It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

GuardianUnlimited ^ | 2/2/6 | Robert Newman

[ZGuy]

Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change.

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. We cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.

Power concentrates around wealth. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

Supermarkets are over. We cannot have such long supply lines between us and our food. Not any more. The very model of the supermarket is unsustainable.

We are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of climate change and peak oil. Once we pass the planetary oil production spike (when oil begins rapidly to deplete and demand outstrips supply), there will be less and less net energy available to humankind. Petroleum geologists reckon we will pass the world oil spike sometime between 2006 and 2010. It will take, argues peak-oil expert Richard Heinberg, a second world war effort if many of us are to come through this epoch.

Catch-22, of course, is that the very worst fate that could befall our species is the discovery of huge new reserves of oil, because the climate chaos that would unleash would make the mere collapse of industrial society a sideshow bagatelle.

You can either have capitalism or a habitable planet. One or the other, not both.

[SierraWasp]

This is just as threatening, this agitation for social change, as is the hardened attitude of the Muslim murders!!! Because it's ultimate end is... either Chairman Mao's "Cultural Revolution" brought here, or "the killing fields," brought here eventually!!!

So how about we turn them against each other and let THEM fight it out while we watch???

[Richard Kimball]

John Belushi cough.

Same old communist tactic. The world will end if you don't adopt my political system.

[USS Alaska]

Its over, give up, it's too late.

[headstamp]

This just illustrates the Left's grand scheme that is planned for us. Using environmental issues/concerns to insert a socialist order on us all.

Gorbachev was no dope to go right into the environmental movement from communism. They are peas in the same pod.

[Uri’el-2012]

Robert Newman: a "useful idiot" for the Marxists.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

The "sustainability" of an economy is just the old tried and disproved notion of capitalism as being "unstable" that made so many middle-thinking people switch to socialism and communism after the Great Depression.

All economic studies and books I've read indicate that Socialism is by far the more unstable and therefore "unsustainable" of the two economies. Capitalism must be efficient for participants to compete and remain vital. When there is no competition, it is only fear of the rulers that coerce behavior. And as we all know, when the cat's away, the mice play.

The author needs to read or reread without a bigoted eye, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg. It is loaded with a true interpretation of the many studies that have been done. Much to his own consternation, at first, since he was a flaming Lefty Greenpeace activist, he discovered that Capitalism is vastly improving the environment.

[SupplySider]

Power concentrates around wealth.
Corporate power is owned by millions of shareholders, the largest group of them being retirement savers.

Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control...
In other words, only by concentrating the power in the hands of a few connected politicians...

...will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.
The most socialist countries are the worst polluters.

Facts don't matter when you are a member of the fundamentalist Church of Marx.

[ModelBreaker]

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. We cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

This nicely boils down the left's fundamental argument--"if you let us wear the Jackboots, we will make sure the birds, fish and deer are happy."

[narby]

We cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

The reason why these guys don't get it is they don't believe that capitalism really works the way it works. If the planet was deteriorating because of "capitalism", then people would desire better living conditions which would inspire capitalism to satisfy the desire by fixing the problem.

These guys may, or may not, actually understand how capitalism is supposed to work. But for a fact they don't really believe it does. Their caricature of capitalism is a bunch of greedy Bill Gates, thieving from the people. The opposite is true. If the capitalists don't satisfy the desires of the people (which include a livable planet), then the capitalists don't get paid. This is the opposite from government, which gets paid by using force, and therefore socialist countries are polluted sink holes, and capitalist countries are where the human race wants to live.

[tom paine 2]

My wife and I recently spent an entire Sunday making snowshoes from a kit. When I finished with mine I stood it up next to a pair that had been made 100 years ago using deer skin instead of the manmade lacing I had. The epiphany I had about how difficult it was to live 100 years ago was amazing. These loony birds would die in ab out two weeks, if they had to go back to pre-industrial America.

[ko_kyi]

Power concentrates around wealth. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

One could make a better arguement that environmental causes are better served when there is little or no "common property" but rather owners who have an interest in protecting the resource.

[samtheman]

I've been to China and Russia in the early 90's, just as the ravages of non-capitalism were receding, leaving in their wake vast wastelands of destruction and environmental chaos that made the recent tsnamis and hurricanes seem mild in comparison.

Since then China has discovered capitalism --- a sort of company-store communist version of it, in which the top party stays the same and they supply all the world's walmarts. Under that kind of commie-controlled capitalism, it's true, the pollution of China has gotten worse.

Meanwhile, here in America. The skies are blue and the forests are green.

[WKUHilltopper]

Oh, brother! Where do these lunatics come from?? Heck, if they want "paradise", just move down to Cuba! Misery loves company!

[untrained skeptic]

Power concentrates around wealth. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

The fatal flaw in this is that Socialism or other system just change who has the power. It places it under government control rather than private control, and private corruption is the minor leagues compared to governmental corruption.

Capitalism is giving people what they want. It also generally gives priority to people who have done something to earn what they have.

I have a lot more faith in allowing productive people to decide things, than a bunch of government officials.

[Travis McGee]

Yep, we all know what wonders that Soviet-style command economies produce.

[jrawk]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1700301,00.html

OK, so check it out, but skip right past the junk science on parade. At least this guy ain't shy. He goes ahead and hangs his philosophy right out there, "I am a watermelon, green on the outside, red in the center!" Unfortunately I find in his feigned courage a sign of desperation likely driven by the fact that around the world capitalism is thriving.

Of course I will have to guess what his socioeconomic solution to capitalism is? None are named. Not even soft core communism, also known as socialism is named in the article. The only statement I can infer is that only provider of a habitable planet is some sort of a system of "not capitalism." I guess after the title his courage ran out... oh well. What is clear to me is that the "working man" ploy of the last century doesn't pull the heart strings to revolution like it used to, so maybe "the sky is falling" might work better. I mean you want to live right? You'll die the day after tomorrow if we don't overthrow power and submit ourselves to… well… "not capitalism."

If he was writing from under the grey acidic skies of Beijing or the extermination offices of Pol Pot it would lend credibility. At least then I would know he was either experiencing the environmental pleasures of "not capitalism" or at least trying his best to suppress capitalism. However in typical fashion he writes from a comfortable London apartment, comfortably heated, on a comfortable laptop, with green light bulbs, a green refrigerator filled with green organic food... all of course provided rather greenly and efficiently by capitalism.

I can just smell from his words the rotted notion that when "not capitalism" comes along to save us from environmental doom he is primed and ready step in and let us know where to put the carbon saving grocery stores and what food items they should carry. Well forget that! Out of spite I am buying one item from Wal Mart this weekend and for good measure Target too!

-- lates
-- jrawk

[frankiep]

I tried reading it once but never finished it. Might have done better if it wasn't like a thousand pages long.

[facedown]

Fertilizer.

[manwiththehands]

Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature.

BS (oops, sorry for the "profanity" from my "foul mouth") but I can name one thing technology will provide some day to make the entire planet as hospitable to as many people who live here: an unlimited supply of clean energy.

We can only be heading in that direction.

Maybe the author wants us to go back to the days of plowshares, family farms and wood burning stoves.

[frankiep]

Maybe the author wants us to go back to the days of plowshares, family farms and wood burning stoves.

Sure, he would like everyone to go back to that. Everyone, that is, except himself and the few other self appointed "elites" who will of course be exempt from such measures. They're very important people don't you know.