Poll of the Day > Do you think environment is in such a bad shape because we picked Capitalism?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Do you think there is a parallel Earth where people went with Socialism and the environment there is in the great shape?

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Lobomoon posted...

Do you think there is a parallel Earth where people went with Socialism and the environment there is in the great shape?

Humans were fucking up the environment long before capitalism ever really existed as a concept.

Plus there's the obligatory pointing to the USSR and the catastrophic damage they did to the environment in any number of places (cue also obligatory complaint that Soviet Communism isn't the same as Socialism).
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No matter what form of government or religion or theories people followed, if humans were involved in nature, they messed it up.

Some exceptions did apply were they didn't hunt, fish, or eat something to extinction. Some people didn't demolish everything around them, as others were trying to change their world through sheer force. But humans have always succeeded in screwing up nature

CTLM posted...

Some exceptions did apply were they didn't hunt, fish, or eat something to extinction. Some people didn't demolish everything around them, as others were trying to change their world through sheer force. But humans have always succeeded in screwing up nature

The reason there's no surviving megafauna or larger species in general in North America is because the Native Americans slaughtered most of them to extinction when they initially arrived, and found an entire continent full of animals that had never learned to be afraid of humans (see also, what happened to the dodo).

It came back to bite them in the ass later, when they reached a point of cultural development where they would settle down and potentially domesticate animals, because by then they lacked sufficient species to work with. It's why something like 5/6ths of all animals domesticated by humans all originated in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.
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Lobomoon posted...

Do you think there is a parallel Earth where people went with Socialism and the environment there is in the great shape?

No. ATM the worst polluter in the world is easily China and the damage that places like the U.S.S.R. did is simply staggering even if we didn't understand just what was going on at the time. Just look at what happened to the Aral sea! Obviously capitalism has it's problems, but when compared to the communism it's not a question.

The primary reason, IMO, is that most communist nations hold no reason to care about the environment unless it threatens the power of the government and it's extremely easy to censor the spread of information. If your nation is struggling economically and the only way to fix it is to dump a bunch of toxins into the water from a factory that gets its tech from the 1960's and probably work about 20 people to death doing so, it's very easy to censor that info. Not so in a capitalist nation especially with the free press, social media, and other such things around.

The thing is that a lot of nations have either small populations or are struggling technologically to the point where they can't be a major influence of global warming. Somewhere like, say, Macedonia or Sudan just isn't going to be able to compete with a nation that's both heavily populated and industrialized like America. That's before things like government corruption even appears as a factor.

The interesting thing about a capitalist society is that it does actually contain at least some counters. Namely that it allows for the development of things like electric cars, stores and goods that are eco-friendly, and other such things handled by the buyer. It's hardly perfect, but compared to a place where the government could simply just crack down on the population and censor stuff to protect it's own power it's a bloody godsend for the planet.

America will likely be #2-3 on the list of polluters for a looooong time simply because of its population and industralization, but it is improving at least somewhat. More could be done (such as a greater focus on cleaning up trash) but it's China and India that are currently the bigger environmental threats.

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the whole problem was basically inevitable

(in fact... just realizing that maybe Lavos from Chrono Trigger could be a metaphor for this... maybe?)

fossil fuels are basically a natural booby trap waiting underground millenia after millenia to be sprung when civilization finally progressed far enough. I don't see how that could have been avoided. and now there's basically nothing we can do about it except try to plan to survive the coming changes.

Unbridled9 posted...

America will likely be #2-3 on the list of polluters for a looooong time simply because of its population and industralization, but it is improving at least somewhat. More could be done (such as a greater focus on cleaning up trash) but it's China and India that are currently the bigger environmental threats.

all you would be doing by reducing polluters is letting the foot off the gas a small amount, when the gas pedal has been floored for the past ~100 years. there's no going back...

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<i>all you would be doing by reducing polluters is letting the foot off the gas a small amount, when the gas pedal has been floored for the past ~100 years. there's no going back...</i>

Well, first off, the world has been both hotter and colder than before. It's not likely that the man-made climate change is going to be the death-knell of all life like a lot of people like to claim. It certainly is a problem that needs dealing with and addressing but it's not going to be the end of the world either. Just a massive change.

