Capitalism Can't Solve Climate Change
Capitalism Can't Solve Climate Change
If we continue to see the private sector as our savior from climate catastrophe, we'll continue to fail.
And the IEA, for its part, expects China to continue to be the sole meaningful over-achiever. It recently revised upwards by 728 GW its forecast for total global renewables capacity additions in the period 2023–27. China’s share of this upward revision? Almost 90 percent. While China surges ahead, the rest of the world remains stuck.
I mean, does it count to be 'stuck' if you simply aren't trying?
Because that's what it seems like the rest of the world is doing. They aren't even trying. Not even a little. Just more technocratic discussions on what trying might look like.
"Trying" isn't really a thing on a national scale. What countries do and how they react just depends on their economic system / mode of production.
Capitalist countries, on account of being capitalist, can never really tackle climate change. China's the only major country taking this seriously because a socialist nation doesn't need the profit motive that's required under capitalism.
As with most things, the answer is revolution.
This article is a very partisan read of the source material. https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf
Yes, China is ahead of the West in production of renewables, but it's also skyrocketing (along with India) in energy demands, while the EU and the US remain flat or are going down. Renewables production will offset growth on both the US and China, according to the linked report. China's forecast for reduction in coal energy generation is actually lower than in the EU and the US.
China
Renewable energy sources are expected to meet almost all the increase in electricity demand in our forecast period and start displacing coal-fired generation together with increasing nuclear generation. As a result, we forecast an average annual decline of around 1.5% in coal-fired generation over 2024-2026,
US
Renewable generation is forecast to grow annually by 7% on average over the outlook period. The increase in renewables is set to more than offset the additional electricity demand and displace coal-fired generation, which is expected to record a substantial 10% decline on average from 2024-2026. The United States dominates these developments, where around two-thirds of the electricity in the Americas is produced and consumed
EU
Over the outlook period, renewable generation is expected to grow at an average rate of around 9%, offsetting all of the additional electricity demand and displacing fossil-fired generation. Coal-fired power fell by around 26% in 2023 and is set to decline at an average 13% from 2024 to 2026. Gas-fired generation fell by 17% in 2023, and is forecast to decline by a further 7% annually to 2026. Nuclear output rose 1.4% last year and is forecast to grow by 2.2% annually to 2026, as the maintenance schedule of the French nuclear fleet progresses, and the reactors Flamanville-3 (France) and Mochovce-4 (Slovakia) commence operations according to announced plans.
Oh, that makes a ton of sense, actually. Replacing capacity is almost always going to be more expensive than just building new capacity.
The US numbers are a fucking joke. All the US is doing is replacing coal with natural gas, moving electricity for export, and reporting domestic consumption numbers that completely ignore the blend of input resources.
US natural gas electricity generation skyrocketed from 1687TWh to 1802TWh (+6.8%) from 2022 to 2023: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_1_01
This matches with the 6.8% increase in natural gas consumption for electricity generation from 2022 to 2023: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_2_04_a
Through accounting hacks, the US is able to claim that the vast majority of its consumption is actually not from the natural gas it's burning at obscene quantities to replace coal, but from renewables (and to please ignore skyrocketing energy export numbers).
This is, mind you, with the consideration that natural gas is methane, that natural gas leaks into the atmosphere, and methane is something like a 85x more potent greenhouse has over a 20-year time frame. This switch from coal to gas has been rather recent, and so it's expected that we should start seeing the effects of these short-term GHG emissions aroundabout... Today?
Cool.
Not the point, though.
Again, the original article is about China is outperforming the west because it doesn't have to deal with all that pesky free enterpriese, and it's based on rephrasing data from a report in a misleading way.
I don't care about the underlying argument, I'm clarifying what the report actually says.
If you must know, I'm all for decarbonizing energy generation through renewables and more than willing to consider boosting nuclear power. But that has nothing to do with deliberate misrepresentations for political reasons being misleading.
I gotta say, the curve balls keep coming!
Who would have ever thought that corporations didn't actually care about social responsibility?!?
The modern glutton cares only about acquiring resources, not whether those resources make them happy or if their acquisition makes others miserable.
Are there any examples of large companies, especially stock corporations, that have voluntarily given up short-term profits in favor of long-term calculation or sustainable management? Or examples of cooperation between competitors outside of common (short-term) profit interests? I am only aware of "sustainability campaigns" that have been staged mainly for publicity purposes, which in the vast majority of cases are nothing more than a drop in the ocean.
As far as I know, it has always been necessary to use legal regulations to force the companies to pay even the slightest attention to the common good. One example of this is the ban on CFCs to protect the ozone layer - and that took more than a decade (from 1987 until 1999).
You raise excellent questions. I'm awaiting responses from others with meaningful links. We might need to be very patient.
I would be really interested to know if there was ever a company that tried this - a company for the people, so to say. As I said, I'm not aware of anything like that. Of course, there are also privately owned companies that are less focused on the logic of short-term profit maximization. But even these companies, such as Valve, can ultimately only apply the same standards, because otherwise they would be at a competitive disadvantage. That's why I find it interesting to wonder whether there might have been a company at some point that, despite all the resistance, managed to assert itself with an alternative logic. It's very unlikely, of course, but I'm asking anyway because it would be very desirable imo.
