Sicily - which has already been brought to its knees by a prolonged heatwave - is battling wildfires that are threatening towns and cities across the island.
Sicily - which has already been brought to its knees by a prolonged heatwave - is battling wildfires that are threatening towns and cities across the island.
Can someone explain why capitalism is the cause of these fires instead of just down voting the shit out of us for asking a question?
Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
The goal of pure capitalism is to extract as much wealth for yourself and shareholders as you possibly can, as fast as you possibly can. The consequences of that are to be the most successful, you’re pushed into making selfish decisions, ones that benefit you to the detriment of others. What we have in the world now is that taken to the extreme. Oil companies don’t give a fuck if global warming is killing the planet, they’re making money now. Industrial farms don’t care if the rain forests die, they need that land to sell crops. Fishing operations don’t care if entire species are going extinct, they need to catch more to make more. Companies don’t worry about long term problems because they don’t show up on a quarterly balance sheet, and they need to show growth for their investors or they’ll go under.
the industrial revolution was driven by capitalism
Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
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Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
This is absurd nonsense. Emissions come from people needing shit like electricity.
Even communists like electricity.
And there are a plethora of ways to generate electricity cleanly. Nuclear, wind, solar, hydro. You know who has lobbied against these heavily? The oil and gas and coal industries, because it would hurt their profits if we used clean energy. Coal and natural gas account for 98% of the emissions from electricity generation in the US.
You know another major contributor to emissions? Transportation. Having efficient mass public transportation would eliminate a huge amount of emissions, and we would have more walkable cities with a healthier population. You know who has lobbied against that for decades? The auto industry because it would hurt profits if people didn’t need to buy a car to get anywhere.
Chevron, BP, Exxon, and Shell make up 10% of carbon emissions just between those four companies. All lobby heavily against green energy and public transportation because it would hurt profits.
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And they have known about oil and gas being major contributors to climate change and the effects of climate change for nearly 100 years. And have lobbied against things that could have eliminated our need for oil and gas by now because it would hurt profits.
How do you not get this. They have known about climate change for decades and actively work to keep harming the climate because of profit.
Slide those goalposts all over me daddy.
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I don’t think capitalism is infallible lol
I swear we need to retire the term ‘Capitalism’ entirely because it seems like it’s impossible to discuss its flaws without someone just assuming it’s a statement in favour of resurrecting Stalin. This has nothing to do with communists.
Electricity can be produced in many different ways - it’s just that some are more profitable than others.
Capitalism also creates an entire web of incentive structures that make it hard to develop more sustainable alternatives - e.g car industry creating ‘lock-in’, as described in this paper. I’m sure a similar paper could be written about some Soviet bloc state 60 years ago, but that’s irrelevant. This is a problem of Capitalism and the Soviet bloc doesn’t exist anymore. Just cause ‘Stalin bad’ doesn’t mean ‘Capitalism can do no harm ever’.
We clearly need a new definition of you think capitalism creates barriers to innovation lol
Did you know that to ascribe an externality to a specific cause you need to show that only that specific cause has that externality?
Market capture exists everywhere, in every economic system.
Ah the innovation argument, so original. “Capitalism creates innovation”. Everyone says it all the time so it must be true right? Well it isn’t. Data doesn’t support this argument.
Pretty much every major innovation of the past century has come from publicly funded and/or not-for-profit research and development. Capitalists only step in once the difficult part is done and the ‘innovation’ can be repackaged into something profitable in the short term.
See the following: https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/7/3/459/1693191
https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pdf
Capitalism definitely creates barriers to certain types of innovation. Mainly innovation that isn’t profitable - see ‘planned obsolesence’. It also creates barriers to profitable innovation sometimes; just look up ‘patent trolls’.
But I was never even talking about innovation. You just jumped to it because that is the classic buzzword talking point that is constantly repeated everywhere. ‘Develop better alternatives’ doesn’t have to be ‘innovation’. We have the technology already, we’ve had it for decades. Trains and cycle lanes = better alternatives to cars. Nuclear energy = better alternative to fossil fuels.
Sure, this might be the case for every existing economic system. I believe we need to develop something new. Just like modern Capitalism was inconceivable to someone living in the Feudal era, a new system might be inconceivable for us right now. But it is imperative we try.
Hey man I’ll just leave this here: https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/financing/siemens-financial-insight-center/blog-post-capex-trends-and-investment-enablers.html
Also glad to hear you’re for dense cities and energy deregulation. End single-family zoning.
Lmaooo “Greenablers”. What a joke. That’s literally a corporate PR puff piece. How is corporate greenwashing PR supposed to convince me that Capitalism drives innovation (or is good for the climate?) when countless studies of data prove it wrong? The only piece of data he cites is about the billions being spent on the ‘energy transition’. I checked out his source. A good chunk of that is just government investment. Another big chunk of that is electric cars - a really stupid thing to invest in as they’ll compete with renewable energy for rare earth minerals etc. Not to mention all the emissions they’ll cause in production, and the fact that they’ll still need half the world to be paved over in asphalt for roads and parking. Better than petrol or diesel sure, but hardly efficient.
Dense cities yes. End single-family zoning yes (doesn’t really exist where I live, the US is an insane place).
Energy deregulation no. I’m sure it will be great for opening new coal plants, not a chance in hell will it lead to more nuclear power or anything useful.
More on the data: global investment in the energy transition in 2021 = $755 billion total investment in energy in 2021 = $1.9 trillion (source)
Also I’ll just leave this here:
It’s literally an investment blog lol.
Also you don’t need to tell me your thoughts on things. That was me ending the conversation on a friendly note.
https://pitjournal.unc.edu/2022/12/24/how-capitalism-is-a-driving-force-of-climate-change/#:~:text=Most climate scientists have come,from a global capitalist drive.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/world/heat-wave-climate-change-us-china-europe-intl/index.html
Capitalism demands and requires constant growth/metastasis instead of equilibrum. Consume, consume, consume, leads to unnecessary industry to make unnecessary things to increase profits for private individuals who never stop demanding more year over year. They use their propaganda machines, all major media which they own, to impress on everyone that not consuming needlessly makes you a loser and a bad person who is missing out and uncool, to further drive consumption for profit. Which has led us inexorably here.
You’re getting downvoted because it’s hard to believe there are any folk out there who are arguing in good faith that climate change is not at least partially (if not majorly) impacted by man-made causes. Capitalism being a driving factor would go hand in hand with climate change due to its proponents of “fuck you I got mine” and get rich at any cost. Capitalism is not for the people, it is for the capitalist, and the capitalists have shown that they are willing to burn the world down for short term gains. See the picture above.
If you can tell me you believe that fossil-fuel executives, having looked at this picture, think “oh man we really should’ve been listening to scientists for the past half century”, then I can show you a liar.