alanjjohnstone
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“Only that it will throw up some technological fixes and potential solutions but it can not escape its profit driven imperative”
apologies for misreading the above but Sussex and i agree with you.it can never escape the profit driven imperative hence it can not ultimately resolve the crisis even if the very lives of the capitalist class is at risk
“Any reforms sow the seeds of the next crisis. Always too little too late.”
I want to differentiate between capitalism’s usual periodic cyclical recessions and even recurring ills such as war and this climate crisis
This is a physics issues, hence the UN committee is composed mostly of scientists, not economists, (although there may be some) and if there is a chain reaction which many suspect we are on the verge of experiencing, there is no economic or political policy to avert it…runaway climate change caused by feedbacks.
I posted previosly that the scenario on the economy is that we will enter a recession of falling GDPs and that it will be endless. I stand to be corrected. This research says that in the developed world economic growth will continue even with climate change. Only the poorer nations will be harmed
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-climate-affect-economic-growth-poorest.html
Hence perhaps the projections of migrants movements
Not only neither Sussex or i are advocates of green capitalism but we are not supporting the other green proposals of degrowth or re-wilding
Matt, Marcos, where do you read that either Sussex or i are jettisoning or down-grading our case? We are arguing that social change is the only solution. It is not capitalism collapsing but as i say civilisation is threatened by collapse. A bit bigger than stock-market prices collapsing
This isn’t some cyclical economic crisis we are in the midst of where the capitalist system restores profitability, Marcos.
We are very much on the edge of the abyss and cataclysmic climate change …unless capitalism can fix things. You believe it can and it will.
Can capitalism repair the planet? Can capitalism mitigate the effects of global warming? Can capitalism reverse climate change?
i said in my posts that green capitalists claim that they can fix the problem either by the invisible hand of the market or by governmental legislative intervention and international treaties.
The capitalists have already finacialised the problem with carbon credit trading and it has not reduced emissions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_credit
I don’t happen to believe that capitalism is capable structurally of resolving the crisis. It has economic imperatives that are not compatible with the solutions needed.
Some countries have already spurned the advice of their own scientists, not just Trump but Australia and now Brasil. Satellite pictures show China is continuing expansion of coal power stations even though they publically say these were cancelled. India is dependent on coal and is unlikely to reduce its use
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/02/india-shows-how-hard-it-is-to-move-beyond-fossil-fuels (registration required)
If people recall, i frequently called that we need a dedicated conference to the Party’s future and the strategies it should adopt. I still favour such an event.
Indeed i do…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus
Our case was that even if true there were always alternatives, second-best choices as explained by that Liebig Law of Minimum, and that its effect was not really on supply but the price to obtain it.
i don’t consider it relevant to this argument.
We have a consensus that climate change will have an indeterminable effect on society, no-one can be sure the degree but the accepted opinion is that it will be wide-spread and life-changing.
And it could be that it gets to the point that even if governments do take action, it could be too late and that is a possible scenario which is only too plausible according to the science hence the urgency now for reforms.
Our position as a political party has to be clarified
Do we say we think that capitalism cannot and will not solve the problem, only socialism can, if it is achieved in time to have an effect on the physics, and hence the immediacy of establishing it is our campaign direction. But we could be accused of hysteria and scare-mongering if we do concentrate on the slogan “Socialism or Barbarism”, not as a nice sounding slogan but as a deadly reality
Or do we say that this is a problem capitalism will remedy as it grows in intensity and as the ramifications for the ruling class become clearer to them.
The latter may perhaps encourage the view that all social problems can be resolved if the political will was only there and the capitalists suspend the economic laws that drive their businesses. And as i said in a previous comment, green capitalism may well see a potential profit in geoengineering and carbon credits and government subsidies and various other reforms. I note the oil corporations are diverting investments to green enterprises. That big conference in the news that everyboy was boycotting in Saudi Arabia is a sign they were looking to find climate-friendly returns. Does capitalism have the time to readjust it global economy without creating a deep recession? That is being debated.
Wez, for well over a hundred years we have tried to persuade fellow-workers of the need for them to establish socialism because of the legal robbery through the LTV and surplus value. Nope, that hasn’t worked. My encounters on the WWW tells me that few accept that idea and we have little success in using it as a motive for supporting socialism.
