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Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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good that you and OP are convinced that "our society's organization over production" links climate change to "capitalism", but my point is that it is probably not as simple as you make it to be, and I still don't see any evidence of causation for this exceptional claim.
My "hot take" is that we are not doing anything new or different now than we did thousand of years ago (so, before the advent of capitalism and globalization) when it comes to destroying our environment. The main difference is the scale at which we do it now, which is leveraged by our progress in science which permits the usage of large amounts of readily available energy.
The good thing about this discussion is that I only need a single counter-example to disprove your thesis (but you can find many throughout history). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf02664569 : here you see how ancient Chinese dynasties caused environmental collapses forcing large populations relocations. You may not want to call this human nature, but humans have since forever poked at things without understanding consequences, and with ever larger populations and techniques, the bigger the blowbacks. Capitalism had nothing to do with that: it didn't provide the means, it didn't provide the motive, it didn't provide the opportunity.
And yes, I understand how tempting it is to look at the problem under the lens of current ideas and ideologies, but this is just cheap presentism.
To close on the subject, I am not a climate change denialist, and I am certainly not a capitalism apologist. I am a strong believer that people in future generations will keep poking at things without understanding the consequences. All I hope is that those future generations will be wise enough (i.e. have enough understanding of the world/advances in science, and enough safeguards against demagogic and other unsound ideals) to mitigate the negative impacts.
Fair. I cannot pretend that I have a single "cookie-cutter" solution for a complex global issue that's been going on for centuries and whose effects and remedial actions will affect every single individual on earth. I still think I stand higher than those that claim to have such a solution while having their nose and mouth delved into local political matters of no global relevance. I have listened to the whole podcast you linked and the Red Deal offers nothing of substance, just more opinions, as it has no predictive value (it doesn't try to show quantitatively how much of the problem is remediated under which circumstance).
A thousand years in the past there weren't people in Europe/North America waging massive wars to protect their sources of oil across the world. Global imperialism is essential to this global crisis and no country would be exporting most of its resources to some foreign power to the detriment of its own people if they were not organised in a capitalist fashion. We already have many measures like hydro power that would be much less harmful to the environment but are not as profitable to the property owners as oil and therefore are not properly explored. "We" is already a loaded term because humanity was incredibly diverse in its organisations of society before the 19th century, but this whole crisis is caused mainly by our production methods, not their scale.
I think I see the misunderstanding here. The point is not that ecological catastrophes are only caused by Capitalism, but this one in specific is directly caused by it. If people owned the means of production they wouldn't force themselves into a catastrophe we all know is happening. We already understand the consequences in this current case, but just so happen to be ruled by a bourgeoisie that is more interested in fleeing to Mars than actually solving these issues. I fail to see how there could be any solution to this crisis without ending the control of a select few over the entire production of the world to our detriment, which is capitalism.
And for you to claim that something like this is "human nature" you don't need to just provide a couple of historical examples of ecological catastrophes caused by humans (even ones they knowingly did it), but to show that there has never been the case where humans changed course to avert one, or something of the sort.
It would be pretentious to predict the economic effects in a manifesto from those who are not (and will likely never be) in power. If you want actual numbers you can look at how China has been leading the world in green energy production. As I said before, that one was specifically to push back against "human nature" causing this crisis when some very natural humans want to do the exact opposite but can't specifically because of settler capitalism. Humans want to fight the climate crisis, except for those few property holders who see this as an "opportunity."
Also what's with "opinions"? Do you expect some lab somewhere to do an experiment proving if redacting landlords has positive or negative correlations with emissions? Social decisions are based on historical analysis which would be too long for a 30 minute interview. Since you got so interested you replied to me 8 days later and want more of those juicy facts, you can go read their actual whole book on it their positions in depth. Part 3 does a better job explaining it than I could in a single lemmy reply.
There definitely were people all over the world waging massive wars to protect/expand their land and agricultural capacity instead. And they were largely affecting their environment in the process (if not at a climate level yet). I cited some ancient Chine dynasties, but the same could be said about every large ancient civilization, just to name few, the Incas, the Romans, the Mongols, the Indus, …: it is very much the same thing.
