What kills me is that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The longer they fight against change, the more people they will convince that capitalism itself is the problem.

↑ This, but without the /s.

In particular, we need to protect the free market by creating a carbon tax to compensate for fossil fuels' negative externalities and level the playing field for "greener" competitors.

Not taxing carbon is anti-capitalist protectionism.

That's a pretty shallow take on historic economics.

Capitalism had a role to serve as the transition out of feudal economics.

Now it's time to do better.

regulation falls off the wayside and leads into corruption

And vice versa! Corruption leads to lack of regulation. It's a shit circular dance that I feel like we're doomed to repeat regardless of the economic system we pick.

Make it and crosspost!

The problem is externalities. Companies have to be held responsible for their damage.

If governments held companies liable for the full cost of fixing their damage to humanity and earth I honestly don't know how many would be left.

"Green capitalism" only exists if green energy is more profitable than climate-harming alternatives

Given the multiple decades of oil and gas infrastructure, that's not realistic.

In theory, consumer demand for green energy could make this a reality, but it would have to be a massive swing. And in practice, most consumers will go for the cheapest option - in many cases, given their resources, they have to.

The other way that green energy could become more profitable is through heavy government regulation. So... yeah you could have a green 'capitalism' if the State manages the market, and withstands the corporate pressure to withdraw. But that has literally happened nowhere

I suppose hypothetically you could argue that IF a company invested heavily in green technology and IF that investment resulted in a cheaper form of energy, AND that technology also applied to the supply chain, then we could have green capitalism. But i mean that's highly speculative and it also would be entirely a coincidence

Is there a c/toiletpaperusa?

They're yet another cancer on society...

The mothers days day after I had a baby, they sent me a book in the mail about a boy and a dog (I think the dogs name was Otto) celebrating mothers. It was weird but historically accurate. They said that one of the founding fathers mother was a good mother because she taught the founding fathers the bible. Im not sure what to do with the book... Donate it?

Any system that has some growth built into it will eventually cause problems, it's just that some of them, like capitalism, are very efficient at getting us to these points faster. The best system for the climate was discarded long ago, as we moved out of the hunter-gather phase and discovered techniques in maximizing our energy into other things besides just surviving. Agriculture and all that it allowed were the first steps into taxing the earth's balance.

Socialism.

Capitalism is inherently a wasteful of resources and also doesn’t value human life nor the planet’s life. The planet and people are just something to be exploited to enrich the top capitalists who contribute nothing.

It encourages planned obsolescence, short term profit making, and production of commodities which exist solely to turn profit, etc.

A socialist economy, if not being constantly undermined and sabotaged by the capitalist imperial core cough , would exist to meet the needs of the people, the workers. There is no capitalist class under this economy. All surplus value goes to some collective, the state usually, to be held and used in common for the betterment of the people who labored. If all countries adopted this outlook and abolished their capitalist classes and liberal democracies which exist solely to protect the capitalists, then all resources could/would go straight to necessary resource production. Things like food, housing, etc. would be met very quickly due to technology that already exists. This is absolutely not an issue. It’s only an issue due to hoarding, poor/zero distribution of resources under capitalism, and purposeful scarcity as a “disciplining” tool for labor.

Once basic needs are met, luxury commodities can also be created. This is where BUT NO IPHONE? VUVUZELA? comes in. People incorrectly attribute technological innovations to the economic system instead of realizing that 1) capitalism had absolutely nothing to do with smartphones or the internet existing and 2) these things would exist under a socialist economy as well, however the end result may look different simply due to a focus on things that last longer and aren’t meant to be chucked in the bin after 2 years. The only reason our gadgets die so quickly is so we can be sold more gadgets and this causes more surplus labor (profits) to be sucked into the capitalist class. Remove that thievish incentive and you remove the excessive waste associated with it while retaining better commodities that meet the desires of society in a “fair” way that doesn’t destroy the world for the benefit of the few.

Basically imagine a world run by those who labor and importantly a world not designed to simply suck all the profits of exploitative labor under bullshit made up reasons to the 1% and 0.1%. Some people call it utopian. To some, the idea of people cooperating, which is the “natural” state of man, instead of being at each other’s throats because some rich thieving class put them in that position, is inconceivable. And to those people, they should examine why it is they so readily accept the bullshit shoveled down to them from those with every incentive to kill them and the planet and why they dismiss so easily as “utopian” the most obvious solutions. “Oil companies are raping the earth to enrich a few people? What if we… didn’t have… oil companies…?” That logic is never allowed. And it’s worth asking why it is people don’t look to the simple answers that we can very clearly see would be better for the average person. Your “honest question” (ok dude) here is a perfect example of this fascinating phenomenon. You already knew the answer, yet something prevented you from embracing the solution and instead posting bad faith questions. Well, anyway, that’s a different topic, I suppose.