The Climate Crisis? Its Capitalism, Stupid.

[elleng]

'Even casual readers of the news know that the earth is probably going to look very different in 2100, and not in a good way.

A recent Times opinion piece included this quotation from the paleoclimatologist Lee Kump: “The rate at which we’re injecting CO2 into the atmosphere today, according to our best estimates, is 10 times faster than it was during the End-Permian.”

The End-Permian is a pre-dinosaurs era of mass extinction that killed 90 percent of the life in the ocean and 75 percent of it on land. It is also called the Great Dying. Although those who write about environmental change like to add notes of false personalization around this point — “My children will be x years old when catastrophe y happens” — there is really no good way of acclimating the mind to facts of this magnitude.

However, the cause of the disaster that, by all indications, we are already living through should be clearer. It is not the result of the failure of individuals to adopt the moralizing strictures of “green” consciousness, and it is a sign of just how far we have to go that some still believe reusable shopping bags and composting (perfectly fine in their own right) are ways out of this mess. . .

On the defensive for centuries, socialists have become quite adept at responding to objections from people for whom the basic functions of life seem difficult to reproduce without the motive power of capital. There are real issues here, issues that point to the opacity of sociability, as Bini Adamczak’s recent book, “Communism for Kids,” playfully explores. But the burden of justification should not fall on the shoulders of those putting forward an alternative. For anyone who has really thought about the climate crisis, it is capitalism, and not its transcendence, that is in need of justification. And don’t be surprised, or fooled, when its defenders point to the tireless work of intelligent people.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/opinion/climate-capitalism-crisis.html?

[HeartachesNhangovers]

1. The problem isn't capitalism - it's consumerism.

Homesteaders who live out in the woods and live off the honey their bees make or the wool from their sheep are capitalists - they believe in private property, they believe in free exchange of their goods for money or services.

The problem is people who buy 72" TVs, or have a car for every person in the house, or have a 5,000 square foot house, or a new car every time their lease is up, or who fill the landfills with their take-out coffee cups and lids, who heat their homes to 75F in the winter and 60F in the summer.

Capitalism doesn't imply or require consumerism.