People aren’t worrying because the threat has not impacted upon the “first world” Air pollution, meat-eating is killing innumerable in the developed countries and until the media and governments begin to link those deaths directly as they did with cigarette smoking, people are not going to connect the cause and the effect. Doctors aren’t blaming capitalism for a person’s death on the death certificates.
I recall it was families and friends who demanded that there was a change in antirevival treatment for HIV by being very very angry at the unnecessary deaths which created a more interested response by the media. World wide it was competition from Indian generics that made the patent owners drop their price.
I’m not saying we should indulge in hysterics but that we should engage in some righteous anger. Jeez, Wez, we had the case of Flint when the local politicians knowingly poisoned the water yet none was lynched from the lamp-posts. (hyperbole rather than hysteria) much less even prosecuted for criminal negligence. We mean nothing to the ruling class absolutely nothing unless we grow into a threat to their power and privilege.
I will accept completely that i am vague on actual propositions for the Party to take. I’d like a full debate upon that point based on the premise that climate change is the most serious threat society is facing or has faced, not that, “oh, capitalists will come to the rescue when push becomes shove ..its just yet another crisis many people face, nothing unique…” Just like the business-as-usual climate change deniers, we seem to say, carrying on what we were doing in the same way. What was Einstein’s remark? “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”
I welcome your contribution and hope that others begin to engage on this thread and give it importance i and Sussex believes it deserves.
Sausages, bacon and other staples of the full English breakfast should have their prices raised by up to 80 per cent to prevent nearly 6,000 deaths a year and save the NHS more than £734m, according to a new study.
Raising taxes on red and processed meats enough to offset their cost to the health service could prevent hundreds of thousands of cancers, heart attacks and strokes, University of Oxford researchers said.
Globally this would mean 220,000 fewer deaths a year and savings of $40bn (£30.6bn) if every country adopted a tailored levy based on their current levels of meat eating, they added.
The World Health Organisation International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that cured, smoked and other processed meats cause cancer, and the same was “probably” true for red meat – which has also been linked with cardiovascular disease.
This has led to calls for meat to be taxed in a similar way to cigarettes, alcohol.
The consumption of red and processed meat exceeds recommended levels in most high and middle-income countries,” said lead researcher Dr Marco Springmann, from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at Oxford University.
“This is having significant impacts not only on personal health, but also on healthcare systems, which are taxpayer-funded in many countries, and on the economy, which is losing its labour force due to ill health and care for family members who fall ill.”
I note that our posts providing similar news on ozone holes crossed, ALB.
But as Sussex and i both said…oranges and apples.
As for reforms, i think we have said there is an importance of urgency and that governments are procrastinating and delaying much necessary legislation which will make them too late for for effectiveness. A s we often say…a bandaid measure by capitalism.
Anyway, ALB, I don’t want to make this into some sort of personal feud and i have already said i am disappointed that other members deem this issue not of sufficient importance to participate in no more posts on this thread. Except fo perhaps one in the future that says …”i told you so” 😛
But there will be no gratisfaction in that, considering the tragedies and atrocities and suffering i anticipate occurring….in my own lifetime and continuing into the lifetimes of a few generations after me…I think we can all agree that mankind’s future will be a painful one unless socialism is established…Do you think we will see that?…Nip down to Ladbrokes and check what the odds are, ALB.
However, in the fairness of debate, i draw attention to this story from today
The ozone layer is showing signs of continuing recovery from man-made damage and is likely to heal fully by 2030 in the Northern Hemisphere and 2060 in the Southern Hemisphere, new evidence shows.
But some caveats. We didn’t see conservatives get upset about governments shutting down CFCs to protect the ozone layer. Technically the issue was the same – government regulations curbing the freedom of industry – but because the vested interests were low there was no need for conservative elites to fight back.
The industrialised countries agreed to phase out the production of CFCs and the US was keenest because it had a virtual monopoly on the production of substitutes. The other countries wanted time to catch up on the technology. So of them refused to sign, on the grounds that they couldn’t afford the substitutes.
