Liberals Can't Address the Climate Crisis Because It Means Confronting Capitalism
(www.currentaffairs.org)
return2ozmaLiberals Can't Address _______________ Because It Means Confronting Capitalism
You can put a LOT of stuff on that line
Capitalism culminates in child rape. Real intelligent species we got here.
As long as conservatives continue to exist, the normal people will be forbidden from regulating the pollution industry or addressing climate change.
Friendly Reminder: ALL neo-liberals are conservatives and should be mercilessly dealt with as such. The existence of any conservative, such as Schumer or Jeffries, actively harms everyone.
Capitalism needs a great big continuous series of swift kicks to the balls.
I'd say start with Musk, but knowing of his broken pp problem and his eternal cuckness, he's probably already into this sort of treatment.
One time I had a guy try to get me to do this to him, and I couldn't hold back and started to make fun of him. But he ended up being so earnest and pathetic, that I had to stop making fun of him. For all of you that are into this (except musk and other evil people and evil people supporters), I hope you find what you're looking for.
Neo-liberals get so upset when you mention that leftism actually begins at the desire to see capitalism and such businesses end. They still believe in a free market is self regulating when that's not the case at all, a free market will result in monopolies. Neo-liberals are left of Republicans but we're talking a small matter of degrees. Neo-liberal policies and economics are what got us into this mess, they won't get us out of it.
Wild how you say that second paragraph like it doesn't show what a massive coward you are, posting a disagreement and immediately saying you're running away because you're sure they will hurt your feelings (lol right after you accuse them of making assumptions). It's honestly baffling how commonly people seem to see that as a power move to brag about.
I'm curious what they posted. I wonder if they don't know that neo-liberalism is actually a thing and what I'm referencing here. I avoided the term liberal because it's being used in media and everyday language to mean "left" when even liberal is itself another ideology that isn't heavily left leaning like it's implied.
I'm just frustrated that people don't know these terms have actual ideology to them and that I'm using it in regards to that. On other sites I'd be called a MAGAt for disparaging neo-liberalism while being well entrenched in left wing ideologies.
Their first paragraph was about how you said some things based on only reading a few words about them or something, like the whole liberal/neoliberal conversation hasn't been going on for a while.
And then their second paragraph was saying they are going to block you because they know you'll be condescending, judgemental, and insulting.
I just wonder how we got to this point where so many people have so little resilience against what others say while disagreeing with them, even if it gets insulting. And while I don't think anyone is obligated to engage with someone being like that, I've always seen block functions as a tool to deal with ongoing harassment not one-time disagreement (or in this case, the potential for disagreement).
I'll be honest, I have a dim view of neo-liberals anymore. I've seen what happens when their masks come off and you see who they are. It tends more to a reactionary response than the civility they put forward initially.
I agree with you, block function is for harassment or truly disingenuous people. I've also learned that apparently blocked people can still respond to you on Lemmy you'll just never know. So they can say disparaging things about you without you every knowing.
That's the way block functions should work IMO. So they can't be used to abuse others without them even knowing. As I understand, you can block someone on Facebook and then post numerous status updates about them with full conversations with their social group and they'd have no idea unless someone tells them.
Yes I'm at the mercy of the cruel hatemongers. Unless I submit to their hatred, I am a coward. Thanks for identifying yourself.
You preemptively blocked them because you assumed they would respond in a certain way and then act like a victim that just managed to avoid destruction.
And no, refusing to submit to something isn't cowardly. But poking it and immediately hiding away from it is.
To be fair, I'm not owed anything from them in terms of conservation or argument. We seem to have this hitch up that when someone makes a statement that's an open invitation to an argument with them. It's not, and I let that door swing both ways as well. They're not entitled, and neither am I.
No one's owed participation in their discussion but you can just walk away from a conversation you no longer want to participate in. But what happened here is more like they popped up to disagree with you then immediately acted as if you were wronging them with a reply that you hadn't made and that don't seem in character with your other comments here.
It was an attempt to manipulate the situation into one where they are a victim and are thus the "winner" by fighting back against your attack that you hadn't even made and sidestepping any discussion at all.
If they didn't support capitalism and the world Reagan built they wouldn't be a neoliberal.
You're literally getting upset about it right now.
Yeah I couldn't possibly be talking about the fact that this person is clearly labeling people "neoliberal" who aren't. Thanks for your valuable input tho
I don't see how a comment that very specifically calls out neoliberals and only neoliberals is doing that.
Personally, I think the overall premise of the post is flawed, socialism is more than capable of destroying the planet with overproduction, but that comment even narrows the post's criticism of liberalism as a whole into only neoliberalism.
The thing is that there really isn't much incentive for a capital based society to change course on something until they have gotten as much money from it. So we'll continue using fossil fuels until it's no longer profitable then they'll turn around and start selling the breathing masks needed to survive. A bit of hyperbole, maybe. I look the far right in the USA and say we're past the point of satire or hyperbole.
Who was that comment written for? "Neoliberals get upset..." It was written with a dual purpose. 1) virtue signalling (I am morally righteous, unlike others) 2) "all these neoliberals on here are gonna be put in their place by this post. Ha!"
Considering there isn't really a big population of neoliberals here, and given the constant tankie circle jerking I see here every day, I don't feel my assumptions here are at all unwarranted.
