I don't have any problem with a market economy, per se, but I do have a BIG problem with capitalism.
In my preferred version of state socialism, there is no accumulation of capital, and thus no capitalism. All large industries and large-scale services are socialized, owned by the people and managed by the state (or by worker cooperatives, where practical).
In my version of a market economy, people can own and run small companies, hire employees, set prices, make a profit... that's all fine. But they can't buy their competitors and either take them over or put them out of business. They can't open franchises, where they sell (or rent) the right to operate a different company with the same name. They're not allowed to buy their suppliers and create a conglomerate. They aren't permitted to grow so large that the market no longer operates fairly. And every business owner's wealth will be capped with a highly progressive tax structure (which is the price of using the commons to turn a profit).
So, the marketplace as such is not the problem. The problem is capitalism.
@breadandcircuses oh! The distinction is unknown to 99% of even the “educated” population…. No wonder we haven’t gotten anywhere for the last two centuries!!
Our capitalist rulers, and the politicians they own, are playing the long game. Since the 1950s they have been working steadily to shift the Overton window, to reduce the influence of labor unions, to boost consumerism, and to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.
A large part of that strategy involves privatizing services that used to be (and should be) public.
They're playing the long game, and they are winning — much to the detriment of you and me and the environment we live in.
Reagan and Thatcher hatched the plan and it's poisened the English-speaking world. We once had great public services and now they're all falling apart.
So we are paying double the price with polluters and fossil fuel companies having less regulation so they do more damage, and this also means we have less capacity to deal with climate disasters.
The wealthy are laughing all the way to the bank, until their ranch goes up in flames and the condo gets washed away.
@breadandcircuses
Evidenced by how far rightward the political parties have drifted. Repukes-no need to stress the obvious.
Dems-A 1970’s centrist such as Scoop Jackson (WA) would be called a flaming radical today on most issues.
❝ Capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil. Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones.
The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital, the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.
Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. ❞
That's from 1949 (!) and it was written by...... wait for it...... Albert Einstein.
@breadandcircuses It’s worse than George Carlin’s “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.” Their bottomless greed is accompanied by absolute contempt for the rest of us.
@breadandcircuses
This!: "This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature." Separate the Electorate from the Legislature! That says it all!!!
If you realize that staying under 1.5C is now a fantasy... and if you've learned enough to know that temperatures will almost certainly climb far higher than that within the next few decades... and if you've heard all you need to hear about climate and ecosystem tipping points... and if you understand that our modern hyper-connected just-in-time society exists on a knife edge, where any major interruption in any part of the supply chain can potentially bring everything down... and if you've therefore accepted that collapse is inevitable...
What do you do about it?
Each of us here will have to decide for ourselves. There are no right or wrong answers.
One option is to try to prepare, to become a "prepper." That might work for some people, but not for all of us.
In any case, whatever we choose, it would be ideal if we can search deep inside and find peace within ourselves. That's the message, I think, of this heartfelt essay from Alan Urban...
I am tired of stressing out because I’m not fully prepared. I’m never going to be fully prepared. No one is.
Even if you’re already living off the grid and fully self-sufficient, it’s only a matter of time before a climate disaster kills your crops or destroys your home.
If a doctor told me I had 5-15 years to live, would I spend all my free time searching for a treatment that would only buy me a few extra months?
Of course not! I would spend my time enjoying nature, playing games, listening to music, hanging out with friends and family, and going on little adventures with my kids.
What’s the point of surviving a little longer if you aren’t really living in the first place?
Sure, I could spend all my free time learning knots, canning fruit, drying herbs, cleaning guns, smoking meat, sewing clothes, growing mushrooms, making candles, building booby traps, using the ham radio, and so on and so forth — and I will do some of these things.
But if I’m being honest, most evenings I would rather watch a movie with my kids without feeling guilty that I’m not doing enough to prepare.
I’m tired of living in the future. I want to live in the now. I want to move beyond collapse awareness and into collapse acceptance. I don’t expect to get there all at once, but already I feel less burdened.
@breadandcircuses I think the September temperature report will have ratcheted many people Into this next state - the acceptance that severe change is now inevitable. The challenges are now as much mental as physical.
I think the key is going to be mutually supportive communities. Those that can converge on a shared spiritual/ethical basis are likely to be mentally and physically healthier.