Trade was equally happening at a large-scale millennia ago (in the Eurasian continent, but in the Americas as well. As I said in my previous post, its impact on global warming was only milder because we only knew about "renewable" energies back then (horse riding and sailing is pretty close to carbon neutral, when there were mere millions individual on earth back then).
All we are observing now is, as I said, more of the same thing, but at a larger scale, because we since discovered the atmosphere-warming and polluting machines and energies that are of widespread-use today. For the rhetoric about capitalism to convince me, you would have to prove that the current situation would only be permitted under capitalism, and all I see is history pointing the other way. And if other systems can lead to the same outcome, then this whole thing isn't about the system itself, but something "deeper" that would be left unresolved, and all you would have accomplished would be akin to "shooting the messenger", leaving room for another unsatisfying alternative to emerge.
It is certainly not. That's what organisms like the IPCC have been doing for decades: working on models to predict the future climate with as much certainty and accuracy as our understanding of physics possibly allows. It has this pretty neat thing about itself that it doesn't care about your, or mine, opinions and political orientations, skipping entire avenues for unproductive debate and distractions. The most efficient way to enact change (IMO) is to commit to actionable goals in light of desired outcomes (e.g. how many plants of which type we need to open and close, how many cars and trucks on the roads, …). The rest is semantics and games.
Honestly I'm kinda tired of this because you seem to be deliberately missing the point. Actually put an effort to understand what I'm saying to be able to argue against it properly, please. Add to that actually reading before you write.
Re-read what I wrote:
At no point in history have we had cross-continental conflicts over control of oil deposits before industrialisation. No AES country today does those either. And again, for something to be "human nature" you don't need evidence of a significant number of civilisations doing something. You need to show that the opposite has never happened.
The global market of fossil fuel is only perpetuated today by capitalist interests against the democratic wishes of the workers. I don't particularly care about any pre-factory man-made ecological catastrophe because what I (and others here) argue is that this specific one is being perpetuated by the undemocratic owning of the means of production. There can be no redirecting of the economy towards democratic interests under capitalism because the economy itself is not democratic.
In our current specific case we have loads of research on what can be done to avoid catastrophe, and even the specific betrayed pledges on this article. Or the other source I and others provided. It is an unique event in the history of humanity and we're sleepwalking into it because we can't risk profit line going down, not due to lack of knowledge or any inherent human desire for all humans worldwide.
Congratulations, you equated a political group representing indigenous people who have no legal power in the USA with a governmental research group. The IPCC doesn't make manifestos nor do they advocate for political action, despite suffering from intense lobbying from both corporations and political parties. They work specifically under the framework of liberal capitalism and the directives of the USA government and bourgeois interest, even if the individual researchers are often honest and diligent.
I could laugh but I guess some people out there really think that "political orientations" are unproductive for deciding what to do politically. How useful are all of their reports if they are not put into practice through politics? And how politically diverse is the IPCC? Every single thing in society is political, specially when it comes to society and economy. You can't reasonably expect to solve this is issue by relying only on the USA government body and assuming that whatever comes out of there is "apolitical." How "productive" are those reports if there is no political will to put their recommendations in practice?
Do go on, what "actionable goals" have been committed to and are being enforced right now in capitalist countries? Which ones are even likely to stay in force after an election cycle? How have capitalist countries fought against climate change when it went against the profit of their ruling class? The gist of it all is that all of those "actionable goals" need to be enforced politically, which has shown to be impossible (or at least very unsuccessful) under liberal capitalism over the past 30 years we've been aware of this crisis. Compare it with China.
I mean, I hear you, but from my perspective, you are the one missing the point: I replied to you in a more general case…
…but you keep bringing back the discussion to modern specifics without explaining why they somehow contradict the broader thesis:
Your argumentation is presentist and mine is anthropogenic/historic.