You have a poopy attitude
This thread is full of reasonable actors though. Definitely nothing fucked up here at all. Except me of course.
If you believe what you wrote, one would have to assume this comment was meant to pick a fight
Have you considered just leaving Lemmy altogether, since you seem to have sich a problem with so many people? Or do you secretly enjoy the strife?
A better question is why are you okay with the strife? You either don't notice which is not plausible, or you're a target or perpetrator of the bile. Those last two options are not at all pleasant.
All the time. I hate the strife. I hate the fact that like 10% of the users here are hateful zealots or bigots. Now why do you ask if you aren't looking to pick a fight?
But you need it. You need the strife. It’s why youre still asking me questions. Your self identity is rooted in love of the stroked up arguments you tickle here, but pretend to be an unwilling participant of. And the sweet release for you is the micro hit of dopamine you get when you proudly proclaim (like a toddler) that you’re blocking someone.
Now go ahead and ask further questions.
I had correctly tagged you years ago, though I should've also added "armchair psychologist". I won't miss you.
We can use whatever is proven to work better for healthy people and the climate and follow proven models. We can see how getting off fossil fuels is a good thing for human health. This is the only safe blue dot we have, yet so many think it's disposable and can't wait for some better life later in a magic realm. They trash the planet and don't support politicians that want to help, if they ever have enough majority. It's tribalism and dualism, two peas in a toxic pod, and won't change if the wealthy keep getting their way.
It's not actually confronting capitalism. It's about holding the responsible parties accountable while phasing out products that damage and/or change the ecosystem.
The responsible parties are the capitalists who profit off the status quo. So yeah, capitalism.
Reigning in socialized costs while appropriately taxing the practiced profits would be a good start.
Good news: with every passing day, it's becoming more and more obvious that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and ecology.
Bad news: we're still about to pass environmental thresholds that will have irreversible consequences, and likely lead to an ecological catastrophe.
I mean you say "becoming increasingly clear" but it's been clear as day for about two centuries for socialists. Any progress happening now on that front is just retaking lost ground.
I think it became clear when the oil companies had their internal climate scientist prove it was them, and had that information leaked, and I believe that research was done 30 or 40 years ago?
Longer -- closer to 50 years ago.
Of course. I meant 'more and more obvious' for the general population.
Ah yes, all those socialist climatologists from the 1800s were warning of climate disaster.
(Just pointing out that their wording specifically referenced the environment and it was in response to an article about climate change)
I mean that's fair, but it's also a nitpick since I'm clearly referring to the democracy part of their comment.
I wasn't trying to nitpick, just saying they made a decent point. Regardless of who else knew capitalism was harmful, science being a new indicator of that fact is significant.
Two centuries of worry from socialists and we're still where we're at. They seem pretty fucking useless, ngl.
"We're still where we're at" says the person presumably working a 40 hour work week.
I don't, thank you for 200 years of concern for climate change. Well spent!
Because most people are ignorant and stupid, case in point.
Seems like smugly dismissing people as ignorant and stupid is an ignorant and stupid way of creating change. No points for good thoughts and no action!
I've taken plenty of actions on top of voting. E.g. helped set up a local community food sharing network, volunteer my time on an anarchist community, built my own house, grow my own vegetables, and try my best to support leftist candidates. How about yourself?
Well don't you know, they wrote those comments!!
Really? Can you point to a democracy that has done much of note that doesn't have an economic system based on free market capitalism?
NASA spearheaded the tech behind megawatt wind turbines. Bell Laboratories built the first practical silicon photovoltaic cell. England and the US perfected Hydroelectricity.
Unbridled capitalism is the problem. Well regulated and taxed free market capitalism has proven it's self quite well.
Really? Can you point to a democracy that has done much of note that doesn’t have an economic system based on free market capitalism?
*points to a bombed-out shell of a city*
*points to a council massacred by some suspiciously well-armed drug gangs*
*points to a nation that has survived centuries of economic siege*
For some reason, wealthy liberal democracies get kind of angry whenever you try something other than strictly regulated neocolonial capitalism.
Can you be specific where you are pointing as I can find all that stuff in countries that were attacked or interfered with by non wealthy liberal democracies...
The core problem here is that unbridled capitalism has a very strong tendency to emerge from well regulated capitalism, because the rich won't stop until they've turned the former into the latter. It's a stopgap measure but it doesn't fix anything on a long timescale. Case in point: The developed world today.
And authoritarianism seems to develop from poorly implemented big S socialism. Humans are quite good at thwarting any system to their own benefit...
What? You mean global cartels controlling a plurality (if not majority) of the world's wealth break the free market? Say it ain't so!
Seriously, getting everybody to forget the basic fact that the fossil fuel industry is a cartel is one of the first priorities of the fossil fuel industry's propaganda playbook. This article might as well be written by one of their FUD propagandists.
Cartels are natural parts of capitalism, I don't know why you're pretending they're somehow not capitalist for using the mechanisms of capitalism to gain control of capital.
The ability to weaponize capital markets doesn't make them inherently bad.
Nobody said that, I'm simply pointing out that cartels are part of capitalism, free market or no, and don't "break" anything. They're an inevitable consequence of the system.
Tfw you can't differentiate between economic, social or political systems.
I find the kind of absolutism found in the headline, extremely unhelpful, not to mention total horse shit.
