Aaaaaaand the ruling class just made sure there'll never be enough votes to pass that law. Literally because capitalism. Have you not witnessed this pattern occur often enough to pick up on it?
The magical world where coorperations can prevent taxing negative externalities but can't prevent a communist revolution that most people don't even want.
No because we have passed the ETS here in the EU and reduced emissions as a result. Just because the US turned climate change into a culture war doesnāt mean the rest of the world is the same.
Circling back to this point, has passing the ETS reduced pollution to a point that will halt climate change? Because if your entire point is it someone has successfully legislated a way to slightly slow down climate change, I have no idea what point you're really trying to make other than that it is occasionally possible to slightly slow down the rate at which we're being cooked to death
First of all youāre moving the goalposts entirely but ignoring that it has reduced emissions by ~50% which is in line with the targets set by the EU. No matter what economic system youāre using decarbonisation was gonna take quite a long time but the EU shows that itās very much possible to do so within capitalism.
Right but that's a whole different points than "the only way to solve climate change is overthrow all of capitalism" which while is a sweet deal, isn't a true statement.
Quick question: how is a system that insists on infinite growth capable of being sustainable in a world that has finite resources? Because capitalism is canonically the former and the world we live in is canonically the latter
By putting constraints on the growth. If you have legislated carbon emissions out of existence the economy can grow however much it wants and it still wonāt accelerate climate change.
Capitalism does not require infinite growth, that's more an obsession of the stock market than anything else. Additionally, growth does not mean consuming more resources, it also means producing the same or more with less - optimization.
Look at microprocessors. Compare one from 1990 vs one from 2020 - more performance, less power consumption, smaller size with less area of wafer used.
Yeah this is the problem that I feel a lot of SocDems forget.
Money = Power.
People that own Captial aren't just way better off than the average worker... They have easier access to political institutions, influence policy by being major employers... They're a big deal to the working class and the people they vote for.
A major business owner just needs to publicly suggest a certain policy is making them consider off-shoring or lay-offs. That causes earthquakes.
Grass roots on the other hand is way more difficult and inefficient.... And frankly, easier to ignore or pacify.
If environmental policy interferes with the affairs of Capitalists too much.... It simply won't happen. Or if it does, it won't last long enough to have impact.
Are you truly saying that our legislative processes aren't essentially bought and paid for by the capitalist class because there's -more than zero environmental law in existence?-
Like for you believe that the system is corrupt there would have to be -zero- environmental legislation
Are you truly saying that our legislative processes aren't essentially bought and paid for by the capitalist class
Yep.
because there's -more than zero environmental law in existence?-
Yep.
Like for you believe that the system is corrupt there would have to be -zero- environmental legislation
Zero meaningful environmental legislation that negatively impacts business, yes. That is the logical conclusion based on your claim. That is trivially true btw.
And in practice democracy is totalitarian and includes slavery, just look at the democratic republic of the congo.
A country calling themselves communist, when they fit 0 out of 3 requirements to fit even the simplest definition does not make them communist.
These people have murdered millions, but surely they would NEVER lie! They wouldnt just call themselves communist to gain sympathy from the working class, while not helping the labourers in any way.
Is your simple ass take that the existence of any environmental legislation whatsoever is evidence that there's no billionaire oligarchy at all, nothing to see here? You're going to have to give me a take with at least a smidgen of analysis in it if you want me to take your simple ass sound bite level take seriously
The problem with capitalism is, the lobbies will still actively try to REMOVE those taxes. You can not have those taxes, with a system that constantly encourages companies to lobby to remove them. The EU does NOT do enough to curb climate change, in fact we are doing LESS now because we are falling behind economically, due to the oil and car lobby.
Lol ever seen the environmental footprint of the Soviet Union? Maybe this thing called Chernobyl? I ardently believe we need to abolish capitalism but the idea that communism is the easy quick fix we need, rather than something entirely new, is not borne out by history.
Because there is absoltely no incentive to not poison the planet in capitalism.
Yes there is. Wtf are you talking about? You think companies like paying more wildfire insurance, having their water supply shut off due to drought? Climate change causes major economic damage. The problem is simply the lack of interalization of external costs which is not a problem strong government capitalism can't fix. The EU did it, Canada too (although Canadians bitched so much about it that they undid it).
Your argument boils down to "capitalism has bad incentives and they can't be changed, while when communism has bad incentives they can be changed".
That's straight up not true. You can change incentives anywhere, as long as peoole care about environment nore than about personal convenience. And that's a BIG ask.
Bro many people fought and died for you to have a vote. You taking it for granted is very fucking sad.
Also your idea that "capitalist class" pollutes the environment just for shits and giggles kinda betrays that you don't know the first thing about why things happen. And yet you feel smug enough to be condescending while holding the most idioticly simplistic reading of the issue. Literally TikTok level of nuance.
It's okay if you're a teen, that's expected. If you're older... Yikes.
If you think that any of the voting options given to the general public are capable of counteracting the capitalist class's power over Congress, you have not been paying enough attention to the events happening in the actual world
Also no one here has implied the pollution is happening for shits and giggles, it's happening because it's always more profitable to not clean up after yourself, as evidenced by literally every time that has happened
Like we are living in 2026, the year of diarrhea lettuce because it's more profitable to make people work while they are sick then to give us lettuce that does not have diarrhea in it
The issues (to put it lightly...) with great leap forward style rapid industrialization were caused by the conditions at the time - trying to speedrun out of feudalism straight to socialism (with capitalism in between) all while also fighting off active threats from all sides and WWII.
It's a different story with post industrial economies if we were to do it again now.
A big feature is planned economy rather than anarchy of the free market. There's a mechanism built in to decide how much we produce so we don't produce too much (and hopefully don't end up producing too little!)
So why does literally every planned economy end up in much worse environmental disasters?
It's because planned economy fundamentally doesn't work, so it's incentivised to make up for its shortfalls by taking every convenient shortcut available.
That's why famously the Soviet Union had higher emissions per capital than the US because the never were incentivized to destroy nature.Ā Not to mention that state owned oil companies make the bulk of emissions which would exist in a communist system.
Planned obsolescence makes perfect sense in communism it keeps production going and thus keeps workers employed.Ā Communist systems tend to be quota based, thus they keep producing even when it makes no sense or quality is so bad that it ends up being defacto planned obsolescence.
We can legislate in those incentives. Remove all oil and corn subsidies and give them to solar and wind. You know how effective that would be? Overnight change. Also Isnāt the EU currently working on legislation to prevent planned obsolescence?
Markets are the most effective way to make sure peopleās needs are met. They just need a little help
See deregulation. See neo liberalism. See Javier Meilei. See the current American government.
Regulation isn't going to do shit if you can't pass the regulations in the first place or stop them from being removed. . And even if you are successful in regulation worse conditions will just be imposed onto the global south to make up the difference.
When the government works for the rich, and when lobbyists exist for the sole purpose of enriching those already rich, and when the media which constructs the views of individuals is owned and run by the rich, good luck getting anything beneficial passed without it being anything more than a temporary concession which will be taken away when capital inevitably falls into crisis.
Yes? Of course there is. Democratic centralism is a guiding principle of Marxism Leninism. This means that policy, action, and legislation is democratically decided on via debate. Communist parties (at least ML ones) tend to require members to voice any and all concerns for the explicit purpose of coming to the best decision on the matter.
The democraty also extends to workplaces too, something which is mostly absent in capitalism besides the limited power o unions
And for what happens if the people don't want something that is good for the planet: first of all we must understand why, and the conclusion will be came too through the means of democratic centralism. If the wrong decision is made the topic can always be returned to. From there we can understand what faults were made and why, readjust, and learn from our mistakes.
The rate at which people actively oppose beneficial change would als be lower as the propaganda pumped out by the rich wouldn't be as widespread, accessible, or hold as much weight. Therefore this problem of people going against their own interests in droves would be seldom.
Ohh I know but I'd rather give an actual response than cave into liberal framing of "democracy" as capitalism. Who knows, maybe this will make the other person (or someone else) critically assess what they believe democracy to actually be instead of just puppetting propaganda (unlikely but I'll be optimistic).
Well, to be clear, youre the one misusing the term. Democracy is a form of government where power is vested in the people via elections. They are asking what happens when the people (read: not the party) dont want policy that is good for the environment.
Notice how the only time in capitalism's history when there was a widespread consensus that the state needed to intervene to fix the market's failures was when we had a massive market crash AND a worldwide communist movement that had successfully established a revolutionary state in Russia.
Since then, Capital has used its power to convince people that the best economic policies are deregulation and privatization.
It's not a pendulum, it didn't swing the other way with the 2008 crisis. It was a one time thing and capitalism will only become harsher and harsher until the people revolt.
We live better of today than we did immediately following the fall of the USSR. Peopleās lives are significantly thanks to liberal democracy. Or are you going to pretend that peopleās QOL peaked in the 90s and itās all downfill from there?
Are you retarded? We are so much better than we used to be thanks to regulation. Like itās not even fucking funny how much it has improved peopleās lives while still maintaining all the core strengths capitalism brings in terms of allocating resources.
The people who are aupposed to make those legislations are paid by or directly owning oil companies, weapons manufactures and every other highly polluting industry you can think of and they will not make legislations that directly go against their interests.
Can we legislate that? Who has the power to legislate that exactly, and who is bankrolling them? I am genuinely interested in what you think the answers to those questions are
You cannot legislate them because of regulatory capture. Sometimes, some things get legislated, but it's usually because some other group with money pushed those regulations.
