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Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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China is the number one greenhouse gas contributor, Russia is near the top of the list as well. Fuck off tankies.
If you think those 2 are communist countries, you're stuck in the last century. Let me give you some news. The Soviet Union collapsed and gave way to a capitalist oligarchy. China realized that capitalism is profitable and brings them tons of money from the west. I have no idea why tankies still simp those countries as communist (wait, I do actually - because tankies never had any principles of their own, they just wanted to be anti-west).
There is one country that needs to kickstart change for it to have any effect, it's the US. Not only does it pollute the most per capita, it's a huge market. My tiny ass country with fuel prices already being twice as much in the US, can raise fuel prices even more, but that won't affect global demand. Americans no longer getting fuel for essentially free, would actually affect global demand.
Yes, of course, because political systems are binary and there's only capitalism and communism lmao
There's plenty of systems that mix both, but Russia and China aren't actually good examples. They're pretty capitalist.
If you want a better example of mixing capitalism with socialism, you can take a look at something like the Nordic countries, where there are tons of social services and safety nets, but there's still a very strong (just regulated) free market.
State companies and state-connected companies own more than half of each one's economy. More than in Nordic countries.
Do you belive that in a communist country everything is owned by the state? If so, I urge you to look up communism again.
In really existent ones - yes.
And what are those existent communist countries? The ones that come the closest are China, Vietnam, cubs, Laos, North Korea. But none if them is there yet. https://www.britannica.com/question/Which-countries-are-communist
Communist means ideologically communist. Because "countries which have built communism according to Marx with stateless society with common ownership of means of production" etc are like Zeno's Achilles and turtle metaphor. Only I don't get why would anybody use such an unreachable by design criterion to judge on the effect of communist ideology on societies.
Well in the examples I gave only in north Korea everything is controlled by the state. So your point is irrelevant.
There are gradations between "everything" and "critical mass" as well, and part of it is "private" property which can be easily confiscated or in some other way transferred to a more loyal person, just the system has mechanisms to prevent killing the golden goose (for now, it seems comrade Xi has some ideas with potential to affect this).
I mean, if you consider Nazi Germany capitalist, then China is too.
Anyway, it all depends on terminology. Some people think that "war communism" is the closest to real communism the world has seen. For others it's not communism at all, because they don't forget that "stateless" part. While Makhno's republic is that. For others the Nordic countries are almost like communism.
Just like with Christianity, with Communism we should trace all branches of the tree, not just discard everything we don't like as schismatic.
Confiscation of private property as a criterion for communism is also new to me.
Is the Taliban communistic?
I meant that the state has control over all those big Chinese businesses.
And what are those existent communist countries? The ones that come the closest are China, Vietnam, cubs, Laos, North Korea. But none if them is there yet. https://www.britannica.com/question/Which-countries-are-communist
Because capitalism with state protection is not capitalism I guess.
In each, we're talking about capitalism with the caveat that the owners of the country want a kickback too, and in return local capitalists are protected from foreign capitalists. Vladimir Putin owns Russia, the CCP owns China. In neither case does capital belong to "the people" as a whole.
Yes, it's not. I mean, for Marxists it is, because Marx describes something similar specifically to XIX century Germany with state-supported enormous trusts, influential aristocracy, and so on. Which is for obvious reason of living there, just not very relevant, because real economists use the term differently.
Well, CCP is not different from CPSU in this case.
Seems a bit silly to decide that "capitalism" is the majority contributor to climate change when the country that produces the most greenhouse gases is only "pretty capitalist" doesn't it? If capitalism is the major contributor, why don't more capitalist country produce more greenhouse gases?
I never set out to argue that capitalism doesn't exist in countries that aren't primarily capitalist.
That's not necessarily the case. The pollution comes from where manufacturing is, not necessarily where consumption is. The demand is coming from capitalist countries.
Edit: To account for this, we can look at per-capita consumption-based emissions (thanks to @[email protected] for the data link).
The country that produces the most greenhouse gases is doing so to satisfy the demands of private industry that's producing goods for private profit. What part of that is not capitalism?
Also the country that produces the most per capita, is arguably the most capitalist country, the USA.
While I agree that per capita emissions is a useful metric, perhaps even more useful than raw emissions numbers, where are you getting that the USA has the highest production per capita?
This table shows data from 2018 so things change, but the per capita emissions would have had to double in five years to put the USA on top.
If you look at the non-per capita numbers, the USA is the second largest emitter behind China (using data from 2018).
Good point, I was a bit inaccurate with my last comment.
If you look at the non-per capita consumption based emissions and divide that by the amount of people, you'll find that Americans consume way more per capita.
China has the bigger (even per capita) number in terms of production, but they export a lot of what they produce, whereas Americans get all their shit from China and can then claim China has the worse emissions.
Here's a map showing consumption-based emissions per capita, you can see that the US has a number twice as big as China's.
