this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.world 29 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Blaming everything on capitalism is oversimplistic and reductive, to be honest.

Climate collapse is a result of industrialization and not capitalism, to start. Unless you want to explain how Stalin and Mao were still burning coal.

[–] Elderos@sh.itjust.works 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Whatever social economic model which can funnel power and authority to the very top is bond to ruin us. Humans are too greedy to sit at the top of such hierarchies.

[–] Cowbee@lemm.ee 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yep, that's why decentralization is so important, and why leftist organizational structure ie decentralization and democratization of production is going to be so critical moving forward.

[–] cristo@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If only thats what politically active leftists actually pushed for.

[–] Cowbee@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

Many do, not all of course. Factionalism hurts everyone, at the end of the day.

[–] Cowbee@lemm.ee 11 points 11 months ago

Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution are inseparable from one another. The failure of 20th century Socialist states to adequately address green energy goals can be attributed to rapid industrialization to attempt to keep pace with Capitalist entities.

Going forward, the reason why Green Energy isn't the standard in the US is due to oil companies, not efficiency. The profit motive stands in direct confrontation with the good of all.

That's just Climate Change, too. Capitalism's failures of hierarchical and consumerist nature will exist as long as Capitalism exists.

Not every problem is because of Capitalism, but many are, and at the end of the day this is just a meme.

[–] Sanyanov@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Besides what another commenter noted about indistrialization being product of capitalism and then fierce competition, here's one more thing:

Do you see all those green activists buying reusable bags? Taking their bottles, recycling everything? Well, this has already been there in the past, and most notably - in socialist countries. Pretty much till its death USSR, for example, heavily favored reusable things, there just weren't plastic bags and plastic bottles and all that waste, and recycling, especially of glass and metal and paper, was a super normal thing and people got money/trade-in for that.

[–] shrugal@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

What kind of f*cked up argument is that? I don't think the climate models were quite as advanced back then.

They had no idea that influencing the global climate was even a possibility, so you can hardly judge the morality of their decision-making by how much CO2 they produced. Or do you want to blame them for not building enough solar panels as well?

The problem with capitalism in this regard is not that it produced a lot of CO2 back in the days, but that it won't stop even after learning about the destructive effects.

[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The USSR totally knew about climate change being a thing. Climate change is not a "new thing". Oil companies have known about it for almost a century now, they built their oil rigs to withstand rising sea levels for example.

The USSR did know about it as well, at least since the sixties: https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_329370_smxx.pdf

Fedorov’s article appears to be one of the earliest direct engagements with the problems associated with climate change and, more specifically, anthropogenic climate change in the Soviet Union. However, this theme received more concerted discussion and debate from the early 1960s. Two meetings of particular note took place in Leningrad in April 1961 and June 1962, both of which were organised by the Main Geophysical Observatory in tandem with the Institute of Applied Geophysics and the Institute of Geography and brought together a range of Soviet scientists, including geographers, in order to discuss the ‘problem of the transformation of the climate’ (see Gal’tsov, 1961; Gal’tsov and Cheplygina, 1962).

[–] 1847953620@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

whines about reductionist rhetoric, uses insanely reductionist example

[–] 31337@sh.itjust.works 0 points 11 months ago

Capitalism provides incentives to externalize as many costs as possible (such as pollution), and incentivizes and cannot even function without growth (which leads to more resource usage and pollution). Just because the forms of government/society under Stalin and Mao were also bad for people, doesn't mean capitalism is not also bad for people.