More to the point, however, is that the question of 'what can be done now' is very difficult to answer. Even if every nation in the world decided to tackle the issue the simple fact is that there isn't much that CAN be done in the first place beyond trying to encourage greener technology and clean-up. It's not like we can just drop a giant chunk of comet ice in the water every year.

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yeah those capitalist societies like the ukraine and china

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Capitalism doesn't do the environment any favors at all, but I really think that is besides the point, as other countries with different economic models also pollute the environment, some moreso than the USA.

Nope, it's the lack of regulation in the past and no middle ground in environmental policy in the present that caused the damage.
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Hop103 posted...

Nope, it's the lack of regulation in the past and no middle ground in environmental policy in the present that caused the damage.

Lack of a middle ground is a major issue. ATM it's all basically 'pollute like there's no tomorrow, because that's the goal! Destroy the Earth. Kill if it you have to!' or 'If we don't start pocket-mulching and get rid of everything so we can revert back to a druidic lifestyle we'll all die tomorrow!' Not much in the way of a middle ground.

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No it's because of hypocrites like that Greta Nutjob and her loonie toon followers.

I wouldn't particularly attribute it to capitalism.

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Our 'environment' is just fine... it's the human species (and the other species too I suppose) that's fucked, and even then, I think humans will be just fine too in the long run (our super consumerist lifestyle was never sustainable to begin with, so that will probably give way in the not-too-far future).

Sure we may make conditions on the planet unbearable for life in the next couple centuries... but keep in mind that even a couple of centuries or millenniums is astronomically small compared to the history and lifespan of our planet.

And if you think capitalists are to blame for the environmental issues we're facing today, what makes you think other economic policies are going to fair any better?

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It's fair to call capitalism a major contributing factor, perhaps even THE major contributing factor. But there's a lot of reasons for it.

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Nah.
It's because we figured out we could make things move by burning other things, starting somewhere around 1740.

xjayguyx posted...

No it's because of hypocrites like that Greta Nutjob and her loonie toon followers.

The environment is in bad shape because of a little girl

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Questionmarktarius posted...

Nah.
It's because we figured out we could make things move by burning other things, starting somewhere around 1740.

We were burning pollutants in to the atmosphere aggressively long before then.
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Fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between capitalism and alternatives.

We'd still strip mine the planet, but in capitalism private citizens take on the responsibility of doing the strip mining in exchange for currency. The same thing happens in communism, only it's on government orders and there's no additional compensation.

Capitalism isn't the enemy, it's consumerism... what drives consumption.

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Unbridled9 posted...

No. ATM the worst polluter in the world is easily China

Yeah... a capitalist country.

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LOL at people who think capitalism wrecked the environment, when communist regimes are historically the biggest polluters. The SJWs are awfully silent in this thread.

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EventualDecline posted...

LOL at people who think capitalism wrecked the environment, when communist regimes are historically the biggest polluters. The SJWs are awfully silent in this thread.

Might have something to do with them not being tankies, and the fact that the entire framing of the argument is dishonest. Runaway pollution is due to a combination of tech booms like the industrial revolution coupled with the failures of research into the consequences of not curtailing pollution keeping up with said booms, and governments of pretty much any kind being unwilling to regulate production and waste for fear of cutting into profit or progress speed.

It just so happens that if you have system which is susceptible to corporate interests, a given government is dis-incentivized to regulate, and there's no system that isn't susceptible to this, though fascism has by far the worst potential for it due to the incredibly close relations and interests between the private and public sector under that system. So currently we have the USA being a major polluter due to a dismantling of regulations on pretty much every front over the course of many decades, and China which has adopted a state capitalist system in an effort to boost-jump its economy to the front of the international economic race- and they will NOT compromise their effort to come out on top by cracking down on their ecological damage, not when the USA won't do the same.

Ffs, right now one of the most imminent threats to global environmental health is in Brazil, and it's not coming from Silva's ilk; it's from Bolsonaro's. He wants to clear vast swathes of rainforest for big ranching and mining operations, and assault the indigenous population while he's at it. Brazil is a massive country that is gearing up to do almost unfathomable amounts of ecological damage as we speak. Or how about Canada? Canada is a petrol state and its dealings with the USA to build pipelines has resulted in obscene amounts of pollution, but they aren't authoritarian leftists; they're capitalists.

