It's dumber than that. We could do it if we cared about long term profits rather than next-quarter profits.
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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Yes but that would have tax implications.
Good luck with that. Have you ever met humans?
I'm not worried about humans, I'm worried about the rich
And yet, we managed to mostly abolish slavery and child labour in most countries.
It's not going to be easy, but it can be done.
Not to be defeatist, but...
We didn't abolish slavery... we just replaced it with wage slavery. Sure, the workers are free to leave - and try to survive with no other job opportunities and no money. In fact, for the employers, this is actually preferable to real slavery, because there are lower upfront costs for your slaves, they don't try to run away or rebel, you don't have to pay for their healthcare or long term care, and in many places government tax dollars will subsidize their living expenses. Employers have it WAY better with wage slaves than real slaves.
Child labour is still alive and well in many countries, and even there the ball is rolling on rolling THAT back in the US at least.
I admire your positivity, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Don't forget prison labor slavery, especially in the south. It was specifically added for that very reason.
And also actual old-fashioned slavery. I've read there are more slaves in the world today than there were in the 1700s. Even modern western countries aren't immune, it's just more invisible .Sex trafficking is a good chunk of this.
If you really think that wage slavery is comparable to being owned by a human, then you're delusional.
Yes, slavery and child labour still exists. But if you think living in the US or China or India in 2024 is just as bad as 1850, then you are also delusional.
Some countries like Afghanistan or North Korea might be objectively worse, but those are a minority.
Okay, I can see how you got that from my post. I was a bit hyperbolic in my original post, and I apologize.
I'm not REALLY making a moral equivalence argument or saying anything about comparing the horrors of slavery to work... I'm saying getting rid of slavery was easier to enact because there was an alternative system that happened to be ultimately profitable for the rich at the same time. Yes, wars have been fought to stop abolition, but at the end of the day, after slavery was abolished, the rich found a way to stay rich almost everywhere - abolition came at very little real change to the wealth structure of society. They had a supply of labor to exploit for profit during slavery, and they had one after. The fact is that the moral and financial interests both aligned on making abolition happen - it wasn't caused by pure strength of willpower. And yes, the system we have now is MUCH MUCH better than true slavery, but it's still a stretch to use the current system as a beacon of hope.
On climate change the moral and financial interests are NOT aligned in a clear way. There are always still going to be financial incentives to screw the climate for extra money. By comparison, if slavery were somehow legal again TODAY, it's not clear it would be profitable for anybody to actually do it. That difference will make climate goals harder to enact.
There will always be winners and losers with any change.
Plantation owners definitely lost a lot of wealth due to the abolition of slavery, while the industrial tycoons gained a lot of wealth.
Switching away from fossil fuels will similarly benefit those who invest in the energy sources and technologies of the future, while shrinking the fortune of those dependent on fossil fuels.
Already, some forms of fossil energy are losing new investment.
For example, the high profile Keystone XL pipeline was never built, even though Trump approved it, because investors doubted its profit potential. Biden revoking the permit was mostly symbolic.
Now, I do otherwise agree with this more nuanced take of yours. Morality needs to be aligned with financial incentives in order to achieve change. That's just how our current world works and I don't see that basic mechanism changing.
So it makes more sense to focus on making fossil fuels less profitable, e.g. through taxation.
I agree with your conclusion, but I don't agree that it's feasible. Any tax solutions will involve legislation by a government owned by those same interests. And even if you managed it in major economies, you'd just force the climate issues into places with fewer qualms about their fuel usage. I'd love to see this problem solved, but my faith in our ability to resolve it is far less than yours.
Once the alternatives become more profitable, they will move to legislate in their favour.
Here in Europe, we already have billions in subsidies for wind and solar energy.
Will it go smoothly, or fast enough?
No, I think 3 degrees warming is basically inevitable at this point.
But it will happen, about five decades later than it should have happened.
Guess we will see in the next two decades.
I hope for everyone's sake you're right, but if that does come to pass it will come as a surprise to me.
I agree, all the evils of yesteryear are still there and active, just either well-hidden or people simply don't care/pretend not to know (cfr football world championships in Qatar, ...).
We've made enormous progress technologically, but humans are still the exact same as 2000 or 5000 years ago. We've changed exceedingly little in that time, and the few things that have changed could be reverted very quickly if shove comes to push concerning climate collapse etc.
Have we? Or do we just call it something else and make sure not to look?
Slavery still exist in USA. 13th. In the south they still have kids working legally on farms.
Did we, when?
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Humans are wonderful. Not always good, not always reasonable, but wonderful.
We are rich, nuanced, vibrant beings. A small portion of us are defectors but by and large we are community focused and willing to give when we feel we are not being taken advantage of.
Unless you think all your friends, yourself, and your family are garbage it is inconsistent to assume a random sampling of humans would not display the same prosocial traits you find in them.
The one thing we are incapable of doing though is handling power.
All these claims are simply taking a look at a different angle.
It's like saying "cars pollute" and you reply with "but have you seen the beautiful colours they come in and how much faster than mules they are"
You are not wrong but neither are the people claiming humans are, as a herd, fairly dumb and incredibly selfish
neither are the people claiming humans are, as a herd, fairly dumb and incredibly selfish
wtf? by what standard?
Humans frequently band together during disaster, humans care for their young and old, humans don't typically engage in cannibalism of the weak, humans rarely fight to the death or even serious injury, we live in cities of millions with astonishingly low rates of violence etc etc
where is this terrible selfish stupid behaviour? what standard are you comparing the species to? we're more violent than orangutans but they've never set up water sanitation so I think we can call ourselves smart and we're less violent than chimps or gorillas... are you comparing us to fictitious ideal beings or what?
wtf? by what standard?
if the climate change inaction (or worse, sabotage) did not convince you, I am certain the COVID behaviour should have
Humans frequently band together during disaster
If they are directly affected sure... otherwise people may throw some money (which is usually promptly embezzled) and move on
humans care for their young and old
Their own young, sure let's say that is the common majority. Their own old? a lot more questionable. Other people's LOL... can't tell you how many people complain about their taxes feeding other people's children. But this is not an argument against what I claimed... what I said was basically echoing what Tommy Lee Jones beautifully said in MIB, in a nutshell: a human (as an individual) can be AMAZING, but humans (as a herd) tend to default to he lowest common denominator and that sucks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkCwFkOZoOY
humans don’t typically engage in cannibalism of the weak
what do you think capitalism is?
humans rarely fight to the death or even serious injury
Ok, now you are joking... no matter how old you are, I know with 100% accuracy that you have never lived in a world where, somewhere, there was a military conflict and people were being slaughtered... I know because we have not had such a time since 1816 (and that may just have been an absence of records)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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The title reads: "we can solve the climate crisis, but we won't"
So we're doomed then
"trump" in this context has lost all of its former meaning.
The trump card lost its meaning the moment it got the orange man in jail
The whole world: We need cheap EVs for the regular people.
China: I got you fam.
The world: Tarifs.
It's a bit more complicated than that. You don't want total reliance from one country (especially one as questionable as China) over a whole big ass sector of your economic. And China being super cheap will cause a monopoly of their EVs. That's bad.
A monopoly is not inherently bad. A monopoly removes the incentive for pricing pressure, yes, but that requires consolidation in a single company, not a single country. China's only been able to sell EVs so cheap because every company that couldn't drive prices this low got blown the fuck out of the market. That's competition, not a monopoly. By extension, if EV prices go back up, those competitors can pretty easily restart given the billions of venture funding swimming around in China.
A monopoly isn't inherently bad, but a monopoly by a state is pretty bad. It means they can exert political pressure over you using that sector's influence.
Heck, look at Russia and gas. It impacted tons of people all over the world, and if the world hadn't collectively said "fuck you Russia we'll handle ourselves without you" - then countries like Germany wouldn't have a choice but keep buying Russian Gas.
That's a political power you really don't wanna give to anyone, especially not China.
Yes, competition could restart, but that'd take time. And you don't always have that time. Again, see Russia and gas as a nice example for that.
Sure, I agree, but your claim hinges on the fact that the Chinese EV market lacks competition (like, say, Russia with Gazprom and nobody else).
That's easily disprovable.
But we actually need a sensibly planned public transport and Zoning.
The solution requires a new ideological paradigm, but transitioning into the right paradigm would be extremely difficult and it would likely take a very long time.
I think the US is already in the process of transitioning to a new paradigm, away from neoliberalism, which was the dominant paradigm over the past half century or so, to something else. However, I'm not sure we are transitioning into the "right" paradigm. I think the paradigm we are transitioning into is more protectionist than neoliberalism. We are moving away from globalization and towards something more like the cold war era, where the world was divided along ideological lines into a "first world" and a "second world." I expect the new paradigm we are shifting into to be more antagonistic toward "unfriendly" nations. I wouldn't be surprised if this were to lead to some kind of major conflict.
Of course we're to that: the US is doing very little to slow climate change at all, is anything it is accelerating it. The natural result of this will not be food insecurity in the USA: it will be famine in South and Central America. Climate migration will see tens of millions of immigrants at our borders.
And the government has 0 intention of helping them. It military will directly cause a mass casualty event at the border before the turn of the century.
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Best I can do is a token effort as long as it doesn't upset the shareholders.
Too bad I associate the word trump these day with stupid.
don't look up
The hard part morally is whether future human rights trump present ones. But we can't even get to those issues since they're all trumped by maximum short term profits all the time.
End of the world party it is
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