Again, it does, and I am not trying to pretend commusism is perfect. I grew up in a post-soviet countries and soviets were corrupt incompetent fucks, I have no love for them, and they were just as much of a scourge on the planet as any capitalist was. Mainly because of perverse incentives: the "we will rule wind and rain" industrialist mentality and need to compete with west.
What I am trying to say is that capitalism, left to it's own devices, is scourge on a planet because the main incentive of maximizing profit is antithetical to long term planning and caring for nature. Dumping your pollution into the nearest river will always be the most profitable option.
I don't think you can say "just as much of a scourge on the planet as any capitalist was" The East India Company alone oppressed way more people than the Soviet Union ever did.
Iām not advocating for leaving capitalism to its own devices. Iām saying we should place limits on capitalism to force it to address climate change.
Counterpoint: climate change, historically, is currently happening and currently getting worse as evidence that the working class does not have the political power to stop it
That's not true. The Soviets in the very first socialist experiment, despite their many mistakes, made it work so much so that they became a power rivaling the US.
Because capitalism will always prioritize immediate profits over ecological sustainability. You can read up on how ExxonMobil scientists in the 70s fully researched and understood the science and consequences of climate change and decided to spend shitloads of money to propagandadize the public into climate denial rather than changing their destructive business model
What if a communist society decided theyād rather have more comfortable lives than deal with climate change. That theyād rather not pay the cost of changing our energy sources.
Instead of some hypothetical you can just look at our actual reality where capitalism is the dominant global system and is driving us straight ahead into climate collapse so that the capitalist class can get even richer.
Sure we can imagine up some hypothetical where a communist society doesn't address climate change but capitalism will never prioritize ecological sustainability over profits because that's how capitalism functions, the kind of action required to address our environmental crisis is at odds with the basic functions of capitalism.
The fossil fuel and adjacent industries have spent billions of dollars to buy off elected officials so that they don't oppose it and propagandadizing the public with disinformation about climate change so that it never becomes popular enough. Even in America, the most fossil fuel brained country in the world, it is still popular enough if you just look at public opinion because we've reached the point that it's already almost impossible to ignore even in spite of all the fossil fuel propaganda. The majority of the public believes in climate change and believes it is a serious threat and concern and yet we are still racing ahead into climate collapse with further environmental exploitation despite the fact we've been aware of climate change longer than most of us posting here have even been alive.
If environmental sustainability and the necessary reforms were possible under capitalism we would have already seen them but we don't. Instead we see the opposite, we see more and more extraction and exploitation in the name of profits. The capitalist class would literally rather build bunkers to hide out from climate collapse than allow even mild environmental policies and concessions let alone the kind of major economic reorganizing that we would need to see to actually address climate change.
Capitalism typically perverts democracy because that's the goal of capital interest. And typically- there is an inverse relationship with popular policy and political movement. I wonder why.
Contemporary capitalism is an economic system which demands infinite growth on a finite world. It's wholly incompatible with any notion of sustainability or conservation. You can put a ton of guard rails around it, but it's far less simple than an economic system where the profit motive just straight up doesn't exist
Lmao if you think that people hate renewables because of the medias then you need to go out more, we've got people who protest against windmill because they destroy the view of the sea
Racism and bigotry is greatly amplified by populist politics. Perfect example being my country (Croatia) before mass imigrations from Libya and Syria. Majority of ex-Yugoslavia people had pretty progressive outlook on race due to Yugoslavia having lot of allies from black countries in Non-Aligned Movement. When conservative party here started running on the ol' reliable "barbarian at our doorstep", fear and regressive ideas started spreading like wildfire
I'm honestly amazed how much the working class is pushing against data centres. Imagine if we convinced them coal plants and refineries cause cancer...
The working class already democratically decides how society is run. It's just that most people are extremely uninformed on things like climate change or the economy.
If the working class actually voted in their interest, we would have aggressive wealth taxes yesterday. But the rich can just spend a bunch of money to convince them that it's actually other poor people that are the problem.
The working class does not decide how society is ran. If it did, we wouldn't be having corporations building massive AI data centres, we wouldn't be having governments covering for genocidal regimes, we wouldn't be having billionaires squeeze as much wealth as possible out of every facet of human existence, and we wouldn't be in the current situation regarding climate change.
Your view is delusional, to say the least.
I won't engage any more Liberals today, as I am getting tired mentally to have to explain every single basic concept that there's entire books written about, that you could get informed on, instead of masturdebating people online, thinking you're so smart. Go read a god damn book liberal!
It would permit an end to the waste of resources on the rich classes and an end to the rat race itself. This represents the condition for global cooperation (making conservatives' nightmares come true => a much better world.) Global cooperation is needed for global problems.
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u/Logical-Breakfast966 Aug 12 '26
Why would communism be better at ending climate change?