The memes of the climate

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.

Exactly. End both of them

↑ 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.

Agreed. Capitalism is a horrible master but a good slave. Just like we regulated the other forces of nature (like fire) to harness them in our favour, so should we harness market forces to work for us.

Capitalism works well when there is plenty of potential for growth, but when there are non-monetary reasons (such as the literal end of ecosystems favorable to human life) that require adjustments or even degrowth, it quickly devolves into feudalism - and the problem is that we do not have the means to quickly stop CO2 emissions without tightening our belts in energy consumption, which in turn requires some degree of degrowth.

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...

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.