We probably will, eventually

My old boss told me one time (I’m translating from corporate speak) that it’s 100% totally okay to personally inflict any amount of environmental damage that benefits us in the short term, because the solutions to climate change are on the way. Like it’s a totally forgone conclusion that the bright minds working on these problems will solve them. Always have, always will.

You and I and every sane person agrees minimizing the damage is best either way. It just reminded me of that convo lol. Bro was using the “confidence in human ingenuity” as a blank check excuse to actively cause the damage that will need to be undone. Absolutely insufferable. If it were 100% confirmed there were no way for us to survive what’s coming he’d still run the business the same way just with a different convenient excuse

Education and quality of life improvements lower birth-rates. We have enough resources and the logistical means to ensure all peoples have access to high quality of life. We choose to deny this based on a capitalist profit seeking model, where we over allocate resources to the most wealthy and strip them from the least.

Think about how much shit is wasted on the daily, and then think about if we just didn't do that. Tons of shit nobody wants is manufactured and destined for landfills for no reason other than to make a few billionaires some pocket change. Now think about all the plastic fucking packaging.

We could be doing shit in a sustainable manner. But no, capitalism.

It's the deliberate choice to use processes over more sustainable options, like using gas and coal instead of cleaner solutions like nuclear. Other examples would be outsourcing processes that we could do cleanly to the 3rd world because it's cheaper.

Doesn't matter. Both the first argument and yours presuppose the internal value of bio diversity detached from humanity, which is weird.

Nature is valuable insofar we can coexist with it. If climate change were driven by the factors independent of our actions, our collective goal would have been to defend humanity and not LDAR.

I cannot prove it, but vibes are that this sentiment is coming from years and years of anti climate action propaganda.

Yes, but if we stop capitalism the population will likely maintain itself at a reasonable level. The only reason we have as many people as we do now is thanks to government pressure to reproduce as much as possible, restricted access to family planning techniques, and rape culture.

Some exploitation is necessary, in the same way a bison exploits the grass.

But different economic systems can generate vastly different levels of environmental destruction. For example, our system encourages planned obsolescence, fast fashion, and overall disposable goods. There are countless materials we don't recycle simply because it's not profitable to do so. You can build a system on a more circular economy, where new raw materials are only harvested if recycling can't provide.

Capitalism and communism both need to same resources, they’re just distributed different.

I'm really not convinced by this. I'm not going to try and make an argument for communism. But the idea the amount of consumption under capitalism would be the same as under alternative economic systems is just absurd. The amount of waste created by planned obsolescence, fashion (fast and otherwise), consumption from status anxiety, the things people buy to cope with long working weeks and commutes. In addition to this the extra damage caused by the billionaires and mega rich.

We would still need access to the same types of resources under alternative economic systems. But there is so much waste created by things which are exclusive to capitalism.

Humans have existed for 300,000 years. It is only in the last few hundred that we have decided on this route. It is not human nature to consume and reproduce more than a ecological niche can support us and many peoples across the world live in balance with their ecosystems before Europeans invaded them.

Capitalism started ~500 years ago in Europe. It did not come from humanity as a whole, yet you would condemn everyone on Earth to die because of that?

How about instead of this childish take on reality, we realise that it's a system that can easily be dismantled and we don't have to kill 8 billion people.

People are still saying this shit in here in the comments. We also saw it said a fuckton during Covid. It's literally one of the most cliche and common eco-fash talking points.

As a vegetarian I feel like this is purity testing. It's easy for me to not eat meat but some of them seem really weirdly attached to it.

Unilateral sacrifices are fine when it's easy, but a lot has to change and it can exhaust you. If they've only got the mental energy for one, then I'll accept their help with systemic change. Even a slightly better economy would internalize the cost of eating meat.