“Liberals” (and I’m not even getting into what people here defined as “liberals”) absolutely can confront capitalism in order to address environmental concerns, they just don’t like to and find it very difficult. But it is absolutely possible, and, with enough cajoling, absolutely will do so.
This “us versus them” attitude, and this level of absolute defeatism only makes the job much more difficult for everyone. Instead, I suggest we all focus on how to get the job done rather than focusing on all of the barriers in our way.
You don't want to get into definitions because it makes your entire point moot. Liberals are capitalism. Its the driving force of liberalism. They go hand in hand. The liberal revolutions were capitalist revolutions. This is an inescapable fact. The most core component of liberalism is private property, which is what capitalism is built on.
Liberals will never abandon capitalism because they are capitalism.
Y'all realize that the fossil fuel industry already isn't a capitalistic entity, right?
Oh, so “liberal” means whatever you want it to mean
Gotcha
If by what i want it to mean you mean what it has literally always meant for 300 years yeah sure.
There's a lot of daylight between "the exact thing a word means" and "the messy group of people who can currently be vaguely be defined that way". Most 'capitalists' are just working class people who've been tricked or don't do a lot of thinking. It's wrong to conflate them with the rigorous meaning of a word that predates any living person.
Tricked or not its what they support and what they vote for.
A couple things. The Americans who call themselves liberals didn't vote for this, and the American liberals who did vote for it were aided and abetted by the most radicalised and financially empowered conservative oligarchs in literal human history. So if your only goal is to put as many people as possible into a toilet and flush it, great job. If not, you might have lost your way.
Yet, you still can’t seem to define it in any meaningful way. Just vague references to other subjective vagaries.
Case in point
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pretty sure my definition was extremely meaningful. Which is why you have gotten so huffy about it.
Says the person who has to project their feelings onto others because they couldn’t defend their position. Or even explain it.
And while I’m very happy for you that you take a great deal of meaning in those vague and subjective references in your previous comment, if you can’t even define them, how can you expect anyone else to take any meaning from it?
I understood it perfectly well. What part were you confused by?
Thank you for a sane take. You are correct in every way.
It also doesn't help that it seems to conveniently forget that the fossil fuel industry is an international cartel. It breaks capitalism by virtue that it can control its entire market and a great many markets (and governments) to which it's connected.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
You do not understand capitalism very well if you think cartels are abberant.
They do not break capitalism.
They are capitalism.
Either oligopolies or monopolies are the theoretical end point of basically any possible unregulated capitalist market structure given enough time, or enough corruption ('subsidies').
If you think thats not correct, please do tell me how global financial markets work.
I'm sure its just very close to that theoretical idea of perfect competition and a near infinite number of nearly equillvalent actors, right?
And money itself, currency, definitely not like a cartel, I'm sure.
Greatest trick the devil pulled on you was just telling you a childish fantasy was reality, and then you just kept on liking that idea, because it made for simple heroes and simple villains.
I think we are all well aware capitalism is working exactly as intended.
I love seeing it. We've got a party in power that's rolling back environmental protections, rolling back regulations, increasing the amount of pollution companies are allowed to dump, while backing a far-right dictator to take over and decimate the Amazon rainforest but, BUT, it's actually the minority party that's been thwarting their efforts' fault.
See I figured the people trying to ban cancerous pesticides and fund green technology would be the good guys, but now from this article I see that actually they're the bad guys all along!
Guess this election I'll just stick my thumb up my ass and dance around the living room to the sound of my own superior thinking instead of voting. That'll show'em 👍
The world is more complicated than deciding who is the bad guys and who is the good guys.
One party would let companies sell you cancerous pesticides and call it infant formula if the bribe is right.
The other will spend all of their time and effort attacking marginal issues which don't directly affect the bottom line of the fossil fuel companies.
It looks like they're trying to save the climate but, as it turns out, we're not going to reverse centuries of industrial activity by providing $500 off a plug-in solar unit or making it so that pesticides can't be applied 4 weeks before harvest instead of 2. They pick their battles, and their chosen battlefields are ones that are in no danger of disrupting the fossil fuel hegemony.
You should still vote, just don't buy into the idea that neo-liberals, R or D, are going to make meaningful changes which would harm fossil fuel companies. There are some leftest candidates running, support them or vote for the lesser evil.
Not voting is always the wrong strategy.
The rule is, always vote for the left-most person running that has a chance at winning. Progressive socialists are the only way forward. But sometimes you gotta hold your nose and vote for the person that's simply not running on the protect-the-pedophiles platform.
The choice isn't as hard as people are pretending that it is
Until you factor in that both of them are pathological liars.
"In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic..."
-Phil Ochs Introduction to "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" (1966)
Liberals won't take on the ecocidal billionaires incinerating the planet because they own too much of the incinerators stock.
What a load of horse shit. Liberals have been addressing climate change for decades. We’ll doo a lot better without this bullshit created to divide the left on every issue.