*Shrug* TL:DR, it's not so much about the political systems in and of themselves, but geopolitical relationships as well as technological advances and corporate interests utilizing geopolitics to avoid being regulated. It's also not just a matter of scale but also what exactly is being damaged. Deforestation coupled with air polution and ocean acidification is a three-way primary threat and it's coming from multiple countries with vastly different political systems.

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Gaawa_chan posted...

It just so happens that if you have system which is susceptible to corporate interests, a given government is dis-incentivized to regulate

It just so happens that if you have a system which is susceptible to personal interests, a given government will refuse to regulate.

This effects commies more.
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On the one hand? You don't get to piss and moan about "personal interests" when that is literally all Capitalism runs off of.

On the other? Um, no. That affects authoritarian systems more, of which the Soviet Union is merely a (no longer existing) Stalinist example. China is authoritarian (Oligarchic and capitalist). Russia is authoritarian (Oligarchic and capitalist). Brazil is now authoritarian (beholden mainly to foreign oligarchs, Christian fascist). The USA has been backsliding into authoritarianism (Oligarchic and capitalist) for years now to the point where we have a billionaire oligarch as president.

So unless you're going to tell me that you're for an anarchic distribution of power in which everyone holds control over local means of production thereby dis-incentivizing them from polluting, I'm not really interested in hearing about someone trying to Red Scare in a world where communism basically doesn't exist in any notable country on the planet at this point in time.

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No. In fact, we see the US leading the way on cutting our emissions. Meanwhile Communist China seems to be leading the way on polluting. This trope by leftists that capitalism directly contributes to pollution, and that human beings wouldnt pollute if we just turned everything over to government control, is tired and not born out in facts.

BeerOnTap posted...

Meanwhile Communist China

Someone stepped out of a time machine...
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-went-from-communist-to-capitalist-2015-10
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/07/08/chinas-economic-success-proves-the-power-of-capitalism/#1ab338893b9d
http://www.usfunds.com/slideshows/how-china-became-a-capitalist-nation/#.XfN1idV7lEY

Sometimes I forget that people don't bother to educate themselves about post-Vietnam history after primary school. Makes me glad my grandfather was a university professor of history and worked for the CIA.

China has not been a communist state for decades (never gave up its authoritarianism, though)... but most people know even less about economics and economic shifts than they do about general politics. Communism, for all intents and purposes and regardless of authoritarian or anarchic variations, no longer exists on any meaningful State level today.

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Gaawa_chan posted...

Communism, for all intents and purposes and regardless of authoritarian or anarchic variations, no longer exists on any meaningful State level today.

There are tiny exceptions. For example, the Amish and Hutterites can be considered communist colonies... but as you said, not on the State level.

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I don't think the environment is in as bad of shape as everyone wants us to believe.

And the places where it's the worst....nobody is really talking about.

Anywhere where there are too many people too close to one another.....the air is and water is literally poison. But we're whining about deforestation, ice caps melting, and lazy recycling policies. Those are not nearly as bad as the MSM wants us to believe.

Why doesn't anyone talk about India? Or China? You literally can't walk outside in many areas of those two countries without dying. Why isn't Greta protesting there?

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Gaawa_chan posted...

Communism, for all intents and purposes and regardless of authoritarian or anarchic variations, no longer exists on any meaningful State level today.

does Cuba not count?

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The reason there's no surviving megafauna or larger species in general in North America is because the Native Americans slaughtered most of them to extinction when they initially arrived, and found an entire continent full of animals that had never learned to be afraid of humans (see also, what happened to the dodo).

It came back to bite them in the ass later, when they reached a point of cultural development where they would settle down and potentially domesticate animals, because by then they lacked sufficient species to work with. It's why something like 5/6ths of all animals domesticated by humans all originated in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.

It's actually 12/13ths. They got llamas. That's also the reason why natives didn't have their own plagues to spread back to the europeans.

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The USSR in the 50s and 80s had 2 of the 3 worst nuclear events in human history and tried to cover both up.
The one in the 50s has been brushed under the rug and is almost never discussed.
https://youtu.be/SQCfOjhguO0

Also though China isnt full communist anymore, there are still lots of state sponsored companies, or even state owned ones, and the population has near 0 unemployment, as if nothing else they get a state job. China doesnt give a fuck about the environment.

