[lbo-talk] East Coast Climate War

[Wojtek S]

Eleutherios: "It really is true that climate change may be the single
greatest example of market failure. It caused this and one response is
to ravenously, rapaciously immediately and without any consideration
exploit the new energy resources that the warming it caused made
available, thereafter pushing the climate and ecosystems past the
brink. From their perspective and in their insular social circles it
makes sense to do so. Capitalism uses all resources to exhaustion
until acted upon by a sufficient "outside" force, be it labor or
social action, or resource constraints. "To hunt a species to
extinction is not logical" but "whoever said the human race is
logical?" (other than orthodox economic models). Sometimes internal
market developments can escape or at least postpone this process, such
as new oil exploitation techniques and exploration, but this cannot be
counted on and obviously only applies in certain narrow realms.

[WS:] Yup, but capitalism does not hold a monopoly for this - cf.
Jared Diamond's "Collapse".  If Diamond's analysis is to be believed,
the so called modern civilization is going the way the Easter
islanders, Meso-American Indians, and Norse colonists in Greenland did
- over exploitation of the environment and a collapse.  The mechanism
that produces these results is competition - and it is the holy grail
cum sacred cow of capitalism, especially the Anglo-variety.

-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."