Mods need to stop allowing this psyop propaganda.
liberalism is a capitalist ideology. it requires capital to move its policies. therefore the policies are dictated by capital. meaning that the ecological barrier between life and death on planet earth is filtered through capitalistic economic beurocracy before it is dealt with on a timeline that is suitable for reality. meaning.
we are fucked if we continue to pretend capitalism will ever address climate change in any meaningful way as long as there are rich people who believe that human rights have a dollar value.
that is liberalisms fundamental flaw. it waits for 1's and 0's before it moves in any meaningful direction, and if there is no backer to put up the capital for it. it isnt happening. and there is far more capital pushing for climate collapse than there is pushing against it. even if the capital holders dont realize what they are "voting for" with their wallet.
to over simplify this scenerio. liberalism says that you have rights (life, liberty, persuit of happiness, food, water, shelter, entertainment, a clean environment, etc) but only if you have the capital to say that you have those rights. if there is no capital to push those rights, then you dont have them.
an example being. if you are hungry. and you walk into a store. but have no money for bread. and you take some bread from the store to feed yourself so you dont starve to death right then and there. the store owner who has capital, and owns property, can call the police or security. and have them perform state sanctioned violence, because you took something which imho, should be a human right in every society. so, if you dont have the capital to say you are entitled to food, a right. then you dont have a right to food.
i detest and hate conservative capitalism. but liberalism is also a scourge of unfetered capitalism in the modern era, the overton window has shifted. liberalism just understands that workers need a few more scraps from the stable for longevity of productivity. and thats basically it. the rest is just fancy marketing and highschool level psychology tricks to keep people voting for them. no lasting meaningful change that cant be undone by larger capital, just crumbs and broken promises.
capitalism, and all its sub ideologies are a poison to the planet and everyone who calls it home.
people have a tendancy to say one thing, and do another. especially when there is an incentive (like capital) to do so.
^ and there ya go ^
LMAO… if anyone wanted an example of the type of person that believes the divisionist psyop rhetoric….
Liberals have burned down the world. Read The Climate Book.
Confronting capitalism means they might have to set aside their comforts for once, which they won’t do.
The title says it all.
The obstacle preventing liberals from addressing climate change is conservatives.
Also corporate funding.
Corporate funding of projects that change climates, to be be precise.
Corporate funding of political campaigns and lobbying for laws that benefit and shield them from consequences.
No, corporate funding of liberal politicians' reelection campaigns.
Corporate funding of projects that change climates, do not help reduce climate change bud.
It's true that corporate projects change the climate, but I'm pretty sure that isn't what @nosuchanon was talking about. The "funding" phrasing is the clue: when corporations harm the climate they're usually just doing it directly through their own actions, not "funding" some other entity. And also, "projects that change climates" aren't "the obstacle preventing liberals."
The comments in the thread are deeply disheartening and why I've almost hit my quota of social media forever. People here like to say "liberal" to apply to anyone they disagree with. It does not matter if the person is 97% in agreement with them, that 3% makes them a "liberal" which really is just a way to say "conservative" to those who hurl that label like a slur.
I don't identify with the fucking labels (goddamn sure not conservative by a sane measure) and yet I believe in most of the same shit you haters do. What's your response? Demonize me on any point of contention, call for violence against those like me, and preach from a high horse. You would think we could agree that the world isn't black and white but apparently the ability for diverse groups to anonymously talk to each other has revealed basically nothing of use except that people hate each other's differences whether large or small.
I expect bile in response to this and a bunch of assumptions about my politics. Which will just confirm my point, sadly. I miss the days when the Internet was young and it felt like it could be a good thing.
No bile, but a clarification. I think that a lot of arguments here boil down to differing definitions. Here's the definition of Liberalism from Wikipedia, posted by @wholookshere@lemmy.blahaj.zone in another part of this thread. It's buried deep inside a thread here, so I'm copying it here for visibility (emphasis mine):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law.[1][2] Different liberals espouse various and sometimes conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support liberal democracy, private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.[3] Liberalism is frequently cited as a major ideology of modern history.[4][5]: 11
In other words, liberalism is pro-capitalism. I think that's one of the main reasons why socialists use "liberal" as an epithet.
What's funny is the person your replying to can't see it because they blocked me.
Oh, that's a bummer. I don't block anyone here, and I'm on one of the most widely-federated instances.
Yes, you are absolutely correct. Although it's actually just devolved into "you disagree with me slightly" on lemmy. I think using the term has zero useful purpose unless we're talking about politicians who embody the definition from Wikipedia. Even then, because people don't often actually know what it means, it's probably limited in usefulness even there.
Thanks. I disagree that it has zero useful purpose though. I happen to think that liberals should be constantly reminded of their contradictory beliefs. Capitalism is fundamentally contrary to most of the other rights listed in that definition. The first liberals that started the philosophy probably didn't realize this, but we now have the benefit of history to inform us. Present liberals need to eventually realize that they must choose between the two if they want to have a consistent philosophy. That means deciding whether they choose conservatism/fascism or socialism.
The thing is though, I'm gonna guess that 90% of users here would never call themselves liberal nor do they support capitalism. The users I'm taking issue with would declare literally anyone a liberal without any solid basis at all besides some disagreement. I've seen it so repeatedly, if you haven't I couldn't know how.
I don't know, I see plenty of people here saying that they're a liberal, even in this thread. Perhaps they're not aware of the common definition. Sure, this is the internet, so people are prone to misunderstand or label others. However, I think it's reasonable to call someone a liberal if they provide clear indications that they are. See how many posts here are saying "but oil companies aren't real capitalism!"
I don't see anyone saying they're a liberal except one dude. And I think they're using the word like Americans have traditionally for years: "left of center".
