'The Suicide of Capitalism,' Revisited
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
NORTH POLE Ice (now). Holy Crow (or is it Holy Cow?) If Admiral Peary and his colleagues (britannica.com/biography/Robert-Edwin-Peary) had slipped, they might have drowned.
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Christopher Michel (1967–) ) Details Source DMCA
Preface (from the New York Times Editorial Board, Sunday Review, p. 8, August 15, 2021)
"In June 1988 a NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen, appeared on a very hot day in Washington and told a group of powerful senators that a grim future lay ahead. Carbon emissions, he said, had raised average global temperatures to the highest levels in recorded human history, bringing heat waves, droughts and other disruptions to people's lives. 'The greenhouse effect has been detected,' he said, 'and it is changing our climate now.'
"That same year a collection of scientists assembled by the United Nations known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered much the same message, warning pointedly of rising seas and threats to biodiversity. Four years later, world leaders meeting in Rio de Janeiro signed a landmark agreement to stabilize 'greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.'
"We knew, three decades ago, about global warming and its consequences. We suspected, even then, that the potentially catastrophic future forecast in the I.P.C.C.'s latest report, released on Monday a report the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called a 'code red for humanity' could well come to pass.
"What have we done with that knowledge? Very little, for lots of reasons. Timid leaders, feckless legislatures. Interminable arguments between rich and poor nations over who bears responsibility. Well-financed disinformation campaigns from big polluters like Exxon Mobil (and etc.; see below, "George Will"). On a purely human level, there's the reluctance of people living worry-free in the here and now to make the investments and sacrifices necessary to protect future generations."
And now, to some current headlines:
First, there's the latest Report from the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" (I.P.C.C.). The New York Times headlines their lead article on it thus: "A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us."
Second, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that this past July was the hottest on record, and the average global temperature has risen steadily over the last 40 years.
Third, George Will, who some folk think might be turning just a bit to the left because he has criticized Trump (don't be fooled folks; he is still quite a Rightist) used his current column to feature one of the few technically credentialled climate change deniers left. Dr. Koonin repeated the usual blather about the "Little Ice Age" and etc., which Will dutifully repeated himself. Dr. Koonin is not held in very high regard by the climate change community, and if numbers mean anything, he is far outnumbered by the number of scientists contributing to the IPCC Report --- amounting to "several thousand" --- who reviewed around 14,000 pieces of literature.
It interesting to note that while over the past 20-plus years the IPCC has accumulated tons of evidence for its current conclusions, supported by those 14,000 or so references, Dr. Koonin's arguments sound very much like those made by one Gene Tew in 1998 , under the heading "GLOBAL WARMING/ CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX":
"Man made global warming was invented in 1998. The purpose was an attempt to force the United States to sign the Kyoto Treaty which would have shut down industries in this country which had carbon dioxide emissions above the levels of third world nations and developing countries. It was an attempt to cripple the industrial production of the United States and to "level the playing field ". In spite of the efforts of that great Guru of Global Warming, Al Gore, and the liberal left of the Democratic Party, this treaty has not been ratified to date by the United States. . . .
"Environmental kooks, left wing loons and the hate America crowd use these funds to promote this hoax to the American public. Is it any wonder then that Nancy Pelosi demanded that $400 million dollars of the 'Stimulus Bill' go to Global Warming Research. It's the money that explains why most of our major universities have science degrees devoted to this pseudoscience."
Yes indeed. This quote is from 1998[!]. These folks just don't change, regardless of accumulating evidence. With a few date/name changes, this could easily have been written just the other day.
And then, fourth, according to a New York Times lead for August 14, 2021, "Many Republicans in Congress no longer deny that Earth is heating because of fossil fuel emissions." But don't get too excited. That lead goes on to say:
"[Republican] Members of Congress who long insisted that the climate is changing due to natural cycles have notably adjusted that view, with many now acknowledging the solid science that emissions from burning oil, gas and coal have raised Earth's temperature.
"But their growing acceptance of the reality of climate change has not translated into support for the one strategy that scientists said in a major United Nations report this week is imperative to avert an even more harrowing future: stop burning fossil fuels [emphasis added].
"Instead, Republicans want to spend billions to prepare communities to cope with extreme weather, but are trying to block efforts by Democrats to cut the emissions that are fueling the disasters in the first place."
Now why would they do that? Well, as is VERY well-known (no special insight on this one) the fossil fuel industry is still very profitable, so much so that they are able to make substantial campaign contributions to politicians of both parties (see Joe Manchin) to make sure that it stays that way. Parts of the earth are burning up and/or melting, literally, like the Northwest United States, the Russian Siberian tundra, Greenland (which on a recent day lost enough ice to cover the state of Florida in two inches of water [Gov. DeSantis would absolutely deny this; Greenland should be allowed to lose as much water as it wants to]), the island sized "ice bergs" (as in Rhode Island) that are breaking off from Antarctica, and so on and so forth. But the capitalists of one sort or another in one nation or another who have an interest in maintaining fossil fuel use at some reasonably high level, just keep merrily rolling on. And if they do, eventually capitalism will in effect be committing suicide, taking most of the human species and many others along with it. In 2015 I published a column on this subject at The Greanville Post, a slightly modified version of which I share with you here.
The Suicide of Capitalism
"Suicide" means, literally, killing oneself. Most often, suicide is voluntary. However, by definition, it can be involuntary as well, as for example in accidentally killing oneself while cleaning a loaded handgun (which apparently people do from time-to-time). Capitalism, the world's dominant socio-economic system, is in the process of killing itself. Like the cleaner of a loaded hand-gun, capitalism thinks that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, that whatever it's doing will result in no harmful outcomes, and that anyone who tells it not to do such a thing is a hoaxer of the worst order. Inadvertently killing oneself with a loaded handgun is bad enough. What capitalism is doing of course is far worse. Not only will it kill itself as a system, but it will likely take our species along with many others right along with it.
