Sicily - which has already been brought to its knees by a prolonged heatwave - is battling wildfires that are threatening towns and cities across the island.
Can someone explain why capitalism is the cause of these fires instead of just down voting the shit out of us for asking a question?
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Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
This is absurd nonsense. Emissions come from people needing shit like electricity.
Even communists like electricity.
And there are a plethora of ways to generate electricity cleanly. Nuclear, wind, solar, hydro. You know who has lobbied against these heavily? The oil and gas and coal industries, because it would hurt their profits if we used clean energy. Coal and natural gas account for 98% of the emissions from electricity generation in the US.
You know another major contributor to emissions? Transportation. Having efficient mass public transportation would eliminate a huge amount of emissions, and we would have more walkable cities with a healthier population. You know who has lobbied against that for decades? The auto industry because it would hurt profits if people didn’t need to buy a car to get anywhere.
Chevron, BP, Exxon, and Shell make up 10% of carbon emissions just between those four companies. All lobby heavily against green energy and public transportation because it would hurt profits.
I swear we need to retire the term ‘Capitalism’ entirely because it seems like it’s impossible to discuss its flaws without someone just assuming it’s a statement in favour of resurrecting Stalin. This has nothing to do with communists.
Electricity can be produced in many different ways - it’s just that some are more profitable than others.
Capitalism also creates an entire web of incentive structures that make it hard to develop more sustainable alternatives - e.g car industry creating ‘lock-in’, as described in this paper. I’m sure a similar paper could be written about some Soviet bloc state 60 years ago, but that’s irrelevant. This is a problem of Capitalism and the Soviet bloc doesn’t exist anymore. Just cause ‘Stalin bad’ doesn’t mean ‘Capitalism can do no harm ever’.
Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
Because these fires are the result of climate change.
Climate change itself is driven by human emissions, which the VAST majority of are driven by the pursuit of profit by corporations, which is entirely a capitalist concept. Corporations could invest money into eliminating emissions, but that would reduce profit, so corporations don’t do it unless they can leverage it as a selling point to increase revenue.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/world/heat-wave-climate-change-us-china-europe-intl/index.html
Capitalism demands and requires constant growth/metastasis instead of equilibrum. Consume, consume, consume, leads to unnecessary industry to make unnecessary things to increase profits for private individuals who never stop demanding more year over year. They use their propaganda machines, all major media which they own, to impress on everyone that not consuming needlessly makes you a loser and a bad person who is missing out and uncool, to further drive consumption for profit. Which has led us inexorably here.
You’re getting downvoted because it’s hard to believe there are any folk out there who are arguing in good faith that climate change is not at least partially (if not majorly) impacted by man-made causes. Capitalism being a driving factor would go hand in hand with climate change due to its proponents of “fuck you I got mine” and get rich at any cost. Capitalism is not for the people, it is for the capitalist, and the capitalists have shown that they are willing to burn the world down for short term gains. See the picture above.
If you can tell me you believe that fossil-fuel executives, having looked at this picture, think “oh man we really should’ve been listening to scientists for the past half century”, then I can show you a liar.
The goal of pure capitalism is to extract as much wealth for yourself and shareholders as you possibly can, as fast as you possibly can. The consequences of that are to be the most successful, you’re pushed into making selfish decisions, ones that benefit you to the detriment of others. What we have in the world now is that taken to the extreme. Oil companies don’t give a fuck if global warming is killing the planet, they’re making money now. Industrial farms don’t care if the rain forests die, they need that land to sell crops. Fishing operations don’t care if entire species are going extinct, they need to catch more to make more. Companies don’t worry about long term problems because they don’t show up on a quarterly balance sheet, and they need to show growth for their investors or they’ll go under.
