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Changing Climates
World rulers think their inaction at Copenhagen will save their position of privilege, but the people aren't rolling over.
My favourite media moment at the Copenhagen climate conference came last Thursday when Evo Morales declared: "Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity." Bolivia's president was being interviewed by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, heard at noon weekdays on CKDU.
Morales, speaking through a translator, described the irrational and unlimited industrialization that destroys the environment. He added that capitalism could only be overcome by ending luxury and consumerism. "So that's why we're trying to think about other ways of living [our] lives and living well, not living better," he said. "Living better is always at someone else's expense."
I chuckled knowing that capitalism's main defenders, Barack Obama and his little pal Harper, couldn't do a goddamn thing to squelch Morales or the leaders of other poor nations who questioned a rampaging economic system based on fraud, ignorance and greed. All Obama and Harper could do---and they did it---was to do nothing about climate change. Both have earned the undying curses of future generations. The US Environmental Protection Agency warns, for example, of far-reaching climate change effects---everything from coastal erosion and flooding, to drought and wild fires. The Natural Resources Canada website carries similar warnings including an ominous one about the threat of serious flooding in downtown Halifax. A recent provincial report on the state of Nova Scotia's coasts predicts an accelerating rise in sea levels over the next century of between 70 and 140 centimetres. Yes, we'll all feel the impact of climate change. No wonder there's such strong public support in both Canada and the US for serious climate change measures, yet Obama and Harper diddle while the world burns.
My second-favourite media moment came last Wednesday as a United Nations security guard escorted the chair of Friends of the Earth International out of the climate change conference centre. Nnimmo Bassey, sporting a well-tailored suit jacket and burgundy scarf, calmly told Amy Goodman that the UN had suddenly revoked all of his organization's security passes. Bassey, a prominent Nigerian environmental activist, said Friends of the Earth had representatives accredited from all over the world. "And today we expected to have about 90 delegates in here, but not one has been allowed in," he said as the security guard kept urging him to leave. "And we are here as ordinary people, grassroots mobilizers, just to speak the mind of the people that want a real climate deal in Copenhagen. But apparently our leaders want to be cocooned away, to listen only to themselves."
As Bassey was led away, he barely had time to describe the "horrendous" effects of climate change in Nigeria. "We have ocean surges. We have desertification for the north, drought, all the evils---the oil corporations burning gas relentlessly." The next day, Canadian journalist Naomi Klein commented that Bassey has been imprisoned because of his activism in fighting the oil companies devastating the Niger Delta. "And he has physically been kept out of this centre, even though he's accredited," Klein added. "And meanwhile, the oil executives are walking free in the hallways. It's the world upside down."
Or, maybe, it's just the upside-down world of capitalism. Leaders of the rich, capitalist countries may wish to cocoon themselves away to discuss climate change. But that's becoming increasingly impossible in our wired global village where most of the villagers have figured out that climate change is about a lot more than rising temperatures. It's also about the stark divisions between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, the 1.1 billion who live on less than a dollar a day. It's also about trade, aid and Third World debt; famine, hunger and untreated disease. It's about violence, prisons, occupation and war; economic exploitation and profits; the heedless destruction of wildlife and forests; the loss of indigenous cultures. But most of all, climate change is about the struggle for justice.- Posted in
25 Comments so far
Show Allcapitlism is an irrational system that is devouring the planet... it faces three fundamental problems it cant slove (a) massive unemployment (c) finite resources and (d) environmental destruction of the planet
please dont mess with my pond...small is beautiful
A fair market system would be balanced between wants, needs, and resources. It would be inclusive instead of tending toward monopoly. It would seek to minimize ill-effects while maximizing benifits. Everyone would have a equal shot at playing in the game.Nations and people would not be played off each other to produce a lowest common earning/price situation.
Hail the Market. It works. But only under proper controls. And it is not necessarily a cancer-like force depending of unlimited growth and an need for an infinity of resources to function. That is just the form the market took with the spread of corporatioins. They are the real enemy.
Gary
I get tickled when I see anyone like this writer talking about Capitalism and it being the cause of all the worlds evil.
And all that without suggesting any replacement. So far no other system has worked half so well, but he ends with no suggestion of a structure to replace it.
Not exactly helpful.
any system is better. All systems are better. Capitalists are just better at destroying all competitors.
"any system is better. All systems are better."
Other than the fact that every known system has been tried and none has come close to working even half as well would make your conclusion a bit iffy I'd say.
The idea that there is some pure, unfettered capitalist system that has "worked" so well is a myth--such a system exists only in your imagination.
Capitalism has "worked" in the past 100 years only with massive countervailing doses of state intervention in the economy and in the social sphere, to correct the dysfunctional inequalities pure capitalism generates.
There is no pure capitalism that "works" in the real world--in your imagination, yes, but there is no empirical example.
Exactly. We have been riding upon a ruchness of cheap energy, food, and limited competition for decades. Farming enjoyed until recently a very unusual period of calm weather and developed policied that depended upon the trend continuing while capitalisatic forces uncheck have destrpyed the family farm and disenfrancise millions of farm families.
