Joanna wrote:
>
> epoliticus writes:
>
> "With respect to the comment by Glazer, I do not think that global warming
> poses much of a threat to the capitalist class. It will be treated as a new
> domain for capital accumulation."
>
> Yes and no. There's money to be made in rebuilding green. But, in a deeper way, to the extent that capitalism depends upon planned obsolescence and refuses to account for resource costs, there is a contradiction. To the extent that green implies natural limits, there is a contradiction.
The focus is wrong here, I think. The question of whether X is or is not a threat to capitalism _as a social system_ depends on whether or not X contributes significantly to the rise and/or growth of conscious political opposition to capitalism as a system. Whatever elxe X does (such, for example, as threatening the continued existence of th human species) if it does not have this political effect, it is not a threat to capitalism.
Whether particular capitalists can or cannot make money out of something is not of any particular relevance politically.
It is debatable whether or not radicals can use global warming as such an issue. My own provisional view, which I hope is incorrect, is that it cannot be made an effective mobilizing issue. But the issue cannot be explored in the abstract but only within the ongoing practice of left politics.
HOWEVER, any left movement that did not incorporate serious 'green' politics, whethere or not they were effective mobilizing issues, would not be a left.
Carrol