Indeed, but my point is that you very much should. Let's suppose that we have it your way, and overnight we suppress everything undemocratic and capitalistic about this world. Would that solve climate change? Your conviction is "Yes, because such and such things that (you believe) caused it (but no evidence was given) are no longer there". This is not only extremely naive (and unproven), this is also illogical: in essence you would have replaced something we know by something else we don't (and that moreover could be worse), and be expecting a better outcome, out of pure faith, with no evidence. On top of that, how can you look at the world history (which you are hasty to dismiss) and still believe that whatever new world order of yours would be immune to the same power struggles, in and out fightings, and ultimately the same destructive behaviours which are contrarian to our own common benefit as a species? What would prevent the same griefs you currently hold against "Europe/North America" to be resurrected there or elsewhere, as they were countless times and universally throughout history?
This is the crux of the issue here: you propose change for what looks the sake of change, whereas I'm more interested in understanding why we are where we are now, despite all our knowledge, but still unable to move. That is, so we finally get a chance to break the circle and not just burn the world down in yet another desperate revolution.
Which is why they matter, they come before in the decision process, so that any serious manifesto or political action gets some amount of legitimacy and bearing in the physical world that we collectively live in.
I trust science and the (very much apolitical) scientific method, which the IPCC embodies, by being the largest venue for the best scientists of this world to convene on the subject, and I have no reason to believe that their methods have been corrupted. If you have any evidence of that, please offer it for the sake of our common good. If you don't, please go away with your FUD, or, better, put together a more qualified and adequate team.
Another easy argument to be said is that this same panel (corroborated by independent studies) came to the conclusion that stopping climate change would be more beneficial for the world economies (and the current world order that you despise as a result) than not doing anything. Which kind of makes sense in light of the ever worse food and water wars, wildfires and destructive weather. Nobody wins.
Of course it is. I have a wonderful thing to teach you today: the material world doesn't care about your (or mine) opinion, or this planet would have alternated between being flat, spherical, carried over the back of a giant turtle, concave, and all of those simultaneously. Similarly, we could unanimously decide that the branch we collectively sit on should be trimmed, and that wouldn't make it a good decision either. Opinions alone are no reasonable basis to decide what to do next, the best thing we have is science, and the second best is history.
Good points, really. Then the argument should be turned into "why were those actionable goals not implemented".
You seem to have it all sorted out to explain me how that solely rests on the shoulders of "the villain capitalist West", and not on the many other easy culprits, like, I don't know "people are afraid of change/the unknown", "significant changes always take a long time to be enacted", "people like to postpone or avoid at all cost tough changes, especially those that are detrimental to their quality of life", "why would I let other people decide for myself how to live my life, especially when I'm old and won't have to deal with any of this", "why should I have it worse than that other person", "why am I hostage of the bad behaviours of other humans long dead", "it takes a lot of mutual trust and reciprocal guarantees for committing to sacrifices with the assurance that the other side of the fence/border/geopolitical spectrum will not use it for its own short-term benefit", and this goes on and on. Like I said in another post, sects and religions. We are not geared-up as a species for reacting rationally in this scenario. We have never been confronted to such a threat, and required to exhibit such an amount of coordinated sacrifice. All we need is to prove that we are better at survival than lemmings. And sorry again for finding ludicrous the idea that taking out capitalism would do anything of substance.
Yeah no, this ain't working...
cute words for saying that I'm focusing on how to solve this specific crisis while you're philosophising over the tragedy of human nature and pretending you don't like capitalism while defending it till kingdom come.
A lot of people here have presented the evidence, you just chose to disregard it because it's "too political." You have yet to explain how the capitalist ruling class are doing anything to combat climate change (as we can see from the article they are just doubling down), while a majority of people support actually doing something about it. Like I said, look at all the AES/anti-imperialist countries and their track records on fighting climate change. Is it not evidence for you that China is leading the world in production of green energy? You're probably just gonna ignore this again and claim "no evidence!", which is why I'm tired of this discussion.
Now you're moving the goalpost from fighting this specific climate crisis to preventing all ecological crises forever. I don't care enough to argue that point, even if I have strong opinions about it, because it's so beside the point that it would be a waste of my time. It seems almost intentional ngl.
Okay yeah you have no idea how organising society works. Good luck doing anything in your life while ignoring your own opinions, or worse, equating them to scientific facts. What is your opinion on the IPCC, I wonder.