Yeah, prepperness is something you do go get through a temporary thing where you're going to come out the other side. A hurricane or a pandemic, perhaps. Given the hockey-stick-upward look of what's coming with Climate, you're at the very best buying a bit of extra time to sit huddled in a cave waiting to learn how even that cave can be vulnerable in ways you never imagined. As I understand it, the "other side", if there even is one, would be more than a lifetime out, probably more than several lifetimes.
I'm reminded of a bit from the excellent cult classic movie Dr. Strangelove, which took on the similar topic of living through nuclear holocaust, as in this classic clip leading up to one of many quotable lines from that movie: "Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"
The somewhat-more-recent movie Blast from the Past likewise takes on the notion of what amounts to early prepperism in a romantic way, I worry that things like this idealize what's possible in a way too many buy into. Really it'd be ugly and error-prone, not to mention psychologically draining.
"You worry too much. Everything's going to be fine. Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. We've always adapted before, and so of course we also can adapt to climate change."
Ever hear something like that?
Andrew Dessler (@andrewdessler), a climate scientist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, offers a response to the optimistic "We'll adapt" crowd...
“Humans have always adapted.”
If you’ve followed the climate debate, you’ve inevitably come across these soothing words, usually made by someone rich, often working for a think tank whose agenda is stopping action on climate change.
The argument taps into the romantic notion of human resilience, suggesting that adaptation is not just possible but a simple, cost-free solution to the climate catastrophe unfolding before us.
This view is overly optimistic. Adaptation, far from being an easy way out, is shaping up to be an absolute nightmare.
The point of my article is not that we CANNOT adapt, it's that the people pushing adaptation have zero interest in actually doing it. Instead, it's an excuse to do nothing.
We absolutely can and need to adapt. But we also need to decarbonize. We need to do everything.
The author of that article, Marshall Brain (https://marshallbrain.com/), has published a follow-up piece based on some of the reactions he got to the first one...
The article received a lot of traffic, and reactions were all over the map. Today’s article is for those people who think things aren’t that bad.
They say things like:
“Everything is going to be OK”
“Civilization is not going to collapse”
“We are on the road to solving climate change”
To those on this “positive” or “hopium” end of the spectrum, here is something to consider: Things are way, way worse than you think. The reason people can believe that everything is going to be OK is because they have not taken the time to comprehend all the different things that are going wrong simultaneously, nor how seriously these things are going wrong.
Massive heat waves across the planet
Rising fossil fuel emissions
Heating of 1.5 degrees C in 2023
Failure of the 2016 Paris agreements
Huge wildfires in Canada
Wildfires burning in the Amazon rainforest
Arctic Tundra thawing out and tripping a climate feedback loop
Other climate tipping points getting ready to trigger
The acceleration of Arctic warming
The coming Blue Ocean Event in the Arctic to make Arctic heating even worse
All the mountain glaciers are melting
Rivers are drying up
Aquifers are drying up
Reservoir lakes are drying up
Aquifers and farmland are becoming contaminated with salt water
Massive droughts across the planet
Massive floods in other parts of the planet
Crop failures
Heating and melting in Antarctica
Threats from the Thwaites glacier
Sea level rise around the world
Mass extinction events in every area
He goes into detail on many of those 22 items, and then concludes with this...
All these phenomena are happening simultaneously, and they will all be accelerating. If you can wrap your head around the convergence of these problems, you can begin to understand how bad things are getting.
Think about it this way: If we get together again next year in October, after humanity has released another 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, are any of these 22 things going to get better? What about in three years, after humanity has released another 100 gigatons of carbon dioxide? What about in 10 years, after humanity has released another 300 gigatons of carbon dioxide?
And then add in the unknowns:
◦ What if the Amazon rainforest collapses and releases another 100 gigatons of carbon dioxide?
◦ What if a large glacier in Antarctica collapses?
◦ What if all the ice in the Arctic disappears and we experience a blue ocean event?
◦ What if positive feedback loops like the Tundra really engage?
◦ What if droughts and floods and heat increase enough to cause major crop failures?
@breadandcircuses I really hate having to boost this stuff... that I've known for too long already. This is a really good time to have a spiritual practice ....to cope with the chaos!
I thought all we had to do to fix the environment was go meatless once a week and buy a new electric SUV. That’s the solution, right?
Wrong.
While automakers and politicians scramble to transition to a zero-emissions sector in the coming years, the over two billion tires produced internationally may be a problem themselves.
The Yale School of the Environment discovered that tire dust — small particles that break down and wear off of a tire over time — accounts for 78% of the ocean's microplastics.