The banning of CFCs and the issue with energy production and global warming are far different, the latter being integrated as closely as they could be in capitalist production in general. Combatting them would not be a mere matter of disrupting the manufacture of aerosols but of changing something which is part and parcel of the capitalist system and on which all companies depend.
So what have capitalist governments actually done since 2008.
They have failed to put the planet on track and are currently exceeding their self-imposed own limits.
Next time you see Glen or Brian, check who has shifted their opinion in the last ten years of additional evidence being produced.
It is a very fine line to say that capitalists will solve the problems of climate change when/if it reaches a point of an existential threat, depending on that they recognise that point, and indeed being soft on them, crediting them that their self-interest will lead to a change of direction…that profits and capital accumulation will no longer be their priority with humanitarianism, when Sussex has pointed out that they refuse to help millions starving and billions in poverty. But as you seem to suggest, their individual self-interest might make them take actions stronger than their words.
I think we should be very much angrier in our analysis… Capitalism is killing us….right now…this very minute….the very air you breathing in now is poisoned and the UK government is ignoring the law that demand they take action and even though the capitalist inhales the same polluted air, they argue costs and expenses and risk their own lives and their families and their childrens. Yet we are to be content to accept that they will do something…eventually…and it won’t be too late, regards climate change.
If it seems as if i am saying you are soft on capitalism, i mean you appear far too complacent and the danger in playing along with the claims that everything is under control and it is not going to be as bad as the worse scenarios say, makes the Party complicit with capitalism. Your analogy of Zeitgeist or banking or those others who assert robots are going to take over the world are not comparable in this debate, ALB.
Is it an exaggeration to postulate that there will be a societal breakdown due to capitalism’s incapacity to take the remedial measures in the required time and deal with the social problems that will arise when the climate change really starts to impact upon people. We know the US military is preparing for the consequences of climate change regardless of the president’s position. They trust the science and anticipate the worse.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-10/war-plan-orange-climate-change
Again i refer you to tipping points and feedbacks and that there has been a failure to study these by the IPCC and even if governments heed scientific advice, they may well not be given sufficient time or have the appropriate resources to deal with the unexpected which suddenly occurs.
Forgive the repetition but this should be emphasised.
“… many scientists are increasingly worried about factors about which we know much less. These “known unknowns” of climate change are tipping points, or feedback mechanisms within the climate system – thresholds that, if passed, could send the Earth into a spiral of runaway climate change…. Durwood Zaelke, founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said: “The IPCC report fails to focus on the weakest link in the climate chain: the self-reinforcing feedbacks which, if allowed to continue, will accelerate warming and risk cascading climate tipping points and runaway warming.”… Mario Molina, who shared the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1995 for his work on depletion of the ozone layer, said, “…the IPCC understates a key risk: that self-reinforcing feedback loops could push the climate system into chaos before we have time to tame our energy system, and the other sources of climate pollution…”
I also gave figures for the deep economic recession that will arise and that too will contribute to societal collapse, not just the rural farmers facing drought and floods, but urban populations as well losing economic prosperity. We witnessed the food riots when prices went up in 2011, was it?
When it comes to predictions, the two authorities i tend to rely upon are the bookies odds and the insurance actuaries.
https://www.livescience.com/1414-gambling-global-warming-mainstream.html
But i’m not sure what you think but even if Sussex and i suffer from severe paranoia, i am quite surprised and shocked that 4 members seem interested enough in a topic to debate it, that regardless of our exact positions we agree will have a serious repercussions on vast numbers of people, in the billions, but i am sure plenty people had a lot to say when Lancaster suggested meat off the menu for Summer School.
Are Sussex and i calling wolf as implied. Or are you following the dictum…”Keep calm, the capitalists will save us.”
ALB, if you don’t read what i post, there is not going to be much of a debate
I repeat “I have restricted my EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO CIVILISATION for i am guessing human beings will survive as a species. In what numbers and in what form of social organisation i cannot really imagine.”
I suggest we may well experience a period similar to the Dark Ages or the impact of the Black Death or the Mongol Hordes or the arrival of Columbus and the Conquistadors or whatever.
