Change - Climate Crisis - Climate Emergency I don't disagree with the thrust of your point, but the same argument you make against 'climate change' could also be made against 'climate destabilizaiton', since destabilization can have human and non-human causes (for example, the ris…

"Artificial climate change", then?

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

#103

Post by ch4s3 » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 10:52 PM UTC

miguelazo wrote: post #83

nostromo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany and the US also export a tremendous amount of goods, and do so without clogging up our rivers (and eventually the ocean) with trash. And studies have shown that only 15% of China's CO2 emissions are for the production of exports. That means that 85% of their CO2 emissions are for local production. [1] Lastly, the amount of economic value the US and other advanced nations produce per unit of Co2 is much higher…

That's mostly due to the TYPES of exports involved.

The US exports cars, steel, cotton, natural gas, coal, plastics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and on and on.

On the note of pharmaceuticals and India, there’s a stark difference. Indian manufacturers dumb literal tons on antibiotics and their byproducts into rivers, and no US pharma company does this at all.

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

#104

Post by resoluteteeth » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 10:54 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #76

resoluteteeth wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This idea that capitalism is all growth is a very simple-minded and inaccurate view of capitalism. It's also the death of firms. It's stagnation. Its fortunes squandered, in addition to fortunes built. Capitalism incentivizes increased economic output, which incentivizes increased energy consumption. Barring regulations to internalize the externalities of co2 emissions, this means it incentivizes increased fossil f…

Energy is the lifeblood of humanity. We can't demonize it, the only path forward is to embrace it and find a way to utilize the near infinite energy available to us in the universe in a fashion that is environmentally safe. Also capitalism is about efficient allocation of capital. It really doesn't require growth of the economy as a whole (imho). Sure it encourages innovation and growth of new ideas, but that is usua…

> Energy is the lifeblood of humanity. We can't demonize it, the only path forward is to embrace it and find a way to utilize the near infinite energy available to us in the universe in a fashion that is environmentally safe.

I didn't say that energy was bad. What I wrote was

> Capitalism incentivizes increased economic output, which incentivizes increased energy consumption. Barring regulations to internalize the externalities of co2 emissions, this means it incentivizes increased fossil fuel consumption.

I think you may have overlooked the part in italics.

In other words, capitalism incentivizes energy consumption. This is okay. But it's now important to regulate co2 emissions in a way where energy that does not produce co2 emissions is consumed.

(However, the reality is that capitalism is also having difficulty doing that.)

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

#105

Post by ch4s3 » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 10:54 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #98

larsiusprime wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the same way that any imports involve extraterritorial emissions. The US manufacturers a lot of things and and does so with pretty good environmental standards compared to most other places.

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

#106

Post by HKH2 » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 10:57 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #85

geenew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, there's been - Inadvertent climate modification* - Global Warming - Anthropogenic Global Warming - Global Heating - Climate Change - Climate Crisis - Climate Emergency I don't disagree with the thrust of your point, but the same argument you make against 'climate change' could also be made against 'climate destabilizaiton', since destabilization can have human and non-human causes (for example, the ris…

A lot of people (anti-vaxx types) don't buy it because of supposed incorrect past predictions bu science, they believe science is misinterpreting the cause of the change, so it is important to emphasize that you are not unsure about the cause and it is a very serious thing. Most people believe things when people they trust say so, since they know they lack the expertise themselves. So getting important people, politi…

> So getting important people, politicians, celebrities use the best possible term I think is crucial.

Getting them to be consistent in their messaging is even more important.

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

#107

Post by Aunche » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 10:59 PM UTC

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…

Meanwhile, if you ask the interviewee what he thinks about the billions of people who gained access to basic amenities like running water, electricity, and antibiotics, he'd dismiss that capitalism had anything to do with this.

> I can't read this thing without thinking "really? Where is your critical thinking?" About every single paragraph.

A lack of critical thinking is a feature. They want loyal followers to help them overthrow the current system. Whether the new system is actually more egalitarian is secondary to the fact that they would sit on the top.

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

#108

Post by aussiesnack » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 11:21 PM UTC

api wrote: post #33

aussiesnack wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems to be a more general problem than something which is the result of capitalism Sure, but the point is that dismantling of ecosystems is capitalism's central organising principle. It's what capitalism is : denote sophisticated evolved ecosystems as "property" rather than world, then allow the "owners" to dismantle them to create crude technological systems that require ongoing inputs from the outputs of pr…

This is pure ideology, nothing more than a religious screed. I’m not sure how people can not see this. If this were a fundamentalist Christian tirade against the decay of the “family” and the “gay agenda” it would be completely obvious. Stuff like this is the main reason I was once a big climate change skeptic. I read stuff like this and it convinced me the whole thing was just religious apologetics. "Forgive me natu…

> stuff like this is the main reason I was once a big climate change skeptic

That's the only ideological/religious (or perhaps more properly identitarian) statement here. Rather than assess statements about physical reality, you choose to follow your emotional reactions to what people you associate with a movement are saying (or what you interpret them as saying). Even if I had mentioned climate change (which I didn't) and my argument was just rubbish or purely ideological, what could that possibly have to do with your assessment of the gamut of climate change science? Why would you let commenters you don't respect affect your assessments of science? It's precisely the same "argument" forwarded by people who dismiss climate science because they don't like a US politician who once made a film about climate change. Emotional reactivity, nothing more.

> Nature is simply that which is.

Who mentioned 'nature'? Unless you're a metaphysical dualist, it's a concept we can ditch. It's really only of use to marketers.

I'm talking about the planetary entropy increase caused by dismantling complex systems, evolved over thousands of years, to build crude technological ones, and falsely using the metaphor of 'growth' to describe this destructuring process. All this happens within 'nature', if you insist on the term.

Viewed as a physical process (ie. ignoring its own virtual economic self-descriptions which are as unrelated to physical processes as are those of theology), this is what capitalism is.

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

#109

Post by _8j50 » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 11:28 PM UTC

HKH2 wrote: post #106

_8j50 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people (anti-vaxx types) don't buy it because of supposed incorrect past predictions bu science, they believe science is misinterpreting the cause of the change, so it is important to emphasize that you are not unsure about the cause and it is a very serious thing. Most people believe things when people they trust say so, since they know they lack the expertise themselves. So getting important people, politi…

> So getting important people, politicians, celebrities use the best possible term I think is crucial. Getting them to be consistent in their messaging is even more important.

I agree, but clarifying your message is not being inconsistent.

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

#110

Post by datadata » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 11:30 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #28

COVID lockdowns didn't put a dent in climate change and caused immense suffering - and they were pretty tame for a "lockdown". We'd have to make suffering much, much worse, and permanent, to have any effect whatsoever. This will never happen. Until there's an energy source that's more abundant than fossil fuels at the same or lower cost, this is just how it is going to be. Better to worry about how to adapt.

Arguably nuclear is more abundant and lower cost.