the brutal logic of climate change

[bcbm]

http://grist.org/climate-change/2011-12-05-the-brutal-logic-of-climate-change/

[Vorchev]

I'm not really sure if environmentalism is a socialist issue. Lots of workers get frustrated when capitalists shut down plants for social responsibility. Ideally, these plants would be expropriated and still operated.

If you want, think of it the other way around. Imagine a world where labor is inherently polluting, and capitalists can't afford interference to calculate prices. Even in today's world, environmentally friendly products cost more wages for workers to afford, and they reinforce the need for government oversight which preserves bureaucracy disconnected from the proletariat.

The other thing is how are workers supposed to check to see if others are working hard enough aside from evaluating inefficiencies? You need some way to see if people are working to capacity when regular schedules need to be met. If workers aren't messing up enough, then it's going to appear they can work harder.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Enviromentalism is very much of a socialist issue. The logic of constant capital accumulation is literally soon going to threaten the habitability of our planet. Whatever technologies are used, and whatever measure of "efficiency" one wants to use, the current ecological destruction , inevitably leading to severe climate change, canot be stopped under capitalism.

Bill McGibbons, the liberal environmentalist, wrote a book, "Eaarth" which says that Earth, within the next 50 years (well within the lifetime of most RevLeft members) will essentially be a different planet. McGibbons in today's Democracy Now! says that the Colorado wildfires are a taste of the "early stage" of what our future will be like.

http://www.billmckibben.com/eaarth/eaarthbook.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/27/bill_mckibben_of_350org_on_colorado

McGibbon's liberal politics are very limited of course, but that's another story.

So environmentalism is a socialist issue. In fact its the most important issue there is right now.

[Sea]

Enviromentalism is very much of a socialist issue. The logic of constant capital accumulation is literally soon going to threaten the habitability of our planet. Whatever technologies are used, and whatever measure of "efficiency" one wants to use, the current ecological destruction , inevitably leading to severe climate change, canot be stopped under capitalism.

Bill McGibbons, the liberal environmentalist, wrote a book, "Eaarth" which says that Earth, within the next 50 years (well within the lifetime of most RevLeft members) will essentially be a different planet. McGibbons in today's Democracy Now! says that the Colorado wildfires are a taste of the "early stage" of what our future will be like.

http://www.billmckibben.com/eaarth/eaarthbook.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/27/bill_mckibben_of_350org_on_colorado

McGibbon's liberal politics are very limited of course, but that's another story.

So environmentalism is a socialist issue. In fact its the most important issue there is right now.Environmental destruction is more a result of carelessness than which stage we're at in economic development. Removing capitalism from the picture will remove the current main cause, careless profit, but who's to say there won't be other reasons?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The main cause of environmental destruction is the profit motive and nessiticity of constant capital accumulation integral to capitalism. Its the lack of a planned economy. "Carelessness" could very easily be dealt with in a democratically planned rconomy.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Enviromentalism is very much of a socialist issue. The logic of constant capital accumulation is literally soon going to threaten the habitability of our planet. Whatever technologies are used, and whatever measure of "efficiency" one wants to use, the current ecological destruction , inevitably leading to severe climate change, canot be stopped under capitalism.
Exactly, and if the environmental devastation is severe enough, socialism may not be possible because there won't be an advanced material base for it to rest on.

[Os Cangaceiros]

It’s simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. “Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake” footing. That simply won’t be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It’s not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

yeaaaah, I definitely don't see that happening anytime soon, guess we're just going to have to resign ourselves to the collapse.

[bcbm]

alaska is probably a better place to be than the continental us though;)

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Well, my opinion is, that the agrarian industry is going to collapse before the planet reaches over 2 degrees Celsius: the agrarian reproduction cycle is based on regenerating nutritious soil and in this high division of global labor, the chemicals and industrial methods used are not only harmful, but increasingly unsustainable for the regeneration of nutritious soil. I live in Bavaria (the land of cows) and bought a steak at the market from Australia a few weeks ago, the resources used for that are unsustainable for one, but the increasing division of labor at hand of profitability and specialisation of certain regions in agrarian industry, are an absolute natural disaster that is increasingly seeing soil become un-nutritious and hence increasingly unable to provide the needed growth for capital.
It will take about 5-20 years to get over 2.0 C. and then if the planet starts acting up, plants die massively, flooding happens etc., markets will have problems handling the situation and you will see the recent "National Resources Preparedness Executive Order" go into effect in the USA and the EU turn into an outright superstate dictatorship to introduce totalitarian methods of control over economy and society.

But that's only if the current neo-liberal system can make it over the next 5 to ten years, which it won't for many reasons:
1. Government Debts. They are ticking time bombs. They cannot be paid off in this financial system; the ridding of state debts will necessarily require a global Greece type austerity depression and debt "restructuring", hyper-inflation or mass taxation (impossible in this political time). If none of these measures are taken by the indebted governments, a State insolvency looms which would be the worst crisis.. it's never happened before.
2. BMW predicts it needs 7% yearly more car production to sustain itself, but the EU, ECB, IMF are dictating draconian measures, cutting wages, forced firing, social cuts, and are essentially destroying markets and whole national economies.
3. Oil will start seriously rising in price and peak within the next few decades, leading to whole economies having increased prices in everything and markets switching to renewable energies once they become cheaper, leading to huge economic problems as we have not had any sort of serious plan to invest money into technology development of renewable energy sources and making them more practical, we have not set up needed infrastructure for a renewable enrgy economy etc.
4. the Euro currency union is being torn apart, by its national economic differences at hand of the liberal ruling market ideology, and won't survive the next 5 years without massive crisis since there is no political will to solve the problem as the reactionaries are firmly in grip of politics.
5. the Rate of Profit of the Production process is quickly making even this State subsidized monopoly debt run reactionary Capitalism not be able to achieve any kinds of substantial growths. Capitalism is over, the future inevitably is a planned economy, which hopefully will be worker controlled.

[Mr. Natural]

Yes, "severe climate change cannot be stopped under capitalism." Capitalism as an system is organized in opposition to the systems of life. Capitalism attacks living forms of human and non-human community to extract a relentless, runaway profit.

Nature, in radical contrast to capitalism, generates a sustainable "energy-profit" in order to create and maintain its countless forms of community. This is accomplished through the processes of photosynthesis and natural selection.

Marx, Engels, and the materialist dialectic view life as organic, systemic process: living community. Communism is natural. Under communism the human species would generate a sustainable, ecological profit as does Mother Nature.

Earth's biosphere is a community: a giant, self-regulating ecosystem (Lovelock's and Margulis' Gaia). Capitalism's attacks on this climate-community are intrinsic to The System and will destroy humanity if we do not destroy capitalism first.

I believe we had better get going on this, but as Revleft and this science forum seem committed to ignoring the new sciences of the organization of life ....

[Comrade Trollface]

I'm not really sure if environmentalism is a socialist issue. Then your version of socialism is just as unworkable and geocidal as capitalism is. At this rate, we are poised to drown in own own shit in the near future. You can't have a workers' commonwealth on a charnel house world.

[L.A.P.]

Hurricane season is going to be horrible this year. Way too early for this many lightning storms. We're going to die before we even get close to socialism.