I have corporations running ads telling me to save the earth and do my part. Mother fuckers, I do my part and your CEO destroys all my work in one day. I'm kinda getting sick of the blame being put on my poor ass who can barely afford to survive.
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Human caused environmental devastation didn't start in the 1600s, capitalism did. I don't think humans are a virus, but I don't think that abolishing capitalism is the only critical step in preventing environmental catastrophe.
We've been here 200,000 years, we've been farming for the last 12,000 of those. Environmental destruction is, reletively, a very very new phenomenon.
That's an a-historical point of view. There have been several environmental catastrophes, including some causing massive climactic shifts introduced by prehistoric humans, some of them are documented in 1491, by Charles Mann. Poor farming practices, including some that have been practiced for thousands of years, are a huge factor in desertification. I completely agree that the rate and scale of environmental catastrophe is new, but the risk of it and tendency towards it is not. While I think capitalism is ABSOLUTELY the single greatest barrier to addressing the catastrophe, the scale and speed of that catastrophe could be just as easily tied to population growth as the emergence of capitalism.
Not to mention how all megafauna got extinct wherever modern humans showed up
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Did capitalism destroy this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
The Aral Sea is considered an example of ecosystem collapse.[42] The ecosystems of the Aral Sea and the river deltas feeding into it have been nearly destroyed, largely because of the salinity being dramatically higher than ocean water.[5] The receding sea has left huge plains covered with salt and toxic chemicals from weapons testing, industrial projects, and runoff of pesticides and fertilizer. Because of the shrinking water source and worsening water and soil quality, pesticides were increasingly used from the 1960s to raise cotton yield, which further polluted the water with toxins (e.g. HCH, TCCD, DDT).[43] Industrial pollution also resulted in PCB and heavy-metal contamination
This was the result of this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plan_for_the_Transformation_of_Nature
Exploiting nature and fucking things up is not limited to capitalism.
Plus, animal consumption is among the top three causes of ecological destruction on this planet. Do people think burgers only exist under capitalism? That palm oil and pig meat are an obsession of the super rich? It’s not a matter of efficiency (farming is already absurdly efficient). It’s just math. Like everyone will give up chicken nuggets to save the planet or something? Good luck with that. People are obdurate and gross.
Getting rid of capitalism is a step in the right direction, sure, but unless folks are willing to give up meat, cars, airplanes, and who knows what other amenities, we are still just as fucked.
Israel keeps massacring Gazans and yet the carbon emissions of the region aren't falling. I don't understand. I was told it was an overpopulation problem. What else could it be?
These can exist at the same time. It is not binary.
ITT: The environmental consequences of precapitalistic modes of production confuse lemmies to defend a nonsense statement in a totally different paradigm.
Both can be true.
Capitalism didn't create itself... She's just looking at the root of the problem instead of its effects.
Yeah, I just can't stop pooping out capitalism. It's literally a natural thing that I do. /S
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I wish my hair looked like that
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