Oh yeah, there is nothing political about allocating which kinds of research gets done or doesn't. Science is just a soup that we throw money at and stir around and funny theorems and statistics boil out. I bet your history also relies only on completely objective first sources that speak for themselves without any human interpretation. Humans, politics, groups and interests play no part in any of that, which is why the IPCC definitely does a yearly survey of the carbon footprint of expropriating every 1% property and instating a dictatorship of proletariat, obviously. Gringo, please.
Oh look, a lot of political and social questions. All of those are valid of consideration, but the overarching system in which those are embedded isn't because it's "opinionated." Please feel free to quantify scientifically how much influence dead people's laws should have in society. The IPCC must have a couple of papers on it.
buncha wikipedia links
Feel free to believe whatever you want. Unlike the material world and societal organisations, which can be moulded through collective decisions based on public opinions, your bourgeois overlords don't really care much about your opinion of what should be done to society. So long as you keep consuming as they want, they'll barely even think of you, and capitalist society will keep trudging on towards the 4ºC mark. Sorry for finding ludicrous the idea of trying to prove that a crisis the likes of which has never happened before, being exacerbated by the structure of our society despite overwhelming public support to prevent it, isn't related to this societal structure, but only by citing a bunch of unrelated crises from previous modes of production, without providing any proof that it can be solved under this current system.
I've provided some evidence of communism being a better alternative, you have provided literally zero evidence of the contrary. Haven't even acknowledged what I brought to the table, much less argued over it. Until you can actually show me some solution that is actually working under capitalism, keep reading Wikipedia and pretending to be an specialist in everything from anthropology to meteorology.
Riddle me this: What is, in your factual scientific opinion, that which is preventing humanity to actually combat global warming and climate change as they overwhelmingly want to? The answer will say a lot.
(edit: had to split the post because of reaching max limit)
I challenge that very much: how can you hope to solve a problem that you chose deliberately to look at from a narrow angle and not in its entirety?
Where is this evidence again? If we are still talking about climate change here, and not diverting into a political crusade, we can just look at the emissions causing the warming, their main cause, and find that they map to an exponential increase of human activities since the industrial revolution. Exponentially more people live, consume resources (food, shelter, heating, goods), and reproduce. This is life in its most quintessential aspect, the very same you would observe in a Petri dish. Are bacteria consuming nutrients till they cause their own extinction forming a capitalist structure, too?
No, YOU have to back the exceptional claim that this has anything to do with capitalism. The fact that the ruling class opposes change is pretty much what defines it: elites wants to preserve their status. You and I have a problem with conservatism, not capitalism, unless you consider that every member of the current elite defends capitalist ideals, which is fairly easy to disprove by just looking at the religious elite or nobility around the world.
First, I will laugh at the association of "China" with "anti-imperialist country". Then, as it happens, almost all developed economies have been drastically reducing their carbon footprint for the better part of the last century, with the EU leading the way and having a carbon footprint per capita now significantly lower than that of China (which keeps increasing). I'm not sure what China is leading actually (other than in your information bubble, apparently) by having installed more new fossil energy production in the recent years than renewable. In terms of ratio of clean vs fossil energy in its energy mix, China is not even in the upper median of the world, and in this decade we can expect China to surpass the EU in terms of cumulative emissions which is inexcusable in this day and age. This was not even the point of this discussion, but I'm happy to have rectified this at least.
by not wasting time talking about things that are unrelated. If you're bleeding you first stop the flow, not try to find how to create steel skin. By focusing so much on abstract concepts and your liberal view of history, you're avoiding talking about this specific issue. Funnily enough though you still insist in pretending you're interested in it at all.
here. And here. Also all the other ones. "what evidence???".
Look at this ~~photo~~ fucking graph. Now this one. One is up by like 6 times while the other one is almost a 100, so they're not proportional. "where's evidence?"
Bacteria, famous for having governments, research institutions and social organisations. They also have opinions on the concept of private property and knowledge of their limited resources.
Wait you don't? Then disprove it, please, since it's so easy.
When was the last China-backed regime change? Then compare it with the last talks of doing a regime change in China itself. And then look into all the partnerships that China has through the BRICS and show how they were actually imperialist all along. Take your time.
First link with USA added, second link is broken but I fixed it and also doesn't say that they've "installed more coal than renewable" and in fact contradicts the notion of them developing thermal more than renewable.
