Capitalism as we know it is over
These are the pathways that keep us under already catastrophic 2°
Our system of exploitation & short-termism will never achieve the precipitous drop needed
Under our current system emissions are still rising
Capitalism cannot even achieve a leveling off of emissions - and that is the easiest part
Regulations & incentives are already failing: the inherent incentives of the capitalism will always empower those who cheat and game the system
The question is just what comes next:
A more equitable world for all
Or fascist corporate feudalism
@The_ogier #capitalist EU countries were able to significantly reduce their CO2 footprint while capitalist USA wasn't; "capitalism" is a extremely broad spectrum https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions
@kravietz definitely a valid point! However, there is the question how much of the EU's emissions have merely been effectively exported to Asian countries.
Also, all the emissions reductions achieved by the EU are very low hanging fruit.
Things will get progressively harder and harder as we approach net 0.
I do think the problem is capitalism as such. Entities in capitalism that extract maximum value through ruthless exploitation and gaming systems will inherently out-compete those that do not.
That is why I believe regulations will not be enough to curb the system.
And I believe we can already see it: There is already significant fraud in the carbon credit trade and large parts of the "legitimate" trade are far less efficient than could be as, of course, their aim is profits above all else (e.g. planting monoculture forests instead rewilding, cutting down primary forest to plant new forest for credits, etc)
@The_ogier not everything is explained by "reductionism to greed"; growth in lower income countries is energy-intensive but it enables basic living standards which are a prerequisite to environment protection; in high-income parts of the world net emissions of all pollutants (not only CO2) are declining and biodiversity is increasing; you can see this on the OurWorldInData graphs where pollution in China is still slowly inreasing but will soon start falling as it did in EU before
@kravietz Yes! What China is doing is actually amazing (although I would very much hesitate to call their system capitalist).
They spend 3x of the US in regards to renewables and pretty much drive the entire sector both in regards to innovation and large-scale roll-out
@The_ogier but it is effectively capitalist if majority of the companies are private owned, operate on for-profit basis and there's no central planning; that's why I said capitalism is a spectrum, with US and Russia being perhaps the worst examples of it looking from human development point of view
@kravietz Agree that for the most part China functions as a capitalist society
There are the interesting hybrid characteristics that result from their heavy subsidies, the clear direction enforced by the 5 year plans and the large stake the government has in many companies
But all that aside, even China (like almost every country bar 2 or 3 very small ones) is still on track to catastrophically miss the Paris targets.
They may take even more direct control to avoid that, but then they will have found a non-capitalist solution
@The_ogier Yeah, the notion that any gov involvement in economy equals diehard socialism is purely US aberration :) Actually, public schools were proposed by the same Adam Smith whom US neocons consider "father of capitalism", and half century before Marx. And his 1st book title was "The theory of moral sentiments", with the "moral" part completely dropped from US theory of capitalism