Capitalism reflects the marketplace as a viable means of allocation of resources. But without potent regualtion it allows the cheaters, crooks and bandits to take over the reins of control. It's fatal weakness. It also depends upon a flawed view of human nature and had little if anything to do with the rise of liberal democracies which produced most of the benefits falsely attributed to capitalism.
It also crashes and burns every few years and you call it a sucess? Sheesh.
Gary
Severely oversimple.
Various tribal systems continued for many thousands of years. In what sense did these often far more representative systems "not work"?
Egyptian royalist dynasties continued with few changes of dynasty over several thousand years. In what sense would you say this far more stable system "did not work"?
What capitalist country with no socialist principles now counts itself a success?
The post you respond to is surely overstated, but this seems hardly less so. What constitutes a failure?
In Chavez' Venezuela the standard of living rises as he moves towards socialism.
In Morales' Bolivia, workers advance as Bechtel is forced to release its stranglehold on their water.
In Castro's Cuba--despite the very genuine lack of a free press, but also despite the country's being under relative siege and undercover attack for going on 50 years--the standard of living continues to improve, and the infant mortality rate betters that of the United States.
So, how are these things not working?
Look, many Americans don't like to call the services they receive socialism because after generations of propaganda, they think of it as an epithet rather than a theory and a practice with specific tenets and actions. But that does not mean they would vote to give up their Social Security or the Post Office.
Socialism never was what Russia and China CALLED communism. It has genuine liberal democratic roots. Marx did not create socialism -- he co-opted it for his anti-capitalistic ranting.
To each according to their need. To each control of their own tools and homeplace. To each an equal say in their goverance. To none a monopoly of assets. To none control of the commons. To all a share in the production of the state.
Simple yet powerful ideas.
Gary
The only reason that capitalism has "worked" in this country is because Europeans came here to a thriving continent whose inhabitants lived in harmony with nature without using the "resources" that those Europeans valued. Land, lumber, furs etc that evolved into metals, coal, etc etc. They then proceeded to take the land from the inhabitants by force and coercion.
Now that those resources are dwindling we are no better off than any other used up country in the world's history and our "capitalist system", which has used up it's capital, is collapsing because the wealthy cannot sell money to each other any more as the lower classes are becoming restless. Just as has happened in Europe and other societies in the past. The difference now is that there is nowhere to expand to, and little left to expoit without pissing someone off and polluting the environment more and more.
End of story, end of civilization as we know it.
The fact that the writer does not have a utopian solution does not mean that capitalism is not a major cause of the world's environmental and social/political crises.
Your logic is flawed. This is like saying that because there is no cure for cancer, cancer is not a disease.
We may not have the final cure for capitalism--that has to be worked out empirically, in practice--but capitalism is most assuredly a disease, every bit as virulent and deadly to the human race collectively as cancer is to the individual.
Situationist
The writer offers no other system or solution. You are correct "that does not mean that capitalism is not a major cause of the world's environmental and social/political crises." Nor does it mean that it is.
My logic is not flawed at all. Capitalism has proven in every instance to work better than any other economic system and of course it is not the "major cause of the world's environmental and social/political crises."
"capitalism is most assuredly a disease, every bit as virulent and deadly to the human race collectively as cancer is to the individual."
Now there is some flawed logic. Opinion is not the same as empirical proof asnd there is none to support your argument.
I simply get tired of the redundent attacks on and blaming capitalism for all the worlds woes when its so blatently false a claim.
But mostly, if someone doesn't like the system, at least propose an alternative. So far every one that has been tried has failed. Every single one.
I believe its time for everyone to move on from the old rhetoric and failed premises, but that is just my opinion.
Pax
Define your terms. What do you mean by capitalism? What economic systems has it been proven to work better than by empirical evidence? What denotes a failed economic system? What denotes a successful economic system?
You say every "other" economic system that has been tried has failed. But from my vantage and the vantage of many posters here, a state supported plutocracy, like we seem to have, is the only economic system that has been tried in the past 200 years. What we have now is a taxpayer supported system wherein profits are private and losses are the responsibility of the public. Is that the capitalism you're describing? We have a system in place that exports living wage jobs to third world countries to exploit local labor markets leaving economic desolation behind. Has Detroit been greatly improved by the noble "free-market"? Judging solely by the content of the two posts above this, I would wager you feel "capitalism" stands against a controlled economic system like socialism or communism; but we have an essentially socialistic economic system; there exists no free market in America. But more to the point, the fantasy of a free-market seems to only exist in some marginal way amongst the black market (where clients and providers must pay all the overhead costs of doing business) and failed states (like Somalia.)
Finally, how false is the claim that the majority of the worlds ills stem from our cannibalistic economic system, whatever it may be? From the privatization of water supplies in Gaza, or the displacement of edible crops in favor of cash crops throughout central america, we see the capitalistic driver of greed fattening some and famishing others. We see the harshest brutalities in the world condoned by world leaders as helping maintain open markets. Millions of americans being denied essential medical treatments by profit hungry insurers, millions of north-africans dying from treatable but low profit diseases. We see starving refugees interred in slum-like tent villages to protect oil-interests abroad, and in every case we can intuit the cause. Its profitable to stop unionization of coca-cola plants. Its profitable to make wage slaves of indian families. Its profitable to drop billions of dollars of munitions on no-name desert towns in backwards nowhereville countries when locals don't immediately approve the appropriation of their natural resources. What good is there to say?
