Thread by @Maksimiljian

capitalism is fueling climate change, climate change will cause mass (im)migration into the warmer climates (for some colder climates) the water levels will rise, and eco-fascism will begin and that will bring on world war 3. threadreaderapp.com/thread/1171444…

George Monbiot: Capitalism relies upon perpetual growth, which cancels out all our efforts in combating climate change

nationalpost.com/opinion/munk-d…

Naomi Klein on how free market capitalism fueled climate change.

video by @mexieYT

hbomber debunks climate change denialism

Great article:

"Global climate change is not the responsibility of humans in general. It is the result of the way in which production is organized on our planet. In other words, it is the responsibility of capitalism."

leftvoice.org/capitalism-is-…

Capitalism Is Destroying the Planet—Let’s Destroy Capitalism!

leftvoice.org/capitalism-is-…

The existential threat facing Earth must be addressed now. But even with radical measures, the damage is already immense and will take generations to reverse. peoplesworld.org/article/capita…

We will simply have to throw the kitchen sink at this. Policy tweaks such as a carbon tax won’t do it. We need to fundamentally re-evaluate our relationship to ownership, work and capital.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Capitalism Made This Mess, and This Mess Will Ruin Capitalism

To understand climate change, one environmental historian says we need to realize we've entered a new era: the Capitalocene.

wired.com/story/capitalo…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fuelling
George Monbiot

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

The malthusian and social-darwinistic “overpopulation” arguments are a precursor to eco-fascism and climate genocide, don't fall for them!

rainershea612.medium.com/the-overpopula…

Sebastian Kurz, the conservative chancellor of Austria, recently formed a coalition government with the Green party and said "we can protect the environment and our borders." ft.com/content/e8435d…

This is potentially the direction of a lot of these European green parties will go in if they replace the ailing labor/social democratic parties.

Bookchin wrote about this topic of course

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray…

traversingtradition.com/2018/04/02/mod…

"Never has there been so much food in the world. Farmers have grown far more this year than all 7 billion of us could possibly consume, so mountains of surplus foodstuffs are piling up. And the price of that food is falling fast.

Yet there is hunger."

theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-wo…

theguardian.com/sustainable-bu…

sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

The economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

ucsusa.org/resources/glob…
Overwhelmingly, scientists agree that climate change is due primarily to the use of fossil fuels which release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air.

Gases trap heat within the atmosphere and are having a wide range of effects on the Earth, including rapidly melting polar ice, rising sea levels, deadly heat waves, increases in severe weather events, wildfires, and the loss of plant and animal life, inc. species extinctions.

news.un.org/en/story/2019/…
Soil erosion and desertification from agricultural practices, deforestation, and urbanization. - Land degradation from overgrazing by livestock. - Species depletion and extinctions from overexploitation (overhunting, overfishing).

The formal structure of society under capitalism, which has formed over a long process of historical transformation, is called capitalist society, and capitalist society is a class society.

All class societies are made up of two broad categories (classes) of people: direct producers, who produce the goods and services which allow societies to exist; and non-producers, who live off the production of others.

If one of these classes exists, its opposite must also exist. Therefore, a class can only exist in relation (connection) to another class. And the way these classes relate to one another is through their relation to a third thing called the means of production.

The means of production are all of the things which the producers of society need in order to produce: the natural resources and raw materials used in production, the tools and machinery used to transform those materials, the infrastructure used for transporting

and distributing those transformed materials, and the workplaces where the work is performed. In capitalist society, the working class (a.k.a. the proletariat) are the producers of society. They relate to the means of production as non-owners.

As the non-owning class, they relate to the owning class by selling their labor-power in order to buy what they need to survive. The capitalist class (a.k.a. the bourgeoisie) are the non-producers of society. They relate to the means of production as owners.

As the owning class, they relate to the non-owning class by having the privilege of buying their labor-power in order to live off their production.

You may sometimes hear people say that "we" as a whole, as the "human species", are to blame for the destruction of our natural environment. In this view, "destructiveness" is considered to be an inherent "human" trait.

In this view, humans destroy because being destructive is simply "who we are". This view does not distinguish between the powerful and the disempowered, the personally wealthy versus the poor, exploiters versus exploited, oppressors versus oppressed.

Blame is not assigned to specific humans, or specific human activity, but to humanity in the abstract. To consider something in the abstract means to consider it as an idea, by itself, separately from the things which are connected to it in reality.

When we consider human activity as an idea separate from its connections to class society, we lose sight of the many real, tangible conditions which lead to those activities.

To place blame on "humans" in the abstract as a "destructive species" is not only incorrect, but is misanthropic. Misanthropy is a dislike, contempt, or hatred of humankind or human nature. Misanthropic views like this, which regard humans as a "disease" -

or "cancer" infecting the Earth, and which place an equal or greater amount of blame on the poor, oppressed, marginalized, and disempowered, lead to incorrect ideas about human "overpopulation", and even more horrifying ideas about how to control or reduce it

including forced sterilization and genocide of certain "undesirable" or "inferior" people. If "destructiveness" isn't an inherent human trait, then why do humans do things like clear-cut forests for timber, or level mountaintops for coal?

For the worker, it isn't because of a desire to destroy their natural environment. Lumberjacks don't clear-cut forests because they hate trees. Miners don't mine coal for burning at power plants because they want to raise global temperatures.

In fact, these workers may value nature greatly, and feel regret about its destruction. Their feelings, however, are outweighed by their economic needs. Under capitalism, workers are alienated (profoundly separated) from the means of production.

The resources, tools, infrastructure, and workplaces needed to produce the things they need to survive are owned by the capitalist class, the private owners of the means of production.

Because they are non-owners of the means of production, wage-workers have little choice but to sell their labor-power in exchange for wages in order to buy what they and their families need to continue existing.

For the majority of people, environmentally destructive work isn’t freely chosen, but is the result of need, and these needs come from social arrangements (such as non-ownership of the means of production) which are outside of their control.

They are doing what they need to do to survive in a system that alienates them from their own productive power. One of the main causes of environmental destruction under capitalism is its demand for unlimited expansion.

While it's important to recognize greed as a motivator, the need to expand and accumulate greater profits does not depend on whether or not a capitalist is personally greedy.

Just as wage-workers are compelled by an economic system to act against their better impulses, capitalists are also compelled to act against their better impulses. Under capitalism, capitalists must compete against one another on the market.

Sheer survival requires entrepreneurs to grow their enterprises in order to remain ahead of their competitors. They must try to devour their rivals, or be devoured by them. The key to survival in this system of vicious competition is expansion.

Expansion leads to greater profits, and profits are invested into greater expansion in order to outcompete market rivals.

This cycle of expansion and profits leads to reckless, irrational, and ecologically destructive economic growth which cannot be persuaded to stop by moral or ethical arguments. Each capitalist in the world is engaged in production and exchange for the sake of profit.

In the quest for profit, it's usually the most immediate results (those which will result in greater profits and ensure the growth and survival of the business) that are considered to have the most importance

and exert the most force in deciding the capitalist's actions. The distant effects of these actions are rarely taken into consideration. To expand production, cut costs, and secure greater profits, capitalist enterprises often engage in environmentally harmful practices.

For example: - Dumping waste materials into oceans and rivers. - Expelling waste gases and atmospheric pollutants into the air. - Overusing water in production. - Sabotaging more environmentally friendly technologies.

Clearing wildlife habitats to expand suburban sprawl with paved surfaces and single-family homes. The destructive long-term effects of practices like these are considered by capitalists to be externalities.

Externalities are the side effects or consequences of an industrial or commercial activity that affect outside parties, but not the company's balance sheets.

Negative externalities are the "costs" of doing business that capitalists get away with not paying, and which have harmful consequences outside of the business.

For capitalists, making decisions for the long-term at the expense of the short-term would put them at risk of being out-competed.

The result is a contradiction: what's "good" for capitalism's short-term interests becomes bad for humanity's, and nature's, long-term survival.

It would be very difficult to convince capitalists to act against their own short-term interests in favor of humanity's long-term interests.

Shaped by the rules of the economic system, the accumulation of wealth, power, privilege, and property becomes the capitalist's primary motivation and purpose. For capitalists who are invested in the businesses of extracting fossil fuels from the earth, burning…

…fossil fuels for energy, or any other environmentally damaging industry, discontinuing these processes would mean that their assets (the means of production which they own and control) could no longer be used to produce profits.

This would mean losing trillions in the value of their investments. As individuals, people sometimes go to great lengths to protect their egos and justify their wealth and power as being moral and acceptable. When the belief that their wealth and power is morally…

…justifiable comes into conflict with evidence that the source of their wealth and power is the cause of destruction, injustice, and inhumanity, the discomfort many people face when confronted with letting go of that wealth and power is often too much to bear.

Individually, some capitalists might be convinced to act against their interests, but convincing the entire capitalist class to do so is either unlikely or impossible. The way humans view nature has changed over time.

Throughout history, as societies changed, people's conceptions about nature (the ways in which they perceived or understood nature) also changed.