Those 2 are literally capitalist countries. Also tankies are the ones who commonly say China is not capitalist.
Lol the fuck, no they aren't
What makes you think that?
What makes me think that two countries that have never identified as capitalist and have never been identified as capitalist anywhere except for this crazy ass community where you just go ahead and label anything you don't like simply as "capitalism"? Oh I don't know, just a hunch I guess!
Well if you think 'because they say so' is reason enough there's not really any further to go here I don't think. I was hoping you'd have a more interesting answer about how the economy is structured or how resources are distributed. It looks more like an authoritarian flavour of capitalism to me but I'm no politics expert so I only have a layman's view, more than happy to be corrected.
Dude, the reason you think they're capitalist is because someone on Lemmy said so, I'm not going to put effort into correcting something that didn't have evidence behind it to begin with. I'm not going to sit here and try to prove a negative to correct your layman's view, that's not how conversation works.
They have private companies and a market economy, how is that a communist economy exactly ?
If your only argument for saying they're communist is because they said so, then you must also believe that north korea is a democracy right ?
Russia is very capitalist; like how exactly are they communist at all??
The DPRK "identifies" as "democratic" - so by your logic you should just swallow that hook, line and sinker, too, eh?
Oh, boy... are you in for a surprise - Lenin himself dubbed the fledgling USSR as "state capitalist".
Nothing new about it, Clyde.
Every one of your arguments have been blown out of the water with next-to zero effort... and yet you still pretend you're in the game.
Sooo... a capitalist state?
Sooo... another capitalist state?
You don't know what a tankie is, do you?
I knew it was a bad day when we allowed liberals access to that word.
Oh gross, you're one of those
You walked blindly into this argument with absolutely zero understanding of the subject matter at hand, didn't you?
Users are attributing climate change to "capitalism" with no evidence or reasoning to back it up. You've made assertions that countries that political experts don't consider primarily capitalist countries are actually capitalist countries with no evidence to back them up. I don't have to waste my time disproving your flaky nonsense, calling it out is good enough for me.
And what part of this conversation makes you feel like the intelligent subject matter expert here? The part where you said liberals shouldn't use certain words? Keep it up bud, appreciate you helping me decide which communities to filter out here.
Lol! It's aliens, right? Climate change is caused by aliens? Is that your angle here?
I agree... you don't have to flail blindly and ignorantly because you don't have a clue what you are talking about. You can get a clue any time you feel like.
Yes of course, the only two super specific variables that exist, capitalism and aliens.
Would you waste your time talking to you?
Your claims are so ridiculous I wouldn't be surprised if you were to start whining about aliens or the earth being flat.
Like I said... you don’t have to flail blindly and ignorantly. You can come back to reality any time you feel like.
Nice, got any more strawmans you wanna throw out there?
Your ignorance is either naive or contrived. I don't care enough to investigate which one it is... I only care that your shitty take is understood for what it is. Aaaaand... that seems to be the case.
Think it's funny that you're losing your damn mind over there replying aggressively because you can't leave a comment unreplied to, but I'm the one "flailing" right?
Relax, right-winger... chill. Watch this cat parade.
Your politics is a dead-end street... but that's not the end of the world - people overcome much worse every day.
Maybe you should... stop being so sensitive.
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Now you've accused me of being a right winger and a liberal, so which is it?
Liberalism is a right-wing ideology.
It's alway surprising that liberals don't realise that liberalism is a right-wing ideology. They can't have read the main liberal tracts and treatises because the connection is clear. It could be a US thing, where liberal is used to describe Dems and conservative, Republicans. So liberal is 'left' in the states, where it's the left-faction of the capitalist party. What most people don't realise is that Conservatives still self-identify as one or another type of liberal and they almost all, 'left'- and 'right'-leaning liberal refer to the same handful of books as the basis of their ideology. That's because liberalism is the ideology of capitalism, fundamentally opposed to socialism.
Have one (very liberal capitalist) brief source presenting some evidence to how capitalism is to blame. Then have a very short summary write-up on how China has been the world leader in combating climate change. Happy?
The United States has double China's emissions per capita, and China actually is the world leader in the production of sustainable development products like solar panels even though the USA had a 150 year head start in its industrialisation. Despite whatever criticisms you may have against China, looking only at total emissions is definitely misleading. China's renewable power has gone up fivefold in the past 15 years in absolute numbers and double in percentage of total production. The USA hasn't even been building hydro dams since the 80s, while China has built some 15 in the past 20 years. Since one is explicitly the most capitalist country and the other is """capitalist actually""", I think it is fair to say that capitalism has a negative correlation with fighting climate change.
Though I have no idea why you included the Russian Federation there, since it is a capitalist oligarchy created by and modelled after the USA. Do you believe that Russia is communist by any chance?
I just wanna know what exactly you think a tankie is
You don't trash China at every opportunity unprovoked? Damn tankies!