The statement is not that these changes require legislation, though, the claim is that legislation under capitalist (presumably also socialdemocrat?) regimes will not be enough and full centralized control in the vein of China, rather than liberal democracies, is required.
Which is some delusional crap, honestly. There is obviously the capacity to enact regulation in democratic societies, and it's obviously been put to use for the "common good". Anarchocapitalists may disagree that it's useful or positive, but I refuse to give them ownership over representative democracy, or to give totalitarian regimes ownership over all functional regulation.
Plus the data itself is misrepresented, but that's a different question.
If the company is public, it could be argued that any optimization that isn't towards short-term profits is harmful to the shareholders and can be used to unseat the relevant executive
The US Senate is now threatening the IEA, saying that it's going to pull funding.
They claim that IEA projections guide industry, and they don't like the way industry is reacting to the IEA projections.
This boils down to the fact that the IEA considers energy within the context of climate change - that infinite oil cannot be burned forever because it will kill us and stop us from burning more oil. The Senate does not consider this a valid criteria for evaluating energy security because "reasons" (impairment of short-term profit & power).
The US government is waging a war against reality, the planet, and its inhabitants on behalf of a handful of industry titans. Which leads me to the same conclusion (for the millionth time): Capitalism can't solve climate change.
edit: This actually connects with the interesting story of the perversion of the IPCC. Basically, this group exists to report the global consensus on climate change. But there are more lobbyists and other suits attending the conference than scientists. The political division has complete editorial control over the way the science division's findings are reported. Pre-edited releases have been leaked to prove that this control is actually being exerted.
The connection lies in that the Senate is upset that the IEA recognizes the expertise of the organizations establishing the consensus on climate change, because it is not in their mission to do the research themselves (for obvious reasons). The IEA cites data from agreements that the US signed on to, because what else is it supposed to consider official? It turns out, they're supposed to ignore the data altogether.
So the US (and countries like it) is corrupting the global framework of managing climate change, and then turning around and threatening groups who use those cooked numbers because they still aren't cooked enough. It would destroy any remaining legitimacy to blatantly manipulate numbers to the extent they would need to be manipulated in order to make US short-term objectives seem like a good idea, so they tell the groups they fund (which is pretty much everyone, to some degree) to just ignore the issue. They reduce research - at the IEA and for the IPCC - to toy models that ignore the most important considerations.
Capitalism solves nothing. It doesn't even, in general, make people rich. It just makes rich people richer.
Capitalism would just apply a subscription based patch on any given issue at hand if possible, it doesn’t even have to be logistical to the logical mind.
As the life-sustaining places become more scarce, they become more expensive. Your best play for survival is to play the game, amass wealth and afford the trip to Elysium. That's why even the people understanding the problem are part of it.
Ah, my fantasy – to find a survivable place in the world to call my own.
But by God, they're sure not going to try.
And they're all out of ideas!
China has another advantage. They don't ask the market or the people of they are fine with the idea.
In the meantime, US and Europe don't do anything is because of the neoliberal idea that the market will solve all problems through the magic of capitalism. This has been true for the past 3 decennia now. And, we knew renewable must be a thing.
Oh they definitely ask the people in China. Government runs mass surveys of public opinion when deciding on the 5 year plans, and there's also massive public participation in the government itself. China has 1.4 Billion citizens, and CPC has 90 million members. This comes out to 15.5 citizens to every party member. So, every person in China either personally knows a party member or related to a party member. That's why the government in China enjoys mass public support and approval the likes of which is unseen anywhere in the west. It's a government of the people and for the people.
Capitalist nation-states have no ability to solve collective action problems because they're explicitly designed to be unable to. Nation-states exist to make their own nation rich and powerful, which requires them to treat all other nation-states as adversaries. When a problem comes up that would require the barest-minimum level of trust between adversaries just to avoid mutually disastrous outcomes, we end up with things like the Cold War or climate change. Nation-states don't solve the really big, hard problems collaboratively. They use them as geopolitical contests.
They can cut deals with each other, they can respond to pressure campaigns with PR, but they'll never be able to do anything other than the shabbiest, most selfish bullshit in response to one of the greatest challenges in human history. So far, it's all they've done.
😂😭😂
...as long as it isn't profitable to solve climate change. And that's pretty much it. Capitalism is going to be the band playing on the sinking Titanic, except it's actively drilling more holes in the bottom of the ship.
This just in: Metastatic Cancer isn't an effective treatment for the detrimental effects of Metastatic Cancer.
Shocking!
Climate change WILL NOT be solved. Monkey brains are never going to be able to break away from consuming. The best we'll be able to do is mitigate it's effects.
Monkey brains are never going to be able to break away from consuming.
We seemed to manage pretty well without rampant consumerism for the first couple of hundred thousand years. Only since capitalist consumerism was invented have people become convinced greed and endless consumption are "just human nature".
Greed and gluttony have been pervasive throughout history. I have no idea why you would think they were recent phenomena.
That was before people had experienced consumerism. It doesn't make sense to compare people existing without knowing of consumerist luxuries to asking people to give them up. Not saying it's hopeless, but it is human nature. It's animal nature. We've just moved ourselves into a world where those advantages have become disadvantages.
Capitalist realism mindset