Liberals Can't Address the Climate Crisis Because It Means Confronting Capitalism
4 days ago by return2ozma to c/climate
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?
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.
Because most people are ignorant and stupid, case in point.
"We're still where we're at" says the person presumably working a 40 hour work week.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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 define 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 certainly possible, and, with enough cajoling, absolutely can 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— unless it’s on how to overcome them.
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.
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.
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.
I think we are all well aware capitalism is working exactly as intended.
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.
@return2ozma
The oilmen are the pinnacle of every human deviancy that greed can muster. If they define capitalism, either capitalism or humanity must fall, and capitalism falls anyway after it snuffs out civilization...so every democratic politician MUST be actively writing laws to contain and constrain the oilmen, or they are anti-humanity and must be tossed from office quickly and with gusto.
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.
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.
The title says it all.
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.
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.
Corporate funding of projects that change climates, do not help reduce climate change bud.
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.
"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.
Complete non-sequitur. No leftist absolves conservatives of blame for the climate crisis.
Or you could just RFTA.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@slrpnk.net
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
go to feed...
@slrpnk.net
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
go to feed...
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.
save