Most readers of these pages are familiar with the mountain of data dealing with global warming/climate change and its increasingly negative projected outcomes. As the cited article by Justin Gillis says: "Failure to reduce emissions, the group of scientists and other experts found, could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year." [Note: This was in 2015, folks.]
Currently, 2100 has been cited as the "tipping point" year, if no major policy changes in terms of carbon (to say nothing of methane) emissions are undertaken. However, a recent projection by the organization Green Physicists moves the "tipping point" year up to 2050. By then they estimate that: atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will have risen to twice the pre-industrial level; the global average surface temperature of our planet will have increased 2.5 degrees Centigrade [the current projected "tipping point" for irreversible catastrophe is 2.6 Deg. C.]; the temperature rise in the Arctic has been about twice that of the global mean, so that the permafrost has been melting rapidly, with the release of enormous quantities of methane (which adds to the global warming effect of CO2); the Greenland ice sheet will be virtually gone, with a likely resulting sea level rise of more (39"); and so on and so forth. [Note that these estimates have been lowered in the current IPCC Repor t.]
As Naomi Klein has recently documented very well, capitalism is the ultimate cause of global warming/climate change. But why refer to the projected outcome as "suicide?" Well, for example, Karl Marx described capitalism as sowing the seeds of its own destruction. By this he meant that capitalism, dependent upon masses of workers to produce the surplus value upon which capitalist growth depends, will necessarily produce class-consciousness among the workers. They then will eventually organize themselves to seize the means of production from the capitalists and turn the power of those means to the benefit of all. But that's not suicide. That is revolutionary disappearance, at the hands of the working classes. What is happening now is rather different.
Capitalism depends upon the exploitation of natural resources at the highest possible level. And we are, of course, not talking just about fossil fuels. There is a limited amount of natural resources to be found on and in the Earth. (By the way, I just found out that Afghanistan has lots of lithium --- you know, the chemical used in electric batteries, of which we need a very bunch if we are to get out from under the Climate Crisis.) While the burning of fossil fuel is itself creating global warming/climate change, not talked about so much is the unending conversion of the physically limited supply of Earth's natural resources by capitalism, with no thought to conservation, recycling, and what will happen when the sources, from iron ore to copper, to say nothing of the fossil fuels themselves, run out. But capitalism can exist only if the rampant, uncontrolled use of natural resources continues unabated, for that is within the very nature of the system --- the built-in never-ending drive to make profit. But when the natural resources go, so will capitalism and by that time it will be too late to replace it with anything else. And that is what I mean by "the suicide of capitalism."
By its very nature, operating to the greatest degree possible with no thought to anything other than the accumulation of profit, capitalism is leading to this possible outcome. When the critical resources are gone, or at least the supply is reduced to such an extent that their cost makes making profit from their exploitation increasingly difficult, capitalism will die, even without workers' revolution. Indeed, by its very nature of focusing exclusively on profit-making, it will eventually kill itself, as well as taking many humans and many other species along with it. According to a recent report in Nature, 41 percent of amphibians, 26 percent of mammals and 13% of birds are threatened with extinction, if nothing is done about global warming (and do notice the source of that story. Yes, the Catholic Church is changing, before our very eyes.) But the point here is that even without global warming, with no controls on the utilization of natural resources other than fossil fuels, capitalism is essentially killing itself.
And so, what is to be done? There is of course hope. While it may be too late to slow carbon emissions down enough to prevent reaching the "tipping point," as some scientists (quoted above) think, it may very well be possible to develop a series of environmentally safe methods for capturing carbon and methane, shielding the earth from the increasing heat levels, and so on and so forth. It is definitely possible to institute economic planning on a massive scale to conserve and re-use natural resources that will otherwise run out. But that will require the replacement of capitalism with some form of socialism.
What form that system might take and how we will get there are matters for further consideration. But given historical experience and an analysis of how capitalism has dealt with the socialist experiments that have come along so far (see, e.g., The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union), we will not get there spontaneously, we will not get there without the formation of a series of leading parties, around the world. If that series of events does not occur, then indeed capitalism will commit involuntary suicide with disastrous results for ours and many other species. It will indeed vault us into a full-blown "Sixth Extinction."
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Post-script: (from the New York Times Editorial Board, Sunday Review, p. 8, August 15, 2021)
"In June 1988 a NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen, appeared on a very hot day in Washington and told a group of powerful senators that a grim future lay ahead. Carbon emissions, he said, had raised average global temperatures to the highest levels in recorded human history, bringing heat waves, droughts and other disruptions to people's lives. 'The greenhouse effect has been detected,' he said, 'and it is changing our climate now.'
"That same year a collection of scientists assembled by the United Nations - known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - delivered much the same message, warning pointedly of rising seas and threats to biodiversity. Four years later, world leaders meeting in Rio de Janeiro signed a landmark agreement to stabilize 'greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.'
"We knew, three decades ago, about global warming and its consequences. We suspected, even then, that the potentially catastrophic future forecast in the I.P.C.C.'s latest report, released on Monday - a report the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called a 'code red for humanity' - could well come to pass.
"What have we done with that knowledge? Very little, for lots of reasons. Timid leaders, feckless legislatures. Interminable arguments between rich and poor nations over who bears responsibility. Well-financed disinformation campaigns from big polluters like Exxon Mobil. On a purely human level, there's the reluctance of people living worry-free in the here and now to make the investments and sacrifices necessary to protect future generations."