Rebecca Sutton, an environmental scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute told Yale that "extremely high levels of microplastics" were found in stormwater, adding that "our estimated annual discharge of microplastics into San Francisco Bay from stormwater was seven trillion particles, and half of that was suspected tire particles."
Tires are made of a combination of natural and synthetic rubbers and polymers that are intended to reduce the natural breakdown of a tire as it rolls over pavement.
According to a three-year study done in the UK, a car’s four tires churn out one trillion particles for every kilometer driven. And while two billion tires are made each year now, the Yale University report points out that number is expected to reach 3.4 billion by the end of the decade.
And remember, although they produce less emissions, EVs discharge MORE microplastics from tire wear than ICE cars, because the equivalent size vehicle is far heavier.
As I've said many times before, the best car is not an electric car. The best car is no car at all!
A blogger at Medium offers a few unpleasant truths...
Here is my take on the state of our global civilization:
1️⃣ The human species is in absolute overshoot. We consume more resources and release more pollution every year than what could be regenerated or absorbed by Nature. Yes, some countries consume and pollute much more than others, but that doesn’t make the fact disappear that even if we all lived like Jamaicans, we would be still living beyond Earth’s biophysical limits. And that is just the renewable resources part of the story.
2️⃣ The four pillars of modern civilization (ammonia, plastics, steel and concrete) — the non-renewable part — all take immense amounts of fossil fuels to make. Currently there is no way to produce ammonia (a key ingredient of all fertilizers) at scale without using natural gas, nor to make plastics without oil, or to smelt iron without coal — not to mention making cement. Note how fossil fuels are not only sources of energy here, but also key ingredients for these materials: providing the necessary hydrogen and carbon atoms making these wonders of civilization possible.
3️⃣ The best of our non-renewable resources are being depleted, fast. Using the low-hanging fruit principle we harvested the richest, most concentrated — and thus most energy efficient to get — deposits first. What remains takes an exponential increase in energy investment to extract, and might as well remain buried underground. Resource depletion doesn’t mean that we are running on empty, but that we are running out of easy to get resources — and thus bump into all sorts of limits on how much we can afford to extract.
4️⃣ We are in a chronic transportation fuel shortage, which is expected to grow much worse due to resource depletion. Lower grade ores, deeper oil wells, switching to brown coal, etc., all provide much less value to this civilization while taking up even more diesel to mine and carry around. If you consider how depletion of conventional oil (the ideal feedstock of transportation fuels) ruins diesel supply, let alone its energy economics, you start to appreciate the scale and immediacy of the predicament we are facing. Hmm, a shrinking energy base and an ever increasing energy demand to get the same amount of stuff… what could possibly go wrong with that?
5️⃣ Ecosystems all around the world are in free-fall. Even if we solve the energy dilemma tomorrow, this alone would still put an end to our existence. If we managed to kill 70% of vertebrate land animals, empty the seas and usher in an insect apocalypse with such a limited energy source as fossil fuels, what would we do to the planet with unlimited energy? Strip mine the entire Andes mountain range in a search for copper? Convert the whole planet into a bare concrete and glass hothouse, boiling the oceans just with the waste heat of our activities?
It’s very important to note how all these crises are interrelated and downstream to our civilizational activities (building, mining, deforesting, tilling, burning etc.), and are not due to CO2 alone. Climate change is but one of the many symptoms and consequences of overshoot and must be treated as such.
Replacing one energy source with another will not solve the climate predicament (let alone ecosystem collapse), nor will it alleviate resource depletion. Erasing the biosphere with electrified bulldozers in search of raw materials and places to expand our cities into, or dispersing a different set of pollutants does not change a thing for the better.
There's more, a lot more, and it's all rather bleak, but at least it's truthful.
@breadandcircuses How do you put up such a long post?
Secondly agreed, dismal, depressing, The Great Filter action. The Human species may not go extinct, but we are about to be slapped down, possible widespread conflict, destruction, and wholesale death as groups of humans sacrifice each other so they can survive, or live in comfort. We’re about to be sent back in time tech wise, 10th century, maybe? Some tech knowledge will remain so the future is not etched in stone. 😢
striking to me how these aren't even particularly controversial points. some have even been foreseen for many decades now. hell, there are very, very old fables about how rapacious exploitation of resources never ends well. it's almost comical, it's all so absurd
We know there are scientists who WILL tell the truth about climate change — such as David Ho (@davidho), Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman), Ruth Mottram (@Ruth_Mottram), Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath), Katharine Hayhoe (@kathhayhoe), Brad Rosenheim (@Brad_Rosenheim), and more — but sadly, there are many others who will NOT level with the public about the crisis we are in.