In early human history, the forces of nature were mysterious, often viewed as something to be feared, sometimes commanded by gods. Later, with the appearance of science and philosophies of rational thought, nature came to be thought of as simple matter following…

…fixed laws that could be discovered and mastered through careful study and observation, as something which could be conquered and harnessed to serve humankind.

In time, others began to view this "conquest" of nature with a sense of tragic loss and nostalgia for a past unity between humans and nature, romanticizing the simpler life of primitive humans and "noble savages", and calling for a "return to nature".

Today, these views, and many others, continue to exist, but the ways we think about nature are now largely shaped by capitalism.

Individual people under capitalism might have slightly different views about nature, but capitalism has its own view, and because we live under capitalism, *capitalism's* view greatly shapes *our* view. Capitalism's conception of nature is unique to capitalism.

Under capitalism, the things we produce to fulfill our everyday wants and needs take on a specific form which is specific to capitalism. This form is called the commodity.

Commodities are goods and services which are produced, first and foremost, not for use, but for exchange. The primary purpose of a commodity is to be sold for profit and turned into capital. Every other purpose is secondary to this purpose.

The materials we use to produce commodities must come from nature. Because nature is the material for making commodities, and commodities are produced for sale, capitalism views nature as one thing and one thing only: something for turning into profit and capital.

Capitalism, like science, also views nature as simple matter and the forces that govern it. The difference, however, is that while science is interested in nature for the sake of understanding nature (and applying that understanding for the benefit of all), capitalism…

…is interested in nature (and the use of science to understand nature), for the sake of exploiting nature. To capitalism, nature is a free gift to capital, a wealth of raw materials waiting to be transformed, through labor, into sellable commodities.

Under capitalism, fewer and fewer people interact directly with the natural world.

Our interactions with nature are filtered down through many complex processes and the breaking down of labor tasks into smaller and smaller roles, so that when nature finally appears before us, it does so in a processed form, the form of commodities.

As the world of commodities becomes more familiar to us than the natural world, the natural world becomes a stranger, and the world of commodities replaces the role of nature in our lives.

By no longer interacting directly, but only indirectly with nature, mediated by the world of commodities, we're left with the illusion that human society exists separate from nature rather than within nature, because of nature, and as a part of nature. Because we no…

…longer recognize nature as a part of our lives which we depend on for life, the relationship of humans to non-human nature under capitalism is transformed from symbiotic to antagonistic, from a relationship of long-term closeness, where both may potentially benefit,…

…to one of opposition and hostility. One myth about capitalism is that its market is "self-correcting", that market forces such as the "invisible hand" will eliminate destructive technologies and replace them with newer and cleaner (and more profitable)…

…technologies, providing the solutions to climate change on its own. Although new technologies do appear under capitalism (like any other mode of production), and these innovations will be indispensable to combating global environmental problems, it would be a…

…mistake to believe that technology itself can be the magical solution to all of our problems. Our ecological problems aren't technological problems as much as they are social problems.

Many technological solutions (such as wind and solar energy) already exist, but without the right social solutions, they can't be implemented quickly enough, or on a scale large enough, to adequately address the current and soon-to-be ecological catastrophes.

Industries being under the direct control of individuals with business interests opposed to technological solutions is one example of how social problems keep us from solving our ecological problems.

Additionally, the so-called "solutions" provided by capitalism rarely seek to eliminate the causes to ecological disaster, but seek to make profit by selling survival.

Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to stop the melting of glaciers and rising sea levels, the market would rather sell the construction of walls.

Instead of addressing the worsening environmental conditions that will lead to starvation, mass migration, and social upheaval, the market would rather sell luxurious underground bunkers to the rich.

Another myth is that as consumers we control what happens in society and the economy, that we can do good things for the environment and bring about social and economic change by carefully choosing what and how we purchase.

This claim, along with the misanthropic view that humanity is a destructive species, is an attempt to misdirect blame away from the root of the problem: the system of economic relations which rule over human production, and those who benefit from that system.

The majority of working class families would have to overcome major economic hurdles to even try to "do good things" for the environment with their purchases.

The working class can rarely afford to purchase according to their ethics, but rather purchase according to their needs, especially the need to survive by spending less money on cheaper goods and services.

Being a well-informed and responsible consumer is also not as easy as it sounds. Businesses use marketing, advertising, and consumer psychology to influence people's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and perceptions in order to shape what they buy.

In the US economy alone, over a trillion dollars are spent per year on marketing to get people to buy things they neither need nor want. The idea that consumption determines production is also greatly exaggerated.

In reality, what is consumed largely depends on what is produced, not the other way around.