Third one I have no idea how you got "median" of the mix out of it or what you mean by that. It's even per capita. Change from relative to absolute and click the "play button and you'll see how quickly China has caught up on green energy production within just the last 20 years while the others stagnated. Also note how much energy Europe and the USA consume per capita compared to the world median.
Fourth one at least is interesting, but I think the tragedy here is how a rapidly developing country under a trade war is being blamed for not having access to the resources it needs to develop further. It sure would be lovely if the Capitalist developed countries exported their technology to help China develop its green energy further, but instead they have been blocking critical tech exports there. I guess we need to ignore that because it's political.
Either way, it's also very important to be careful when jumping between different metrics such as total, per capita and per KWh. Trying to consider all of those in a black or white manner will lead you to awkward and subtle mistakes and syllogisms. Here's a very well researched article that goes in depth on how the CPC is leading the way into actually producing more carbon-efficient energy. This twitter thread also has a lot of reading material on how China has been on a gigantic green energy growth spurt for the last 30 years both in internal production and also in importing infrastructure. Solar, Wind, Hydro. All those sources are political and not made by the IPCC, so be careful there.
It's okay to think they're not doing enough, but to pretend that the EU (which is very dependent on their polluter friend the USA) is somehow beating them at this despite their very minor improvements over the past 20 years is just disingenuous. If you remember energy production 20 years ago you'll notice that it has barely changed in capitalist countries, while anti-capitalist countries really care about it. This comes from the intuitive fact that the power serves the common proletarian, who are the most affected by climate change, rather than the stockholders.
This was actually the point of the discussion, and I'm happy you finally addressed it so I could rectify it. Now reply to me by ignoring all the listed sources, while moving the discussion to other nonsense abstract notions of bacteria and ancient civilisation, like you seem to enjoy doing.
The only way that you could hope to gain traction in your stated mission to abolish capitalism is by convincing others that whatever comes next will stand the test of time, and so I am legitimately curious. I don't think we can afford buying into pretty but empty promises.
I really don't understand what's causing your vivid reaction here and you said nothing to help me understand it. But okay.
So I take away that you are a science denialist. If so, I don't see the point of continuing further, because this could be all fake news as well. And if not, then I'll ask what you gain from removing the scientific step from the decision process. And I would re-iterate my offer to provide evidence that the IPCC is biased as you claim.
You missed the forest for the tree, didn't you? At the very least you deflected my question. In the present world order, how do those pertain to capitalism, and in the new world order that you propose, how are they addressed?
I know this is sarcasm and I have no idea where you are going with your dead people's law, but at least in the case of the social questions above, science, and the IPCC in particular could provide some partial answers (e.g. how long/how big the sacrifice, how to adjust to many aspects of every-day's life), which will absolutely help weather the incoming storm. I really don't see the need to denigrate.
Who exactly are my bourgeois overlords? And how are they compelling me to over-consume exactly? Perhaps it's not obvious but you and I must be very close on the political spectrum, and I could be your best ally when it comes to proposing a more sustainable lifestyle for the future. My problem is that your discourse is not nearly as polished as you make it to be, and shooting the messenger without addressing the core of the issue will not give you legitimacy and support. I live in a mostly socialist highly-educated country where our political landscape is diverse and organized in coalitions who must compromise. Unlike some stereotypes, we were not "brainwashed" during the cold war into believing that the world must exist in an extreme form of either communism or capitalism. Capitalism isn't something that I see practically affect my life because without specifics (which this thread is lacking en masse), this is just an abstract construct. Market laws (offer vs supply) do, but this is trade, this doesn't equate capitalism, and I think I already made that point clear.
I don't think you did. All I (mis)read is that abolishing capitalism to be a condition for addressing climate change, and I've been begging to know more about how it will play out in practice.