But social progress, the centuries Enlightenment, may very well disappear and there is a real threat we are collectively sleep-walking towards such a gloomy doom that relies on the assumption that somehow capitalists no longer act as they always have acted – to accumulate capital and expand markets and make profits and will desist from their own internecine rivalries.
Pat, the risk is that climate change becomes out of control, that capitalists will act too late to save the world…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(climatology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback
Yet again though, a member of our Party expresses the opinion that capitalists are rational inependent actors and not as we always said personifications of their economic role and function in the process of accumulation.
You may have missed it in all my messages but i did refer to nuclear war in an earlier post
“…This not like the nuclear war and end of the world hysteria we have met in the past. It is beyond the finger on the red button to something that is very much beyond any human intervention…”
I have restricted my existential threat to civilisation for i am guessing human beings will survive as a species. In what numbers and in what form of social organisation i cannot really imagine.
Like yourself, i have recommended the Last Conflict as a possible response, although it is a piece of wishful thinking. The world stumbling unthinkingly and unplanned into socialism by necessity.
On the other hand, perhaps the example of Elon Musk might also be applicable…the rich and wealthy escaping in their space lifeboats. The 1% are already building their gated communities an employing their private armies.
I think i suggested before that rather than blind guesses the Party creates a committee for more concrete projections along the lines of production for use committee.
You may not believe a 4-degree rise is something not to be alarmed about yet many others consider it would mean a world emergency. The recent IPCC report revealed the dire consequences what a mere half-degree difference would make.
The explored consequences of an increase of the global earth temperature of 4°C are indeed devastating.
Among the foreseen consequences are:
the inundation of coastal cities; Goodbye, Clapham High St
- increasing risks for food production potentially leading to higher malnutrition rates; many dry regions becoming dryer and wet regions wetter;
- unprecedented heat waves in many regions, especially in the tropics;
- substantially exacerbated water scarcity in many regions;
- increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones;
- irreversible loss of biodiversity, including coral reef systems.
- If the currently planned actions are not fully implemented, a warming of 4°C could occur as early as the 2060s. Such a warming level by 2100 would not be the end point: a further warming to levels over 6°C would likely occur over the following centuries.
“A great many record-breaking heat events, heavy floods, and extreme droughts would occur if global warming crosses the 4 °C level, with respect to the preindustrial period,” said Dabang Jiang, a senior researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “The temperature increase would cause severe threats to ecosystems, human systems, and associated societies and economies.” They found that most of the models projected an increase of 4°C as early as 2064 and as late as 2095 in the 21st century, with 2084 appearing as the median year.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/ioap-ect052318.php
Imagine something similar to the Great Depression of 1929 hitting the world, but this time it never ends.
At 4 degrees Celsius of global warming, for example, the losses in income to the global economy are over US$23 trillion per year, or the equivalent in economic damage of three or four 2008 Global Financial Crises each year. These damages represent roughly one-third of current global GDP and about 7 per cent or more of projected GDP in 2100. Losses, for example, at 4 degrees Celsius, for Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Nicaragua are over 17 per cent, for Indonesia 19 per cent, for India 14 per cent, Thailand 17 per cent, Singapore 16 per cent, and the Philippines 20 per cent. For much of Africa the losses range from 18 to over 26 per cent of GDP. Global losses of this size are comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s, with its global fall in GDP of 15 per cent, except these will occur year after year, with no way for effective redress. The severe falls in GDP in the long term will put many governments under fiscal stress, since tax revenues are tied to GDP or national income levels. Tax revenues will fall dramatically, and thus social services spending.
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-trillion-lost-temperatures-degrees.html#jCp
(We may have to re-write the capitalism won’t collapse pamphlet)
One of the aspects i have read about is the knock-on effect of migration t. Imagine, if you can, how the arrival of a few million migrants and refugees has had on Europe…and now visualise what the World Bank expects – 86 million people being displaced in Sub-Saharan Africa, 40 million in South Asia, and as many as 17 million in Latin America. Climate change refugees on the move from countries that are too poor to adapt crops and farming systems (and need i add the contributing reason for this is the transnational Big Ag corporations and an international land-grab.) Trumpite demagogues will indeed be facing “invasions”
Should we complacent and support the idea that capitalism can cope with climate change?