Consumers can only choose to purchase what's available to them, and what's available to them (what is produced) is determined by those who own and control the means of production. Real power in a capitalist economy lies with capitalists, not consumers.

Can carbon taxes and regulations under capitalism curb the emission of greenhouse gases or end other environmentally harmful practices?

Carbon taxes are an attempt to indirectly address climate change with a “market based solution” that turns a negative…

…externality (greenhouse gas pollution) into an internalized financial cost (a tax), in the hope that introducing a cost will encourage industries and individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

But this cost doesn’t tell polluters to stop polluting, it tells them they can continue if they can afford it, and they do this by increasing their prices, shifting the burden of payment onto consumers who are already struggling to make ends meet.

Research shows that carbon taxes effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is overwhelming agreement among economists that carbon taxes are a efficient and effective way to curb climate change, with small adverse effects on the economy.

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

But when governments try to pass laws that impede growth, capitalists will use their greater wealth and political power to block those laws
foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/05/par…

Repeal them, evade them, revise them, win exemptions from them, use them to suppress competitors, or move to developing nations without them.

When money buys political power and influence, democracies are not democracies for the poor and working class; they are democracies for the wealthy capitalist class.

It would be impossible to enforce the solutions needed to stop climate change through governments which are controlled by the big polluters themselves. The climate crisis is intensifying.

We are facing an ecological disaster of global scale, the greatest threat to ourselves and the natural world in thousands of years, and which is the direct result of the capitalism. Some experts estimate the Earth has lost more than 60% of its wildlife in fewer…

…than the past 50 years, and that the Earth's species are going extinct at a rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate (the rate without humans), with anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 species becoming extinct every year.

Life on our planet is being sacrificed so that a small number of people can make enormous profits. The loss of life won't be limited to nature either.

Humans will continue to feel the worsening effects of climate change and environmental destruction, including the potential for billions of deaths, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, the wealthy, who benefit from the destruction of the Earth under capitalism, will escape the worst of climate change by moving to new luxurious homes in more comfortable parts of the world.

Current efforts to stop the catastrophic destruction of nature are not enough to match the threat our planet is facing. All of our businesses, industries, media outlets, and governmental institutions are failing us.

Capitalism is going to drive us over a cliff of destruction. The working class needs to take the steering wheel by force before it does. The challenge of climate change requires us to radically restructure the way we organize our economy.

If solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then it is time to change the system itself. It is now necessary to govern the relationship between nature and human economic activity in a rational way.

Now is the time to act with solutions that embrace clean energy and create a healthy and sustainable future. We need an economy and society which work harmoniously with nature, because the future of human life and nature go hand in hand.

This is completely beyond the capabilities of capitalist society.

Capitalist control over production, wealth, politics, media, and public discourse thwarts rational decision-making, because the short-term interests of the capitalist elite are radically different to the long-term interests of humanity and nature.

Endless economic growth is incompatible with the Earth’s systems. For humanity and the natural world to continue, capitalism must end. To do this, we must form an organized mass movement to: - Seize control of our state governmental institutions.

Remove all vital industries from private ownership and control—especially the energy, agricultural, forestry, and transportation industries—and place them under the direct ownership and control of the working class.

Dramatically and very rapidly scale down the production of fossil fuels. - Create entirely new energy and transportation platforms that are not reliant on fossil fuels.

Invest heavily into a program that puts people to work decarbonizing every sector of the economy. - Halt the large-scale deforestation of the planet, and reverse it by planting new forests.

Decommodify all vital industries so that resources are distributed rationally, according to need, rather than sold for profit. Time is running out. What’s needed now, more than ever, is an international proletarian revolution.

The working class must seize the state and the means of production. The continuation of humanity and the natural world depend on it.

Capitalism Devours Nature:
To make anything of use, humans must transform the materials found in nature into useful things.
For this reason, commodities (which are produced primarily for exchange and secondarily for use) must be produced from nature.

Capitalism must continuously produce and exchange commodities in order to produce profits.

Capitalist enterprises must also continuously expand their productive apparatuses to remain competitive. Therefore, capitalism must continuously, and at an ever expanding rate, devour nature.

Capitalism is incompatible with the sustainability of life on Earth. Capitalism is Ecocide Ecocide is large-scale damage to, destruction of, or loss of ecosystems, most often used to refer to humanity’s destructive impact on the natural environment.

Life on Earth is being wiped out by human activity, and not just any activity, but a historically specific activity called capitalist production.

Which views all of nature as raw material to be ripped from the Earth and transformed into profits, and nature’s habitats as its productive facilities and waste bins for the garbage and toxic byproducts of its productive processes.

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