I can only offer my biased and limited opinion, sorry. Part of which you already got in my paragraph about the "easy culprits" (people being scared of change, etc) which still stands. I believe there are many large issues, the fact that most people are in denial about it is a significant one: no matter what we do now, we will collectively take a huge cut in our quality and comfort of life for the centuries to come; pensions, property titles, diplomas, insurances, … will become meaningless and that's a tough one to swallow. Most people are just incapable to imagine such a world, and won't react until too late. Then comes the fact that most countries have experienced the late stage of their demographic shift: you get a large population of elderly and politicians representing them who won't get to live through the hardship of climate change, and who have little to no incentive to do anything about it. Then comes the fact that this is a global phenomenon that affects all countries unequally but requires all of them to agree, commit, and execute toward a common goal. We have no global instance with the legitimacy to oversee and arbitrate in this context, and I doubt there will ever be one. This post is long-enough but I think you got the gist.
First staunch flow, then treat infection, then do a course on first aid. If you do it the other way around you just die, though you at least get to be smug about it.
Vivid is a strange synonym for "sarcastic." If you actually think anything can be done in an organised social society while ignoring opinions by looking only at "science," I'm pretty sure you have no idea how anything, be it societal actions, be it actual research, gets done in practice. Have you ever heard the phrase "expert's opinion," or do you think data is some kind of holy word from god that speaks in tongues by itself?
Nope. You pretend don't want to deal with social questions that are impossible to measure, yet most of your questions you want answers for are exactly those. Which follows with:
Showing that you have no idea how social sciences work. You yourself listed dead people's laws, which is why I pointed it out as absurd to measure scientifically. It's on you to actually provide some data-only opinion-less analysis that measures the impact of social concepts such as these, but spoilers, you won't find anything of value. They are unmeasurable and so are based on our human understanding which comes from studying and understanding many different perspectives and interpretations. There is no single "correct factual way" in social studies for the vast majority of cases, which is why I mocked your naïveté there. Good luck "factually" finding answers to your questions of interest in your future job at the IPCC.
Leave your computer device, pick your car, go to the supermarket, but some plastic with food in it, go back to your apartment, pay your rent, buy new electronic devices, maybe contract Hello Fresh because you don't have time to shop groceries or watch yet another multimillion Marvel production from your ever-increasing backlog. Then come back and tell me which of those things are absolutely necessary for you. Specially considering the human and ecological cost to all of those things that you probably ignore daily.
Best ally seems incredibly unlikely, what do you even do to help? Vote?
I'd like you to actually define socialism because we have a bunch of libs thinking the NHS is socialism running around. Also not sure what "highly-educated" has to do with anything. Weird flex.
lol
Did on the other one. Either way if you want me to get a USA government body to analyse the carbon benefit of toppling the USA, you're gonna have to help me crowdfund it. I and others have shown here how capitalism is preventing us from democratically fighting climate change. Unless you know of some way to bypass those hurdles within capitalism (please don't say "vote harder"), it naturally follows that abolishing capitalism is at least the only alternative we know.
Have a read from scientific material. This might help you stop blaming civilians with no power.
For that you'd need to have linked literally any research for me to deny it. You have only named the IPCC randomly without providing any specific article, and I have not denied the truth of the only one you actually provided (the ancient China one). If you think science is only looking at pretty graphs in OWID and pretending that's the whole picture, you might be a bit out of your league here, and that is why you're so set on your positions while being so vague and abstract about the issue at hand. I say this as an actual researcher, though not of physics or meteorology.
Every research institution has a bias, research is made by humans and they have limited resources to allocate to every avenue of research. Even simple stuff like choosing one metric over another is a source of bias that needs to always be taken into account in any serious research. I don't think it's that important to prove that "the IPCC is biased" knowing that, and again you have not even provided a direct source from the IPCC for that to be relevant. Research has to take account of a multitude of sources and be very aware of what is and is not actually being studied, as well as paying attention to whether experiments are shown to be reproducible. You might notice that the IPCC provides recommendations as well as data, and since the data collection methods, the analysis already always contain some biases, the recommendations themselves will have even more as they are based on (very informed) opinion. Being biased isn't a bad thing, it is natural, but failing to account for it is the problem. Not sure why liberals and laypeople keep getting this wrong.
But I guess I'll humour you. 1, 2, 3, 4. Those are very well known cases of meddling.
Edit: btw, if you don't want to split posts (please don't because they're annoying for me to reply to), then don't quote yourself from two replies ago. I can just go check it, as I repeatedly do, and you're just wasting space.