Should we ignore the stark warnings and describe them as exaggerations and effectively join the ranks of climate change deniers?
I think perhaps we should start investing in HO and turning it into a bunker as those preppers would in the hope of holding out. And in this way, we keep the Party alive and the idea of socialism…or would it be primitive communism, again…or tribal clan communism… 😆
The IPCC report was very conservative and excluded certain scenarios such as tipping points and feedbacks from their projections to avoid appearing too alarmist.
“The full report of the IPCC reflects our lack of knowledge of the full potential of tipping points, he said: “The underlying report suggests that the other tipping points are too poorly understood, or not likely to be triggered until higher amounts of warming – but given their consequences, one would expect a more risk-based approach. That is, you don’t ignore them until you know them to be impossible.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/09/tipping-points-could-exacerbate-climate-crisis-scientists-fear“Current promises made by countries as part of the Paris climate agreement would lead to about 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century, and the Trump administration recently released an analysis assuming about 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 if the world takes no action…If you’re expecting IPCC to jump up and down and wave red flags, you’re going to be disappointed,” said Phil Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center. “They’re going to do what they always do, which is to release very cautious reports in extremely dispassionate language…
…the scenarios that the IPCC presents that hold warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, particularly the reliance on negative-emissions technologies to keep the window open.
“Even if it is technically possible, without aligning the technical, political and social aspects of feasibility, it is not going to happen,” added Glen Peters, research director of the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo. “To limit warming below 1.5 C, or 2 C for that matter, requires all countries and all sectors to act.”
htts://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/10/08/world-has-only-years-get-climate-change-under-control-un-scientists-say/?utm_term=.2524b7e6b3ep4
“The worst-case predictions regarding the effects of global warming are the most likely to be true…Our study indicates that if emissions follow a commonly used business-as-usual scenario, there is a 93 per cent chance that global warming will exceed 4°C by the end of this century,” Dr. Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science.
We already have governments disregarding scientific recommendations…USA, Australia, Brasil.
China was recently revealed as secretly breaking their coal-power stations promises, India continues on regardless with their fossil fuels.
Plenty other countries are procrastinating on much urgent policies.
Perhaps capitalism will succeed with green capitalism. If capitalism can avoid the existential threat to humanity, then perhaps we should promote it as still being a progressive social system and the solution. Certainly, there is no reason for green reformers to adopt socialism if even socialists say capitalists and their politicians can fix the problem
We place our trust and faith that the world’s governments will do the right thing if only to just save their own skins. (A bit like the 19th C public health reforms to stop catching diseases.)
Is that our policy now?
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned the world is facing “a direct existential threat” and must take action in the next two years to avert the disastrous consequences of runaway climate change.
<p class=”speakable”>”If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us,” he said. Guterres said scientists have been warning about global warming for decades, but “far too many leaders have refused to listen – far too few have acted with the vision the science demands”.</p>
But perhaps capitalism will change its spots if it detects a market for profitsNgozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance Minister of Nigeria and Co-Chair of the Global Commission, said that “policy makers should take their feet off the brakes, send a clear signal that the new growth story is here and that it comes with exciting economic and market opportunities. $26 trillion and a more sustainable planet are on offer if we act decisively now.”
But i am not holding my breath. Are you?It appears to me that our usual response is to publish a pamphlet and rest on our laurels. I’m not sure some members quite realise the urgency for civilisation and they seemingly share the general view that capitalism will fix it.
This not like the nuclear war and end of the world hysteria we have met in the past. It is beyond the finger on the red button to something that is very much beyond any human intervention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
“…This rapid acceleration in climate change may lead to potentially irreversible damage to the climate system, making timely mitigation efforts unfeasible…”
And all the evidence (and it is a growing body of scientific opinion) is that we are heading towards such a situation.
It may well be that by the time socialism is achieved it will be the only system that can mitigate the worse, but before then, at what cost in lives, before people conclude it is a rational answer.
Yes, i am a pessimist. And who can blame me when the alternative is relying on the capitalist class and their governments to bring forth the solutions to climate change.
It is not just the ideal time to get our message out there…it may be the last time.