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Overall no. Communist country like china has a bad environment. I think it's bad because elect people that deny climate change. I was kind of pissed off at my name is earl because the smartest person in the show was a climate denier

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I don't blame capitalism, I blame over production.

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Gaawa_chan posted...

On the one hand? You don't get to piss and moan about "personal interests" when that is literally all Capitalism runs off of.

I get to piss and moan about one person's interests being held above the rest of the country.
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capitalism has no mechanism for dealing with negative externalities, so it's impossible to solve this problem with capitalism. we'd probably still be here without capitalism, though -- even economic systems that could address climate change/environmental protection aren't going to magically make it happen.

<quote> Communist country like china has a bad environment. </quote>
China isn't communist.

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Noop_Noop posted...

It's actually 12/13ths. They got llamas.

I was mostly estimating, because I couldn't remember the exact numbers. But from what I was remembering it was something like 6 species were domesticated in the Americas (including llamas), out of something like 40 or so domesticated species total. Maybe even less.



Noop_Noop posted...

That's also the reason why natives didn't have their own plagues to spread back to the Europeans.

This is definitely true. It's one of the reasons people question just how "good" a thing the Agricultural Revolution was in the first place - encouraging people to settle down actually limited the nutritional intake (meaning people were much less healthy afterwards than before), while being settled in one place is what encouraged animal domestication, which in turn is the source of most of the major diseases humans deal with on a regular basis (because most of them started as animal diseases that jumped species, and then proliferated in the new, more crowded environments of towns and cities).

The converse is, agriculture also opened the door to things like property ownership (whether you see that as a good or bad thing), but is also the source of most art, culture, and technology we've come up with since. Civilization essentially can't advance without the ability to stockpile and trade food for services.

One of the prevaling assumptions is that the only reason early humans were willing to make that trade is because agriculture also makes booze possible. So all of human history as we know it is built on the back of the fact that our ancestors 10,000 years ago just wanted to get really, really drunk.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

So all of human history as we know it is built on the back of the fact that our ancestors 10,000 years ago just wanted to get really, really drunk.

Virginia was founded on the fact that the English really wanted to smoke a lot.

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Zareth posted...

Virginia was founded on the fact that the English really wanted to smoke a lot.

Rum's a large part of why the slave trade flourished in North America.





http://www.amazon.com/History-World-6-Glasses/dp/0802715524
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If humans never industrialized, the environment would be in better shape.

However, not having capitalism doesn't mean that there wouldn't be industry.

Also, there would just be less advancements in general without industry. It's not like you can remove capitalism and still reap all the benefits.

If humans as a species stopped wanted more, and better things, the environment would be in better shape.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Native Americans slaughtered most of them to extinction when they initially arrived, and found an entire continent full of animals that had never learned to be afraid of humans (see also, what happened to the dodo).

It came back to bite them in the ass later, when they reached a point of cultural development where they would settle down and potentially domesticate animals, because by then they lacked sufficient species to work with. It's why something like 5/6ths of all animals domesticated by humans all originated in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.

What's interesting is the horse originated in North America and the natives killed them all off 10,000 years ago.

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Industrialization is the issue. So it's really just the rich countries to blame. The USSR polluted a lot, and wasn't capitalist. The undeveloped ones that were basically stone-age tech when Europeans showed up hadn't changed for thousands of years and weren't going to anytime soon, if ever.

In a great irony, the Nazis, for all their faults, actually were the first Europeans to be environmentally conscious. They preserved undeveloped areas and planted trees and stuff, I am pretty sure. They also planned to make vegetarianism law after the war. I say we repurpose the term soyboy for Nazis.

EventualDecline posted...

The SJWs are awfully silent in this thread.

They put me on "ignore" so they can't see this topic.

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Shows up to gnash teeth and thrash about

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Lobomoon posted...

They put me on "ignore" so they can't see this topic.

I don't think there's any SJWs on here anyways

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Raddest_Chad posted...

Industrialization is the issue. So it's really just the rich countries to blame. The USSR polluted a lot, and wasn't capitalist. The undeveloped ones that were basically stone-age tech when Europeans showed up hadn't changed for thousands of years and weren't going to anytime soon, if ever.

Pretty much. The issue is industrial growth, which happens regardless of which economic system is employed.

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