"Many scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change. Here’s why."
In March, the United Nations released a massive climate change report. The biggest takeaway: Global warming will soon pass the oft-mentioned target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Honestly, as a climate journalist, that totally freaked me out.
That “1.5 C” number comes up a lot in climate change conversations. That’s because at around 1.5 C the climate starts hitting points of no return. Like, almost all the coral reefs die. Ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland get scary wobbly. Permafrost starts to thaw faster than a popsicle on a hot sidewalk. Rising seas drown island nations.
But the UN scientists were pretty clear: 1.5 C is coming.
“Almost irrespective of our emissions choices in the near term, we will probably reach 1.5 degrees in the first half of the next decade,” said Irish climate scientist Peter Thorne, one of the lead authors on the UN report.
Why is overshooting 1.5 C inevitable? Physics. There’s a nearly linear relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the average global temperature. More CO2 in the sky means a warmer world. It’s like pouring water into a bucket — keep pouring it in, eventually the bucket overflows.
Our carbon bucket will overflow in about nine years; by the early-to-mid-2030s, we’ll be living in a post-1.5 C world. Unless we quickly cut carbon emissions to zero. Last I checked, that’s not happening.
After this report came out, something weird happened. Unlike the blunt Dr. Thorne, most climate scientists (and journalists) didn’t change how they publicly spoke about 1.5 C. Admitting defeat could risk “demotivation” said Pascal Lamy, the commissioner of the Climate Overshoot Commission. Scientists kept saying things like: “We need to act now to stay below 1.5” or “it’s getting harder, but still technically possible.”
Technically possible? Like, if aliens appear with magic tools that fix climate change?
I felt like I was being gaslit by climate scientists. I wanted to know what was going on. So, I called Kristina Dahl, the principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
She told me that staying under 1.5 C is now “largely unrealistic.”
But, she added, “like other climate scientists, I'm not ready to say that we have to give up on this goal.”
I asked her why. Why wouldn’t she just give it to me straight? And she told me a story that I found revelatory...
I'm out of room here, but I urge you to click on the link and learn more about why some scientists continue to downplay the true threat of climate change.
I really do not agree with your sentiment that “scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change” — it’s not consistent with folks I interact with anyhow at nasa and Columbia. Now ‘telling’ your own opinion is distinct from delivering a consensus opinion on behalf of an entire group. But that’s not really what the quote says.
It's hard to find this in the corporate-owned (and fossil fuel friendly) news media of the Global North, but here's a story from India's Hindustan Times about a devastating flash flood and dam burst, taking many lives...
At least 14 persons were killed and another 120 people went missing after a flash flood triggered by a glacial lake outburst following heavy rains in north Sikkim in the early hours of Wednesday.
The toll is expected to rise sharply with officials saying that at least 40 bodies have been recovered by different agencies after the disaster struck.
“The Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF), which caused the rise of water levels with very high velocities downstream along the Teesta River Basin in the early hours of October 4, 2023, has caused severe damage in Mangan, Gangtok, Pakyong, and Namchi Districts,” said a statement issued by the Sikkim government.
The flash flood also washed away the Teesta III dam at Chunthang. At least six bridges were washed away and the National Highway 10 (NH10) was damaged in multiple areas.
“North Sikkim has been totally cut off from the rest of the state while Sikkim has been cut off from the rest of India as the flood had badly hit NH10,” said Prabhakar Rai, director of Sikkim’s disaster management department, said.
North Sikkim received around 39 mm rain between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning.
“The rains had probably triggered an avalanche which led to a GLOF. As huge volumes of water and debris comprising boulders came gushing down they hit the hydro dam in Chunthang. The dam was washed away and the entire load gushing down with tremendous force,” said Ashim Sattar, a scientist with IISc Bengaluru, who had studied the lake and the glacier extensively.
Unfortunately, stories like this will become all too common in the months and years ahead. What now seems like (and is) an unthinkable tragedy may soon be almost a daily occurrence.
We are in a climate emergency. It's past time for system change, and Degrowth.
@breadandcircuses OK If we need to really change things NGO/ social groups should define objectives and plan how to implement them so there's a real possibility that this chance will become a reality. In the case of Non Co2 producing energy, it would be a matter of promotion and widespread use so gasoline and other products will become obsolete & cease to be profitable. ()Government will kept doing be usual stuff like picking up garbage and fixing pot-holes).