Wonderful talk. I hope people will start to focus on stopping emissions even at great cost rather than always in terms of our own ideology and assumptions about society.
It’s also important since when we talk about climate using specific terms, there can be an immediate shutter-thrown-up effect. ‘Reduction’, ‘achievements’, aspirations, and signalling care is acceptable to people because these often read as non-ideological; at least to people who aren’t climate catastrophe-deniers.
Here are six reasons one might argue capitalism is responsible for the coming climate disasters:
Emissions are tied to economy size, as discussed in the video. This suggests most people alive today aren’t killing the planet very much and everyone needs to be more like people in these countries. Sadly, differences in economy size is a long-standing feature of capitalism
I recently discovered in this talk on climate and economics with the wonderful fellow-Buddhist Regina Valdez that no-growth economics was popularised or even invented by studying the difference between western economies and happiness in Buddhist communities in Burma in the 70s. Economist E.F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful is also discussed in this SC thread, and Schumacher argued that mechanisation and large-scale mass-production economies are worse for people than smaller economies. But if that’s true, why do so few people believe that?
The birth of capitalism at the end of feudalism in the late 18th and early 19th century correlates with cotton and sugar plantation owners in France and England making huge amounts of money, and the masses in these countries getting cheaper clothes, even before the French Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase. Incomes are still so low in the places stuff is made in the late 20th century and recently:
Paying low wages for cheap consumer goods might be a crucial and necessary for capitalism, always hungry for ‘underdeveloped’ ‘markets’ since maybe it:
- makes low-income people in large-economy countries feel like they are safe and successful, less likely to feel like they are themselves victims of injustice
- makes business less risky since it is “cheaper”
- increases wealth and value, arguably at great cost to humanity as a whole
Companies and nation-states compete
When companies and nation-states feel like their competitive advantage is threatened, they act to stop this. I can’t see any other reason than than nation-state competition for why fossil-fuel subsidies continue – higher costs mean companies might start losing market share, or something like that. I can’t otherwise explain this race to destruction.
There are extraordinary powers for shareholder firms in the US against executives who intentionally reduce annual profit. Shareholders also have a right to replace CEOs or block such things (see chapter 3 in Global Financial Crisis: The Ethical Issues). I don’t know how often that happens, it would be good to research. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could immediately replace leaders who do actual terrible things?
The little difference in long-term reduction of emissions between social democratic and conservative parties when they’re in power
Rather than an example of how market-driven policies are more polluting, it could just mean it’s all capitalism and a climate-acting government could never be able to act. There are wonderful examples of small states/jurisdictions reducing emissions, even down to nil or less. But not on the whole, as Bhante Sujato says in the video.
I watched the Australian opposition leader on Sky arguing that certain coal mines should remain open and I was actually relieved 
. He knew what to say to stop powerful oligarchs scuttling him, like what happened to the 3 Labor leaders previous who tried climate action - and he is left of them. It’s so strange to feel glad a leader postures in favour of coal mines, so that he might be able to close them.
This quote from the Exxon-Mobil executive who thought he was in a job interview: “I talk to [climate-denying Democratic senator Joe Manchin] every week, he is the king-maker” suggests how this is happening, also former Labor senator Sam Dastyari has said similar things about corporate influence more broadly in Australia.
If you got this far, the below is largely rehashing points made by Matt Huber’s articles in Jacobin, who believes no-growth economics is sadly never going to be supported by large amounts of people in the U.S.:
Those who control things inside a company can refuse to reduce revenue
Control or input into what is sourced, produced, what is paid for, who is employed and to do what, etc. is a good argument for why capitalism is responsible for climate change. Sourcing decisions, funding decisions, are ultimately and legally made by a small group of directors/owners/shareholders/investors/managers.
Even if everyone in a business (or the whole world!) except a small group of people thinks something should be done a certain way, it’s unsure whether that will happen. These people often don’t need to justify most decisions to anyone - “unaccountable oligarchies” large and small, to quote Chomsky. And it’s those decisions not just consumer habits that really matter.
Globally uneven wages, with higher-wage economies having higher carbon emissions may not be a cause, and making things more expensive may never be politically viable
Increasing wages is usually a goal of left parties, and yet consumerism is killing the planet - that’s evidence climate disaster will still have probably begun under a non-capitalist more socialist economy. But even today, something like 50% of the US working class has less than $1000 in savings; 3 months from homelessness.
How does more expensive things sound to those of us in that position? It’s very likely that just these survival-level worries about price increases and unemployment might lead to the end of the world… which will then lead to those things. The bulk of peoples’ work going into survival is a feature of capitalism. It might be the case that consumerism and the normalisation of large debt is somewhat responsible for people having little savings - I wonder how much.
No organisations exist with the resources or power to force climate action
NGOs, think-tanks and community organisations have done some effective things, like The Sunrise Project helping to ban coal-seam gas expansion, banning mining in many places, funding less polluting energy, etc. Yet even now when everything is so obvious, large campaigns for climate action seem to have not influenced people in halls of power enough.
If there were some well-funded organisations who aren’t only there to lobby, raise important legal disputes, do media stunts, and educate, we all might have something to do about the knowledge of our impending doom?
