US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2030

On January 16 2020 05:42 Gorsameth wrote:
I don't want to put words in his mouth but to me it reads like ZerOCoolSC2 is (like me) in the camp of "We are already to late, we're fucked and no one is going to do enough to stop it"
That doesn't mean we should not work on it, just accepting that whatever we end up doing won't be enough.

On January 16 2020 05:43 Nebuchad wrote:


What is realistic or not depends on what you're comfortable with.

At the other extreme, we could start a war against India or China right now, and kill as many of them as possible. If we lose 1 billion people, then we don't have to do as many efforts to fight climate change. There is a number of humans existing in the world at which point our way of life is sustainable, I don't know what it is exactly but it certainly exists. Personally I'd rather we try and change than we kill people or let them die, but hey, I'm an idealist.

On January 16 2020 05:48 JimmiC wrote:


This is also foolish, the damage to the environment by the war would do way more harm. Again you starbucks communists are using logical fallacies to try to prove a point which is rotten at its core.

It will take a monumental change of peoples lifestyles and goals to fix the environment, globally. The environment does not care if workers own the means of production or not. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable.


edit: It would be awesome if the two of you were actually talking about the changes we need to make to save the environment instead of using it as some sort of trump card in any argument. I'm not even sure if you know what changes need to be made or how they are possible because you never get past the "without socialism the world is doomed" rhetoric. It is unintelligent populist rhetoric and really quite disappointing.

On January 16 2020 06:13 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Communist countries have a dismal record on environmental issues. And you are right, the "everything is rotten, only socialism will save us" stuff at every sauce on every subject is getting old.

It will take a monumental change of peoples lifestyles and goals to fix the environment, globally. The environment does not care if workers own the means of production or not. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable.

On January 16 2020 06:24 Nebuchad wrote:


Then let's not do communism, let's do something that doesn't have a dismal record on environmental issues instead.

On January 16 2020 06:36 IgnE wrote:
Maybe global warming won’t be so bad

On January 16 2020 06:38 Belisarius wrote:
Ah good, we are here again.


This is the core problem that I have never seen a satisfactory response to.

At this point, you two might as well be advocating we solve everything by magic. You are welcome, at any time, to remove that impression by describing what you would like to do.

On January 16 2020 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:


No problem, thanks for asking. There are two main drivers of climate change, it's emissions by the more developped countries and emissions by the industry. Industry is responsible for most of the emissions of course but there's also a more individualistic element in that our way of life produces a level of emissions that is not really sustainable long term.

The issue that capitalism has in dealing with this is that because it allocates too much power to the specific people who run the industries, the capitalist class, it is ill-equipped to activate change in those. So instead we observe what we have seen in the world today: people should take personal responsibility and change their lives according to climate, we should stop having vacations, we should stop using cars, we should pee in the shower.

This is something but it's not enough because of the dual nature of the problem we face. We see that capitalism is "decent" at demanding that people change their lifestyles, it can use propaganda, it can tax them if they behave poorly, that sort of thing. We also see that capitalism is atrocious at demanding that industry changes, because of the amount of power allocated to the bosses of industry, and because of the profit motive that causes every change to be adopted reluctantly.

Therefore a logical step to make is to increase the power that we have over industry. We can do that using social democracy and have the government regulate the businesses so that they are forced to be more ecofriendly. That has issues, but either way it's the only realistic step that we have so let's do that.

The reluctance that will be shown by industry and the general issues of corruption and propaganda will make it so that it's not enough though. It isn't realistic to expect that the capitalist class won't fight back. Corruption will be more profitable than respecting their limits, so they will corrupt the controllers. All the change that we see will be done reluctantly, thus basically ensuring that it isn't bold enough to lead us to where we need to be. And they will still hold more power on society than the rest of us do, which means they will be in prime position to influence politics and make the discourse drift right again in the near future even if we manage to win right now.

That's why we shouldn't stop there, logically, in an ecologic framework. Luckily not stopping there is also a good thing in general, so it's not a problem that we have to continue.

And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable

On January 16 2020 07:15 Gorsameth wrote:
You didn't address his point tho.
If you change up who owns the industry then they become the class of people who fight against climate change regulations because they now control the industry. By changing ownership from a couple of rich people to a lot of 'poor' people your just increasing the number of people you are fighting and not reducing their power at all, they still control the industry.

On January 16 2020 07:21 Nebuchad wrote:


It's somewhat easy for a few rich people to insulate themselves from the consequences of climate change. It's a lot harder for the entirety of the workers of a company to do so. So no, I don't think that a democratic worker force would make the same decisions than a single CEO would, in fact I think that's pretty ludicrous to believe.

It's not just that, it would also be harder for them to promote actively lying to the people for personal benefit, as the whole enterprise would have to agree to do that. So we wouldn't see as much propaganda and in consequence, not as much climate change or overall science denial.

You are underestimating the dynamic of an elite vs a people. Replacing the elites with the people doesn't just make the people the elite. They're still the people.

On January 16 2020 07:28 Gorsameth wrote:
They don't have to insulate themselves from the consequences. They just don't have to give a shit, or less shit then they give about losing 20% of their pay (random ass number) for the company to become green.

People are really good at ignoring negative consequences that are not directly apparent, and by the time we see direct consequences of climate change, beyond "oh this year is a little hotter then the previous one" it will be way way to late.

On January 16 2020 07:33 Nebuchad wrote:


Which do you think is more likely, that 50% of the workers of a company that are not insulated collectively decide not to give a shit, or that a board of CEOs that are insulated decide not to give a shit? Sounds fairly clear cut to me, do you disagree? I'd love to see why.

And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable