Every system will have people that will try to subvert it for personal gain. I’m not defending capitalism, I’m just saying people are assholes.
Well, yes, but capitalism as it exists now is a system that inherently favours gains now over sustainability, because you can just take the gains, and dump the eventual losses on others.
It has no ideological or practical stops to that sort of thing, instead it is rewarded.
To stop this, we would have to massively rework how corporations work (personal responsibility for owners and executives/management), and introduce such a draconian system of regulation and punishments that most not hard left people would balk at it.
Depends also on what you mean by sustainability. Solow's definition is that sustainability is leaving the world the capacity to be as well off if not better capacity for future generations, specifically looking at the global capital stock and the substitutability of different types of capital (i.e. substituting natural capital for physical capital, etc.)
A lot of the problem (especially here in America) is that our tax system doesn't properly internalize the costs of pollution. That's why economists heavily favor a carbon tax -- it actually solves the underlying incentive problems that have created our current environment.
Sure.
But then you get issues where the system is gamed by subcontractors moving the environmental compliance off-shore and then conveniently not doing the compliance activity because it's cheaper.
So the carbon tax needs to have carbon tariffs as well, and any carbon offsets, earned by reducing emissions or capturing carbon, need to be heavily monitored to ensure that the stated carbon capture benefit actually exists, and isn't just people planting trees to have them chopped down shortly thereafter.
Yeah collective action problems are really hard. Additionally moving production off-shore to get around environmental compliance depends a lot on whether or not the company can move easily, which is an empirical question.
But I think all those problems are more easily solved than getting every country and society in the world to get rid of private property rights (which also doesn't really solve the problem since one can still have personal property which has its own carbon emissions).
Without going into Mao and gulags and all that, do you REALLY belive that capitalism is not responsable for climate change, and that we can realistically not become extinct under global capitalism?
I can't really say one way or the other that capitalism is responsible for climate change. We're talking about a completely different counterfactual world at that point.
But I also do realistically believe we could not become extinct under capitalism. At this point it's a political issue not a policy or economic issue.
Does economic structure play a large role in a society’s willingness to price in externalities?
Is it also maybe more fair to say it’s capital that are fucking everyone else over, using capital as a substitute for authoritarian rulers/ruling parties where appropriate?
The irony is that private property rights do a better job of it than open-access property. Maybe I'll write something up later about this difference using fisheries and fossil fuels, but fisheries under open-access systems over-exploit natural resources more than fossil fuels on property rights. This is looking at the spillovers caused by over-exploiting to depletion, mind, but it's an externality.
When it comes to carbon emissions, I'm not sure economic structure (i.e. capitalism vs. socialism) would change it much. Under socialism there's still personal property, all of which would contain embedded carbon emissions.
I'm not sure you can blame capital in the sense of economic capital, but yes it's a political issue not an economic one. Like I said previously, there's plenty of theory and empirical evidence to support the tremendous reductions in carbon emissions needed to stem off climate change. The problem is that it means everything will become more expensive because the actual True Costs haven't been taken into account.
The Chinese provinces fake their emissions records so that they can meet the party's economic growth targets, because the only way they can meet them is using fossil fuels. The problem is the short term trade off between environmental effects and economic growth.
That trade off is going to exist no matter what the social or economic system, and any system with any amount of agency for local actors is going to have a significant percentage of those actors choosing to fuck the environment.
If the problem starts somewhere, it starts with Enlightenment Progressivism, the belief in the continuing progress of humanity due to the advancement of human knowledge and understanding, which created social expectations of a continually improving human living standard. Liberal Capitalism and Socialism are both products of this tradition.
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I don't think it's necessarily the expectation of continually improving human living standard. I said this in the socialism thread before it got burned down, but economic systems -- including an empowered labor cooperative slash socialist one -- requires profit to some degree. Physical capital depreciates due to the physical laws of nature, and we have no way to counteract that; thus, it must be replaced at some point and that requires resources. Without profit capital replacement extracts from labor and consumers the same as it does under profit.
It's simple human nature to put short term gains over long term planning. Ever see the kids and marshmallow delayed gratification experiment? Now imagine instead of marshmallows the choice is between making money now versus not making money now nor later, with the reward being avoidance of some nebulous bad things in the far off future of 30 years, AND you have a propaganda machine driven by straight up villains telling you those consequences are made up and climate change is a conspiracy. The problem is not whatever system of government you have, the problem is people.
I don't think it's necessarily the expectation of continually improving human living standard. I said this in the socialism thread before it got burned down, but economic systems -- including an empowered labor cooperative slash socialist one -- requires profit to some degree. Physical capital depreciates due to the physical laws of nature, and we have no way to counteract that; thus, it must be replaced at some point and that requires resources. Without profit capital replacement extracts from labor and consumers the same as it does under profit.
I would contrast it to the state of societal expectations in pre-Enlightenment societies such as Feudal Europe or Tokugawa Japan, where a person would never and could never expect to rise above their station and current standard of living. Its a fundamentally different outlook on life.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I don't think it's necessarily the expectation of continually improving human living standard. I said this in the socialism thread before it got burned down, but economic systems -- including an empowered labor cooperative slash socialist one -- requires profit to some degree. Physical capital depreciates due to the physical laws of nature, and we have no way to counteract that; thus, it must be replaced at some point and that requires resources. Without profit capital replacement extracts from labor and consumers the same as it does under profit.
I would contrast it to the state of societal expectations in pre-Enlightenment societies such as Feudal Europe or Tokugawa Japan, where a person would never and could never expect to rise above their station and current standard of living. Its a fundamentally different outlook on life.
This is true and I'm not discounting (heh) it. But also prior to the Enlightenment and industrialization physical capital came in the form of either very low-cost products (hammers, sickles, etc.) that were easily replaced without much resource extraction, or very high-cost products that had extremely long time horizons of use (walls, castles, etc.). The latter of these actually did require extreme resource extraction (labor power), hence feudalism.
Now, however, there are many more physical capital goods that are between these extremely low-cost and extremely high-cost products that aren't easily replaceable but don't have extreme time-horizons for use. Profit allows companies to replace depreciated capital (and expand, but that's a different topic).
Profit does not predicate unsustainability though.
You can extract resources without extracting above and beyond the carrying capacities of the systems you rely on.
Profit does not predicate unsustainability though.
You can extract resources without extracting above and beyond the carrying capacities of the systems you rely on.
Profit does not predicate unsustainability though.
You can extract resources without extracting above and beyond the carrying capacities of the systems you rely on.
I agree! I brought up profit in regard to another topic. And it's also why I mentioned that fossil fuel extraction is actually pretty economically efficient if not for the externalities it causes.
Well, I also disagree that capitalism manages resources any better than open access systems except in the short term where either:
- not enough players have entered the market due to initial outlay costs, but without some sort of tax taking wealth out of the system, this will be overcome in the future as wealth builds among more people
- the marginal cost of extraction prevents the complete strip-mining of the underlying resource, up until demand demands it
I suppose you could argue that a monopoly would have an interest in managing and caring for a resource that only they use exclusively, but they can extract wealth through rent-seeking then anyway so I'm not sure that's much different.
It's putting the burden of resource extraction on someone else, because they can.
Monopolies are commonly known as the conservationist's friend precisely because they can deplete resources at lower rates and extract the same if not more wealth at the same time.
Profit does not predicate unsustainability though.
You can extract resources without extracting above and beyond the carrying capacities of the systems you rely on.
Unless you are maximizing profit for short-term gain and there is no financial incentive to considering long-term benefit.
I think you could make an argument that socialism could allow for a longer-term view to the implications of exploiting resources. Under capitalism, there is real reason not to, e.g. shareholders withdrawing investment.
Profit does not predicate unsustainability though.
You can extract resources without extracting above and beyond the carrying capacities of the systems you rely on.
Unless you are maximizing profit for short-term gain and there is no financial incentive to considering long-term benefit.
I think you could make an argument that socialism could allow for a longer-term view to the implications of exploiting resources. Under capitalism, there is real reason not to, e.g. shareholders withdrawing investment.
Not true, the hoteling rule demonstrates that the exploration of natural resources under private property can be dynamically efficient.
E: which is to say that it works under capitalism, and can under socialism as well
A new Filipino law requires all graduating high school and college students to plant at least 10 trees each before they can graduate.
The law formalises a tradition of planting trees upon graduation, which is also hoped to simultaneously combat global climate change.
...
The Philippines’ Magdalo Party representative Gary Alejano, who was the principal author of the legislation, said: "With over 12 million students graduating from elementary and nearly five million students graduating from high school and almost 500,000 graduating from college each year, this initiative, if properly implemented, will ensure that at least 175 million new trees would be planted each year.
Am I the only one wondering if the Philippines has the land area to handle 175million new trees each year? And if paying to have a tree planted somewhere in the world counts, well, ok, but they essentially created a tax on graduating from school, and I can't really get behind that.
I think this is one of those good on paper, bad in real life things.
Am I the only one wondering if the Philippines has the land area to handle 175million new trees each year? And if paying to have a tree planted somewhere in the world counts, well, ok, but they essentially created a tax on graduating from school, and I can't really get behind that.
I think this is one of those good on paper, bad in real life things.
My guess is you're right, but not in the way you think. Chances are enforcement will be low. Also since they said plant, not grow, a very high percentage of the planted trees will not get what they need to become trees. So it probably doesn't create anywhere near that many trees, but also it's probably relatively easy for the students to do.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
My high school had an honors program where, to actually get the benefit of doing honors classes, you needed to also do a bunch of other crap. One of them was planting a tree on school grounds. Thirty to fifty students a year, allowed in groups of up to 10, you'd think the school would be a goddamn forest by now. There's like twelve trees. Not a single one from my year is left (I know this because they decided to plant a different species to stand out and there's none left).
Scaling it up that much should at least result in SOME more trees - some will die, some will be poorly planted or unsuitable to their location, some will be too small and get run over with a lawnmower, but out of that many some should survive. The government could hire professionals to plant a million trees at quite fantastic expense, and reasonably expect, say, 900,000 to survive. Or they can get kids to plant tens of millions on their own dimes and probably get the same result.
Am I the only one wondering if the Philippines has the land area to handle 175million new trees each year? And if paying to have a tree planted somewhere in the world counts, well, ok, but they essentially created a tax on graduating from school, and I can't really get behind that.
I think this is one of those good on paper, bad in real life things.
I understand that concern.
My threshold for "this is too high a burden" with respect to helping climate change issues is really really high. Possibly unreasonably high, but it helps counteract the existential dread I have when thinking about our planet in the future, so eh.
Am I the only one wondering if the Philippines has the land area to handle 175million new trees each year? And if paying to have a tree planted somewhere in the world counts, well, ok, but they essentially created a tax on graduating from school, and I can't really get behind that.
I think this is one of those good on paper, bad in real life things.
No that not actually a concern. Planting a tree does not guarantee it reaches full size. If there are too many trees planted in an area some just won't grow. Nor does to have to come with an inherent cost. I can walk outside right now and find hundreds of tree seeds I could plant, just laying on the ground. The article is kind of vague but it sounds like it's a government sponsored program so calling it a tax on students is just plain wrong.
That's an awfully bizarre thing to be concerned about. I don't think anyone in the history of conservation has ever said, "what if too many trees?"
Am I the only one wondering if the Philippines has the land area to handle 175million new trees each year? And if paying to have a tree planted somewhere in the world counts, well, ok, but they essentially created a tax on graduating from school, and I can't really get behind that.
I think this is one of those good on paper, bad in real life things.
No that not actually a concern. Planting a tree does not guarantee it reaches full size. If there are too many trees planted in an area some just won't grow. Nor does to have to come with an inherent cost. I can walk outside right now and find hundreds of tree seeds I could plant, just laying on the ground. The article is kind of vague but it sounds like it's a government sponsored program so calling it a tax on students is just plain wrong.
That's an awfully bizarre thing to be concerned about. I don't think anyone in the history of conservation has ever said, "what if too many trees?"
I do think there is something to be said for maximizing resource effectiveness though. If you are in a place with high tree density already, spending a huge number of labor hours planting more is fairly wasteful. Tree's can and do spread on their own.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Am I the only one wondering if the Philippines has the land area to handle 175million new trees each year? And if paying to have a tree planted somewhere in the world counts, well, ok, but they essentially created a tax on graduating from school, and I can't really get behind that.
I think this is one of those good on paper, bad in real life things.
No that not actually a concern. Planting a tree does not guarantee it reaches full size. If there are too many trees planted in an area some just won't grow. Nor does to have to come with an inherent cost. I can walk outside right now and find hundreds of tree seeds I could plant, just laying on the ground. The article is kind of vague but it sounds like it's a government sponsored program so calling it a tax on students is just plain wrong.
That's an awfully bizarre thing to be concerned about. I don't think anyone in the history of conservation has ever said, "what if too many trees?"
I do think there is something to be said for maximizing resource effectiveness though. If you are in a place with high tree density already, spending a huge number of labor hours planting more is fairly wasteful. Tree's can and do spread on their own.
They aren't planting trees where they don't need trees. They are planting trees where they need more.
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
So I'm part of 2 projects that they side step calling it global warming. It's bizarre, like everyone in the room is like global warming is going to fuck up these things.
And the official report is like erosion and deforestation is fucking up these things, we should put in these engineering controls, and plant some trees...
I'm told that we aren't the only agency that is addressing global warming by fixing a related issue. I feel at least positive that we are taking steps to fix problems, but politics has made these just overkill sounding solutions (because it's an end around to address real issues).
Presumably the schools can offer the tiniest bit of guidance on where might be good spots that could use more trees.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
The trees will apparently be planted in mangroves, existing forests, some protected areas, military ranges, abandoned mining sites and selected urban areas, according to CNN's Philippines news service.
Mangroves in particular is a good one, right? Helps with erosion, weather absorption, and when they die, they sink so under the water instead of the atmosphere, right?
Mangroves in particular is a good one, right? Helps with erosion, weather absorption, and when they die, they sink so under the water instead of the atmosphere, right?
It’s not hurting, but perhaps not the most efficient use of resources.
But that’s true of this whole endeavor, and kind of misses the point, which is probably more about awareness and psychology than actual carbon sequestration
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Where’s Monsanto’s to genetically engineer some mutant Super algae that does exceptionally efficient photo synthesis and multiplies at an astounding rate?
Where’s Monsanto’s to genetically engineer some mutant Super algae that does exceptionally efficient photo synthesis and multiplies at an astounding rate?
why did "The Oxygen Catastrophe" pop into my head as I read this?
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Where’s Monsanto’s to genetically engineer some mutant Super algae that does exceptionally efficient photo synthesis and multiplies at an astounding rate?
why did "The Oxygen Catastrophe" pop into my head as I read this?
Where is Monsanto’s Methane mold to counter the Oxygen catastrophe?
Where’s Monsanto’s to genetically engineer some mutant Super algae that does exceptionally efficient photo synthesis and multiplies at an astounding rate?
why did "The Oxygen Catastrophe" pop into my head as I read this?
Where is Monsanto’s Methane mold to counter the Oxygen catastrophe?
It’s May, so the mold-eating gorillas are still alive and ate it all
Where’s Monsanto’s to genetically engineer some mutant Super algae that does exceptionally efficient photo synthesis and multiplies at an astounding rate?
why did "The Oxygen Catastrophe" pop into my head as I read this?
Where is Monsanto’s Methane mold to counter the Oxygen catastrophe?
Are you a supervillain, or are you trying to make the Earth explode as a hobby?
Where’s Monsanto’s to genetically engineer some mutant Super algae that does exceptionally efficient photo synthesis and multiplies at an astounding rate?
why did "The Oxygen Catastrophe" pop into my head as I read this?
Where is Monsanto’s Methane mold to counter the Oxygen catastrophe?
Are you a supervillain, or are you trying to make the Earth explode as a hobby?
I for one see no possible downside to this plan.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Where’s Monsanto’s to genetically engineer some mutant Super algae that does exceptionally efficient photo synthesis and multiplies at an astounding rate?
why did "The Oxygen Catastrophe" pop into my head as I read this?
tbf it's not like there's enough carbon dioxide to really affect the oxygen concentration. The atmosphere is four fifths nitrogen, one fifth oxygen, rounding error everything else.
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I can't really say one way or the other that capitalism is responsible for climate change. We're talking about a completely different counterfactual world at that point.
But I also do realistically believe we could not become extinct under capitalism. At this point it's a political issue not a policy or economic issue.
The irony is that private property rights do a better job of it than open-access property. Maybe I'll write something up later about this difference using fisheries and fossil fuels, but fisheries under open-access systems over-exploit natural resources more than fossil fuels on property rights. This is looking at the spillovers caused by over-exploiting to depletion, mind, but it's an externality.
When it comes to carbon emissions, I'm not sure economic structure (i.e. capitalism vs. socialism) would change it much. Under socialism there's still personal property, all of which would contain embedded carbon emissions.
I'm not sure you can blame capital in the sense of economic capital, but yes it's a political issue not an economic one. Like I said previously, there's plenty of theory and empirical evidence to support the tremendous reductions in carbon emissions needed to stem off climate change. The problem is that it means everything will become more expensive because the actual True Costs haven't been taken into account.
That trade off is going to exist no matter what the social or economic system, and any system with any amount of agency for local actors is going to have a significant percentage of those actors choosing to fuck the environment.
If the problem starts somewhere, it starts with Enlightenment Progressivism, the belief in the continuing progress of humanity due to the advancement of human knowledge and understanding, which created social expectations of a continually improving human living standard. Liberal Capitalism and Socialism are both products of this tradition.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I would contrast it to the state of societal expectations in pre-Enlightenment societies such as Feudal Europe or Tokugawa Japan, where a person would never and could never expect to rise above their station and current standard of living. Its a fundamentally different outlook on life.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
This is true and I'm not discounting (heh) it. But also prior to the Enlightenment and industrialization physical capital came in the form of either very low-cost products (hammers, sickles, etc.) that were easily replaced without much resource extraction, or very high-cost products that had extremely long time horizons of use (walls, castles, etc.). The latter of these actually did require extreme resource extraction (labor power), hence feudalism.
Now, however, there are many more physical capital goods that are between these extremely low-cost and extremely high-cost products that aren't easily replaceable but don't have extreme time-horizons for use. Profit allows companies to replace depreciated capital (and expand, but that's a different topic).
You can extract resources without extracting above and beyond the carrying capacities of the systems you rely on.
Only if everyone cooperates
I agree! I brought up profit in regard to another topic. And it's also why I mentioned that fossil fuel extraction is actually pretty economically efficient if not for the externalities it causes.
- not enough players have entered the market due to initial outlay costs, but without some sort of tax taking wealth out of the system, this will be overcome in the future as wealth builds among more people
- the marginal cost of extraction prevents the complete strip-mining of the underlying resource, up until demand demands it
I suppose you could argue that a monopoly would have an interest in managing and caring for a resource that only they use exclusively, but they can extract wealth through rent-seeking then anyway so I'm not sure that's much different.
It's putting the burden of resource extraction on someone else, because they can.
I think you could make an argument that socialism could allow for a longer-term view to the implications of exploiting resources. Under capitalism, there is real reason not to, e.g. shareholders withdrawing investment.
Not true, the hoteling rule demonstrates that the exploration of natural resources under private property can be dynamically efficient.
E: which is to say that it works under capitalism, and can under socialism as well
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I think this is one of those good on paper, bad in real life things.
My guess is you're right, but not in the way you think. Chances are enforcement will be low. Also since they said plant, not grow, a very high percentage of the planted trees will not get what they need to become trees. So it probably doesn't create anywhere near that many trees, but also it's probably relatively easy for the students to do.
Scaling it up that much should at least result in SOME more trees - some will die, some will be poorly planted or unsuitable to their location, some will be too small and get run over with a lawnmower, but out of that many some should survive. The government could hire professionals to plant a million trees at quite fantastic expense, and reasonably expect, say, 900,000 to survive. Or they can get kids to plant tens of millions on their own dimes and probably get the same result.
I understand that concern.
My threshold for "this is too high a burden" with respect to helping climate change issues is really really high. Possibly unreasonably high, but it helps counteract the existential dread I have when thinking about our planet in the future, so eh.
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No that not actually a concern. Planting a tree does not guarantee it reaches full size. If there are too many trees planted in an area some just won't grow. Nor does to have to come with an inherent cost. I can walk outside right now and find hundreds of tree seeds I could plant, just laying on the ground. The article is kind of vague but it sounds like it's a government sponsored program so calling it a tax on students is just plain wrong.
That's an awfully bizarre thing to be concerned about. I don't think anyone in the history of conservation has ever said, "what if too many trees?"
I do think there is something to be said for maximizing resource effectiveness though. If you are in a place with high tree density already, spending a huge number of labor hours planting more is fairly wasteful. Tree's can and do spread on their own.
They aren't planting trees where they don't need trees. They are planting trees where they need more.
Might have been more a countryside thing than a city thing though.
And the official report is like erosion and deforestation is fucking up these things, we should put in these engineering controls, and plant some trees...
I'm told that we aren't the only agency that is addressing global warming by fixing a related issue. I feel at least positive that we are taking steps to fix problems, but politics has made these just overkill sounding solutions (because it's an end around to address real issues).
Eh.
https://www.wetlands.org/publications/mangrove-restoration-to-plant-or-not-to-plant/
It’s not hurting, but perhaps not the most efficient use of resources.
But that’s true of this whole endeavor, and kind of misses the point, which is probably more about awareness and psychology than actual carbon sequestration
why did "The Oxygen Catastrophe" pop into my head as I read this?
It’s May, so the mold-eating gorillas are still alive and ate it all
Are you a supervillain, or are you trying to make the Earth explode as a hobby?
I for one see no possible downside to this plan.
I hear swallowing a spider is good for that.
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tbf it's not like there's enough carbon dioxide to really affect the oxygen concentration. The atmosphere is four fifths nitrogen, one fifth oxygen, rounding error everything else.