Capitalism is a disease, and I can identify exactly which one, cancer. Capitalism is based on indefinite growth on a finite planet with finite resources. Cancer is based on indefinite growth in a finite host. Both are unsustainable, period. Capitalism will eventually fail, it is just a matter of time. Just because something has yet to fail doesn't mean it eventually wont. For example, I have yet to die, but I am quite sure I will someday. Capitalism would have failed already but for the massive amounts of borrowed money that has been thrown at it over the last year. This happens on a fairly regular basis throughout history. If Capitalism is truly sustainable it would not have to be bailed out over and over.
We have had economic systems that have lasted much longer than Capitalism has. American Indian economies lasted thousands of years. Capitalism is an experiment that is but hundreds of years old.
Any alternative will need to be based on sustainability, no growth, no stock market, no interest. All these things are nothing more than Ponzi schemes, that are guaranteed to fail if given enough time.
IMHO capitalism will evolve into into a much different animal than it is now, after we pass peak oil, water, topsoil, precious metals..., and the population of the planet contracts. Indefinite growth will end in the later half of this century and so will our current form of capitalism.
Capitalism works for whom? For you, maybe, and for a small elite of white Westerners, mostly of the business class but sporadically for some workers, too. But you and they are a tiny minority.
Two thirds of the human race lives in desperate poverty--expressly because of the relentless drive of capitalism to exploit the natural resources and cheap labor of those countries. That is called imperialism, a late stage of capitalism.
The human race is on the brink of extinction because of impending climate disaster--again because of capitalist/market driven imperatives to exploit and plunder and spew the cheapest fuels and toxins--again, to benefit a tiny minority un the short term at the expense of everyone in the long term.
Child labor, sweatshops, environmental despoliation--these are all byproducts of the capitalist imperative to squeeze the maximum proft regardless of the social and environmental cost.
The solution is evident in Europe and the rest of the civilized world--civil society banding together to placed needed restraints and limits on the antisocial byproducts of the insatiable capitalist need to keep expanding profits, whatever the human and environmental disasters it leaves in its wake.
Pure, unfettered capitalism has always been a disaster--that is why social democratic and socialist curbs on its excesses have been key features of every advanced civilized society--when those curbs are lifted or reversed, as in the repeal of Glass-Steagall or the failure to regulate derivatives, disaster ensues.
Perhaps you need to broaden your historical and philosophical perspective on exactly how capitalism "works," and for whom.
Don't feed the trolls, folks. Here is a solution you can work on right now while capitalism is still here. Free public transit. There are about 50 million net additional cars on the road every year. Only public transport can gradually eliminate the auto. To learn more search for #freepubtrans on twitter, or google free public transit.
Japan, Canada, Much of Europe have a socialist filter on their capitalism that makes it more Humane.
And not USA predator Predatory Capitalism.
I think the economic engine needs to be a capitalist generator and a socialist distributor.
Sort of like a horse with an internal combustion engine?
Help me, Glenn. I am trying to picture this, but I keep getting hippogriffs, heffalumps and woozels.
The maestro will please to explain, please?
Capital can be generated without exploitation, it requires controls. Distribution can be need not desire based.
I think?
Or is it a kind of oxxxymoron. Not to be discussed in an open forum as it might scare the horses.
Gary
Capitalism sees THIS as Rational behaviour.
An agricultural land base is used to grow food for export because the consumers in that EXPORT market have more Capital to spend on FOOD while local people go hungry.
This is the exact system that allowed the great famine to happen in Ireland and multiple famines in India. Both these countries produced a surplus of food while millions of locals went HUNGRY.
Irelands agricultural land base was controlled by a handful of rich families who found it more profitable to grow beef and mutton for export to Britain and the Continent because those areas had more RICH consumers able to afford beef and Mutton.
The IMF and World Bank encourage third world countries to use limited resources in order to produce food and goods for export in return for Capital and then use that Capital to buy back the food and goods they are exporting.
These countries then all produce or export the same "Goods" which in turn drives down the price making it even cheaper for the first world consumer to buy those goods. In order to keep up with the collapsing prices said country has to dedicate even more resources/land/food for export.
All of this while the transactions in between must extract some Corporation a profit. Is it any wonder they are all in debt?
It is a massive con game. A system that leads to more and more debt and concentrates power into the handful of one small few.
"So that's why we're trying to think about other ways of living [our] lives and living well, not living better," he said. "Living better is always at someone else's expense."
How about socializing necessities and privatizing luxuries?
And, after all, the differentiation of the hidden fosters the figuralization of the materialist architectonic. Now if we were to say that the illusion of paratextual apparatus gestures toward the experience of the eclectic then surely we can infer that the imposition of autonomous phenomena specifies the fundamental principle of history as such.
Wouldn’t you agree?
Thank you, Professor Irwin Corey.