As far as the oil comment.. found only one like that also..? https://lemmy.world/comment/26330242
I maintain from years of experience that most people on the platform would be considered very left by the average person on the street. Yet despite that, there seems to be a continual witch-hunt for secret "conservatives". To me, that's basically all this post ever was. A signal to the "the real leftists" to say "anyone less than full on socialist causes climate change because they are bad people". You can either think to yourself "that's not me so I will ignore it" or you can see it for what it is in this context.
I didn't mean that a lot of people on this thread call themselves liberal, but on Lemmy in general. I see people defending liberalism all the time. I even interpreted your original top-level comment that I first replied to as defending liberals and liberalism. Were you not? You certainly appear to be complaining in this thread with me that people unfairly rag on liberals.
I see now that it was the same commenter that you linked that made the same point about oil companies being a cartel and not real capitalism in 4 different comments in this post. In any case, that was just an example of people using a general no true Scotsman argument about capitalism. Here's another commenter making this kind of argument under this post: https://lemmy.zip/post/73218813/29425426
I've never noticed a pattern that would resemble a witch-hunt for "secret conservatives" here. I do see a witch-hunt against so-called tankies, and a strong one. I also see people correctly identifying signs that commenters are liberals and complaining about that philosophy.
It does not matter if the person is 97% in agreement with them, that 3% makes them a "liberal" which really is just a way to say "conservative" to those who hurl that label like a slur.
Big part of why I don't consider many lemms are serious about change. Feels like many care more about aesthetics than results. Like the vast majority of Lemmy is left leaning too.
I agree with you. It's a dick measuring contest about who is the most ultra leftist.
You're sounding like a god damn lib there buddy
So shocking, this response. You are sounding like you've never spoken to another person, like everyone else who thinks of the world in terms of: pure leftism as they see it (.01%) and pure demons (99.99%)
Edit: blocking you, I know how this goes. You will be condescending, judgy, and insulting without knowing the first thing other than I'm against this excuse for discourse.
It does not matter if the person is 97% in agreement with them, that 3% makes them a “liberal” which really is just a way to say “conservative” to those who hurl that label like a slur.
I feel like I so often see this sentiment from folks that I disagree with much more than 3%. I've had this ~3% reference genocide, foreign policy, the carceral state, education, economics, immigration, transportation, food, housing, healthcare, and more. The article we are having a conversation about is detailing the ways the current hegomonic global economic system, neoliberal capitalism, is failing to contend with the scientific reality of it's consumption and practices. I, as a communist, have criticism of those that put profit over the only life sustaining planet we know of. With the realities of the climate science, the liberals of our neoliberal capitalist economy are not doing enough to stop the expansion of fossil fuels and are on track to lead us to ecological devastation.
Sorry not sorry if the choice words for those diving us to mass death for personal gain hurt your feelings.
I'm going out on a limb especially after reading that last snarky line, but I wanna think there's good faith in your approach to me here.
I’ve had this ~3% reference genocide, foreign policy, the carceral state, education, economics, immigration, transportation, food, housing, healthcare, and more.
In those cases, those would absolutely be conservatives and those cases are not related to my point. We may quibble over solutions to these issues you listed but I doubt we would disagree at all, at minimum, that they are problems or how they manifest. What I find is that people on the internet love to assign entire worldviews based on next to nothing. Definitely been called a zionist without expressing anything even remotely zionist. Definitely been called a nazi for literally saying "nazis are horrendous and deserve harsh punishments, but they are objectively human beings". In that case I was told I should be executed for being a nazi sympathizer.
The fact that capitalism is THE number one root societal problem and I freely profess that view has NEVER changed anyone's mind in one of these exchanges though. I must be lying, apparently. Everyone on here is trying to out-left each other. Anyone might be a secret conservative who lies about their positions. It's basically reverse-McCarthyism.
sorry if the choice words for those diving us to mass death for personal gain hurt your feelings.
What "hurts my feelings", more accurately written "upsets me that humankind will clearly NEVER be at any level of peace", is that the word liberal carries different meanings to different people and yet it's used as a divisive cudgel here. Online haters love to point to the academic definition as though it's agreed upon and everyone uses the word that same exact way. ...There is no word fully agreed on. Context affects their meanings. People, shockingly, usually do not have PolySci degrees nor do they usually literally even know that textbook definition. On lemmy, "liberal" means "I hate you, your politics are at least slightly different than mine." In the US, for decades liberal meant "more progressive and less conservative." In any case, my issue is the use of the term as a way to identify a hated outgroup, largely imaginary in this space, and it's used at the drop of a hat. These exchanges would NEVER happen in almost any real life context. You likely IRL would hear someone say "liberal" and attempt to parse their meaning based on what else they say. For some reason on lemmy, that never happens.
I do not identify with that label whatsoever, particularly not with how it's defined academically or used as a slur here. I would like to see capitalism neutered or dismantled. The number of people who give a shit that I and many others agree with that goal is depressingly and shockingly low on this platform. That is the point I am making.
Just seeing how you act in this thread I don't trust your view of those interactions, and your mod logs help confirm my hesitancy.
Seems like you lack communications skills and are upset at others for it.
I'm not at all surprised by this reaction. The "Communist" (I'm going to do you the same favor and assume you're a card-carrying Nazi) is completely unmoved, deeply zealous, judgy, and condescending. Not even the least bit surprising. You did deceive me with what you wrote, though I should've taken the hint from your disingenuous last line and not wasted any more of my time.
You're right though. I'm a secret conservative. I spend five minutes at a time many times a day faking a viewpoint which would make absolutely zero sense to fake.
Now I'm blocking yet ANOTHER brilliant sleuth who correctly identified me.
Remind me again which country is the largest polluter on the planet and what their government system is?
I know you are referring to China, and that's true, but there's more to it than that. We have this concept of developmental/climate justice when discussing our policies to save the environment. Western capitalists/imperialists have made use of fossil fuels for a long time now to develop their economies then use that economic might to subjugate the rest of the world and keep them underdeveloped. It is only fair that those who have benefited most from burning carbon take on more of the burden of transitioning away from it. Asking developing nations to shoulder that burden is telling them to deny themselves the benefits of the modern economy.
Ideally, the historically biggest polluters would use the wealth they've accumulated to help this transition. Even if it means some economic pain, they can relatively afford it compared to those other countries. In the mean time, those developing nations could make use of fossil fuels to catch up their economy to some reasonable standard before transitioning, potentially with the help of those developed nations, to renewables.
The trouble is, under capitalism, the people who hold power are the same people who have been made wealthy from exploiting fossil fuels and they have an entrenched interest in maintaining the market for those fuels so they can stay wealthy. Even if the social benefit of a green transition is evident, the threat to their profits is enough to have them fight against it. In this way, at a point in time when we ought to have already begun a transition away from fossil fuels, we have been routinely blocked by those entrenched interests.
China is a case for why socialism is better positioned to tackle this issue. When modern China was founded, it was an agrarian society previously under the thumb of both feudalism and western colonialism. Meanwhile Western countries had been industrializing off of coal and then later oil for a considerable time before this. So they made use of fossil fuels to develop their country into the modern industrialized country we see today. (Also remember that a lot of their industry was aimed at exporting to western consumers, so their development and the resulting carbon footprint can't be entirely disentangled from western capital.) But what have they been doing with that development? China has been using it's ability to set economic priorities and divert capital where needed to make great strides in things like solar panels, electric vehicles, and mass transit. Because at least some capital is controlled by interests who aren't directly beholden to the profit incentive, they are able to do what needs to be done for the good of society and the world instead of allowing for markets to eternally doom them to short term priorities.
The US has an economy developed enough to take care of everyone and still develop new technology if they chose to do so for quite some time now and we've known about climate change for decades. We needed to start a massive project on the level of the New Deal, industrializing for WWII, or the space race decades ago, but we have failed to do that because of who controls the resources and political power in our society. The meager attempts at environmental regulation have done little to slow down climate change. It's only gotten worse over time and at an accelerating rate that will only get worse as we experience more feedback loops.
Despite all of this, what is the capitalist class doing? They're pushing to get rid of the few regulations we have. They're building data centers to spend even more energy on a project that arguably won't even benefit most people. They're continuing to incite wars over resources. They're building bunkers so they can hide away from the consequences of their actions. Capitalism is killing us. We might not agree with everything that China is doing, but they are showing what a government can do when it is motivated by interests other than capital.
Are the capitalists building out wind farms in California, Oklahoma and Texas good or bad? How about all the solar farms in the desert? Is Slate Auto good or bad as it's partially funded by Bezos? How many data centers is china building? (hint: lots) Your obsession with capitalism seems to ignore the vast variation of human nature...
I mean, of course it's good if we get those things on a scale that will fix the problem. However, the critique socialists have of capitalism isn't based on human nature or some moral judgement of individual capitalists. It's based on an understanding of capitalism as a system and what forces drive it to produce the results we observe.
There is of course the labor issue, but let's focus on the market aspect and how it relates to environmental issues for now. In a market economy, the pursuit of profit and growth combined with the laws of supply and demand create pressures that make some companies successful and others fail. This can be looked at like an evolutionary process. Survival of the fittest. Capitalists aren't bad because they are bad people, it's that only bad people become successful capitalists. Companies that are unwilling to engage in maximum profit seeking behavior over the long run get filtered out.
Then there is the financial aspect of this. Investors generally speaking don't make money off of steady profits. They make money when the price of the stock increases above what they bought it for so that they can sell it for a profit. This dynamic demands continual growth. A company that is not growing is one that will be abandoned by investors or pressured to do so through ownership voting. This growth is necessary to outcompete other companies who can also seek to reinvest or acquire more capital to expand further.
These phenomena aren't really in dispute. A pro-capitalist economist would say that this decentralized system of economic pressures creates incentives for growth and innovation. These incentives ultimately result in an optimized economy that has efficiently allocated it's resources in the way that meets people's needs. There is some degree of truth to this, but ultimately the claim that this form of economy produces desirable results for society demands evidence of these outcomes. It also depends on what you value. Was capitalist industrialization good for the workers who died in unsafe factories? Was it good for those in other countries which we violently exploited for profit? Was it good for managing our environment and natural resources in a sustainable way?
There is plenty of evidence that despite the progress made under capitalism, it has failed to produce desirable results in many respects as well. And once again, capitalist economists have analyses of these failures. For example, the damage to the environment is a problem referred to as "the tragedy of the commons." While we all benefit from having a habitable environment, the pressures of the economy are such that no one person or corporation has enough of an incentive to take on the costs of pursuing that benefit on their own. And again, this isn't merely a matter of preference for greed. Companies that choose to take on this additional cost for a relatively small return risk losing to companies that do not do so.
It is also evidently true that market competition is not always sufficient to keep companies in check. For all sorts of reasons, various industries have consolidated into monopolies or near monopolies. The basic assumptions of the market model are no longer satisfied. (Many buyers and sellers such that none have the ability to act as price setters.)
On top of the mainstream capitalist economic analysis of capitalism, there are of course additional critiques by Marxist economists, but this is already getting long enough.
Lastly, the typical liberal response is to say "ok, capitalism has these problems on it's own, but we can just regulate it." This sounds like a nice solution, but the problem is that these capitalists are able to convert their economic power into political power through campaign donations, media ownership, etc. We keep trying to regulate corporations, but these efforts ultimately fail or prove insufficient because the government which would pass and enforce these laws owes it's political power to the very corporations it would be regulating. Fundamentally, the problem with capitalism is that it's antidemocratic. A government can't be of, by, and for the people if it depends on the wealth of a handful of capitalists more than it does the votes of the general public.
People often misunderstand what socialism is. It's not just one thing. It's not just "the government does stuff." There are two core components of it: 1) You must observe and analyses the world and the relationships within it to understand how things change and then adapt to these conditions and changes accordingly. 2) That political power in society should be in the hands of the working class, aka the majority of the population.
The goal in this is to have the means by which we can collectively make decisions that we believe will benefit from society. That doesn't mean we'll get everything right, but at least we had that choice and we can learn from our mistakes and move on. Capitalism at it's most theoretical is a system with nobody at the wheel. "The invisible hand" of the market guides priorities for society, not any particular conscious choice by people. More realistically, capitalism is a system in which wealthy capitalists make decisions for the rest of us. In either case, if the incentives aren't aligned to be in favor of public good, then we don't get public good.
Also, before you go "but China" again: I already said that I don't agree with literally everything China, or any particular government, does. Doing so would be dogmatism. It would fail the first principle of socialist philosophy to analyze the world scientifically. I can look at their successes and failures and use that knowledge to make future decisions. Even for their successes, it isn't automatically the case that we should copy their successes. Different times, places, and people create different conditions which need to factor into your analysis. What worked for them may not work for us, but it at least tells us something.
Holy wall of text, batman. It would be hilariously ironic if it's AI generated, but I am too lazy to check. But to the point: what is the "working class" in modern society?
You must observe and analyses the world and the relationships within it to understand how things change and then adapt to these conditions and changes accordingly.
Capitalism is quite good at that.
That political power in society should be in the hands of the working class, aka the majority of the population.
It is in America and many other western nations. The main problem is life is too easy and no one votes. Where big S socialism has been tried on a large scale, that power disappears quite quickly...
Per capita, or are you just trying to be snarky? Because I believe Qatar, and religious monarchy, but I don't think that's the answer your fishing for.
Palau, actually, but Qatar isn't far behind.
Simple question, simple answer. It's China by a large margin. Also check out their industrial ground pollution, which is bad but nothing compared to the old Soviet Union. Your real answer might be humans are the problem rather than specific governmental/economic systems.
As with almost every statistic, if you're not measuring per capita, your basically just measuring population. Convenient blindness to that suggests you're acting in bad faith.
And speaking of blindness, ignoring the history of communism is your version of bad faith...
I mean that still dodges the point but to yours, I don't ignore the history, I think the actions and rapid industrialization of the USSR and China lead to incomprehensible suffering. I also don't think it's a valid comparison especially given the modern context has China doing a lot of work in the global transition to renewables.
Huh weird response for someone who is righteous
They're not going to act in good faith. They're a tankie.
China and it's a dictatorship but if you mean economic system, it's capitalist. It also manufactures everyone else's shit for them so if you order shit off Amazon in the US or Canada, that increases China's pollution too.
I totally agree. A lot of Lemmy users seem to have a hard on for big S socialism. As a gen X California liberal I hated the guy since before he was president but Ronald Reagan has a banger of a political quote:
The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.
Great advice if you want to get things done rather than generate social media cred...
Yeah. It's not even socialism normally when people are so terrible in the comments. The real hatemongers are tankies. They see political opponents in absolute terms and they honestly believe those opponents must be killed to make progress.
And yeah, even Reagan is capable of saying a correct thing, even though he was the kind of monster these people ought to be hating. Instead of people who simply don't have extremist and absolutist political views. I for one haven't gotten everything figured out. The fact that they think they have is how you know they've got nothing of value to say, frankly.
I do find tankies an interesting phenomenon. Deluded individuals not succeeding in modern society? Russian bots trying to crap everyone out? Combination of the two? Hard to say...
Yeah. Definitely some portion are people who literally never speak to other people but read enough communist literature to find themselves to be above everyone who hasn't read it and also bought into it fully.
An entire article about capitalism and the economics of fossil fuels? Surely they'll mention the fossil fuel industry is NOT a capitalistic free market, allowing it to actively suppresses the process of internalizing externalities (via environmental cost accounting), right?
No mention? Bummer.
They're arguing the opposite? Whacko.
Free market is a buzzword capitalists use to confuse the reality that capitalism's basic goal leads to anti-competitive cornering of the market.
Why do you all think so goofily?
Either free market is a buzz word and so is liberal, which in this instance is being used as a straw man
Or they're both genuinely definable and it's clear what they mean which makes neither a buzzword they're just.. words.
Listen, if you can't tell what is propaganda and what is not you probably shouldn't bother commenting.
I was not speaking to the term liberal. It is not a buzzword, but it definitely is a masterful piece of propaganda that masks the reality that everything a liberal "stands for" is instantly thrown out the window when money is involved.
This is seen in the two-tiered justice, political, and economic systems liberals are so proud of.
The data demonstrates that no one can stop the climate crisis from being addressed due to how cheap the solutions have become. Even in the US where the administration is waging all-out war against anything “green” ~90% of new grid additions this year are wind, solar, and battery.
Most of the world’s population is concentrated in regions with high insolation and those regions are building out solar at a tremendous pace. Most of the world also doesn’t get around by cars and that’s where you’re seeing very rapid adoption of two- and three-wheeled electric transportation. Very little of this is state-directed, it’s driven entirely by cost.
A carbon tax is still one of the best ways to address climate change without confronting capitalism. In Canada, the liberals are the only ones who have put it forward. I have no indication that conservatives are willing to take their turn implementing a carbon tax so I'm not sure why this article takes aim at liberals.
I have no indication that conservatives are willing to take their turn implementing a carbon tax so I'm not sure why this article takes aim at liberals.
This is small l liberals, as in the political ideology, but also, as the article points out, the Liberals under Carney repealed the carbon tax. That's a very small part of why the article takes aim at liberals.
All that happens is that big polluters buy smaller polluter's carbon credits to continue producing at normal operation. It doesn't solve the problem, it just makes a new market to get rich with.
It's so frustrating how left will literally blame themselves before they blame conservatives.
No, everybody with a brain blames conservatives. It's just that it literally goes without saying, in the sense that they're a lost cause and so it isn't worth discussing.
Leftists talk about liberals because they're the ones that have the capacity to be persuaded.
Let me put it this way: If someone believes that a person who has voted conservative lacks individual agency then the person making that judgement does not actually hold liberal/leftist values.
They are dividing and othering.
Hey look, it's the tesseract ui dev that made a hidden censor lists of various human rights activists trying to incite leftest horizontal hostility.
Crazy how liberals will always point to their political partners (conservatives) as the cause of all society's ills yet are incapable of materially unwinding those ills: and if anyone amongst their ranks makes a sincere demand to unpick these structures they leave no stone unturned to politically assassinate them.
The right is exactly who has been begging the liberals for a pipeline, to remove carbon taxes and EV mandates, and who is threatening to break Canada apart in support of fossil fuel combustion.
Nobody here is blaming the left though...
Only from the perspective that the people you disagree with are called liberals and that they are actually just conservatives
Complete non-sequitur. No leftist absolves conservatives of blame for the climate crisis.
This reeks of “leftists have criticisms of liberal’s positions, so therefore they must like conservatives and so they’re also actual Nazis too” team sports mentality
Or you could just RFTA.
I won’t blame the left before I’ll blame conservatives, but those on the left have at least a little bit of blame… All this infighting and finger-pointing and factional divisiveness? How is that helping? It’s exactly what the conservatives want: infighting amongst ourselves rather than focusing on the real problems that the conservatives are causing.
Sure, we didn’t cause the problems, but a bunch of internal bickering sure isn’t going to fix any of them. And we are well past figuring out who is to blame for all of it. It’s time to start working on long lasting solutions.
But I don’t see a lot of that going on. Just a bunch of grievances and more people looking for more people to blame.
You could say that about any political group. Even MAGA is fracturing, as well as Alberta, Canada separatists. The Canadian conservatives have fractured and joined forces again so. Many. Times.
So why blame the left for things literally anywhere?
Also, before you pull out purity tests, whenever someone complains about purity tests, its usually a disgarmeent that human rights belong to everyone. Thats usually what they mean.
I don't find blame-shifting whataboutisms particularly helpful, either.
way to miss the point
So you blamed the left for looking for someone to blame, while blaming that problem only on the left. So how is an example of it happening everywhere whataboutism?
How is that helping?
By pointing out that liberals are part of the problem, laying the groundwork for throwing out false solidarity with the elites and building a climate movement based on class solidarity? You cannot solve the problem if you refuse to understand the problem. Seriously, read the article; it's high-quality stuff.
How is it false solidarity to acknowledge that the climate crisis affects everybody?
How does dividing up everybody into little groups, how does creating all of this conflict help anybody?
How does it do anything but make you feel better about your own sense of identity?
How is it anything but a bunch of circle jerking?
Because it sure as shit isn’t fixing the climate to tell me how much better you are than everyone else
Maybe... maybe the article has the answers to your questions?
If you can’t even defend your own position, then why bother arguing it at all?
At this point, you’re just parroting something someone else told you. It doesn’t come off as even the slightest bit sincere— or even that you convincingly understood it in the first place.
Reported for bad faith argument/trolling.
Pointing out that your logic is fundamentally flawed, and that you can’t even defend your own argument is “bad faith”?
Isn’t that what Trump does when he hears something he doesn’t like? Blame everyone else?
What side are you on anyway?
