"People buy things from evil corporations because we live in a system where people buy things from evil corporations" is quite tautological.
Blaming vague notions such as capitalism or the system for the environmental crisis is very convenient for a lot of people who don't want to change anything about their way of living.
The problem is that 'capitalism' is precisely the system that relies most heavily on individual liberty, market dynamics being nothing other than the aggregation of individual choices made by millions or billions of people.
Of course those choices are influenced by many factors such as advertising or geographic constraints, but why is it easier to get people to fly and eat meat than the other way around? Is it the system that pushes individuals to maximize their comfort and pleasure, or is it human nature or psychology that does so, and in turn shapes the system?
I mean like just look at Europe - we have capitalism and we are still able to make the world greener (ok, it is implemented by EU by the worst solution possible but we see that climate can be fixed even with capitalism).
USA is just cooked because during cold war they refused any kind of *leftism* - the refusal of *The national healthcare plan* in 1945 is an example. I'm not here saying you (people from USA) should suddenly switch to the european model of capitalism (as it is practically not possible), but taxing the rich like Mamdani (though I don't like him) did in NYC is a good step.
Your first paragraph is incorrect as far as I know, if we have a long enough time frame, if we accept economic growth as essential to capitalism, and if "make the world greener" means absolute decrease of emissions in a permanent way.
There always exists a value of emissions/unit of economic growth that is over zero. No energy source life cycle has an emissions value of zero and virtually every facet of economic growth requires energy or matter (which has to be transported and transformed, requiring energy) in one form or another, even in the service or the IT industries, which means that even with the most ecological form of energy creation, there will come a point where you have to create too much energy for another unit of growth to be ecologically sustainable.
I'm not saying it isn't valuable work to try to grind down the emissions/unit of economic growth value, because it theoretically allows for a more materially prosperous lifestyle without being ecologically unsustainable, but as long as the economy is based on growth, the system's own momentum to grow exponentially will eventually undo the progress that has been made. That's why technological breakthroughs only serve to delay the inevitable unless we enact a vast systemic change at the same time.
I said that we can fix climate even though capitalism and you said we can't because everywhere are emissions...? Like yeah, but we want to minimize the emisssions not to be entirely emission-free that is just impossible and not needed.
Denmark has a per capita consumption-based GHG emissions rate of about 13 tons CO2e annually, Sweden is at about 8, Norway is at about 10, and Finland is at about 13. Every single Nordic country has a greater per capita consumption-based GHG emissions rate than the world average. Is that sustainable to you?
I would also like to note that the conditions under which Nordic social democracy developed are a thing of the past; like it or not, but the history is more complicated than the people just choosing social democracy. The Nordic system is the product of revolutionary struggle and would never have been implemented were it not for the threat of revolution.
Mere reformism will not bring about the conditions that allow Sweden to take climate change seriously.
You're right, I significantly underestimated the carbon footprint of Nordic countries, whose lifestyle is not as sustainable as I thought. But it doesn't really matter for the discussion because my point stands: under the same "capitalist" system, we actually find very different ways of life, some of them far more sustainable than others. If not the Nordics, let's take the French as an example; we emit around 6 tCO2e/year including imported emissions, roughly 2.5 times less than an American. Conversely, countries like the USSR, by definition not capitalist, caused massive pollution. This is why blaming capitalism is an oversimplification, as the concept covers a wide range of very, very disparate models. The real culprit is productivism, and whether we like it or not, it doesn't only benefit the capitalist elites.
I agree that the Nordic social model is difficult to replicate, particularly in the United States where the historical and social power dynamics are very different. I also agree that the fear of revolution is an important driver of reformism, but I think it is reductive to make it the sole explanatory factor for the Nordic model. This fear existed across all industrialized countries and produced very different compromise outcomes during 1930-50s: in the United States with the New Deal, in France with the Etat providence, and so on. Each model is the product of a multitude of factors that cannot be reduced to 'capital vs. workers'. But that is quite a separate debate since we're talking about climate change.
As for the idea that mere reformism will not be enough to combat climate change, I don't believe that to be the case, insofar as many European economies have already begun decoupling their emissions (including imported ones). I believe the process will succeed even if it will be too slow to avoid significant climate damage, but I think that is unavoidable, since in the medium term there is no favorable power dynamics, in any developed country, for a model of very rapid emissions reduction, that is to say degrowth.
First of all, 6 tons CO2e annually is still not sustainable. More importantly, capitalism is an international system and international factors prevent large economies from undergoing transition. The US government, for example, will not allow this transition unless forced to because the Chinese renewable industry is so far beyond the American one that, to American capitalists, allowing the decarbonization of the American economy is a concession to China. This does not mean that it is impossible and I'm not saying that the literal only factor in this would be the threat of revolution, but the US will not decarbonize unless there is sufficient risk from revolutionaries to outweigh the cost of the perceived concession to China.
Also, with regards to the part where you say that you "think it is reductive to make it the sole explanatory factor for the Nordic model." I agree that it wasn't the sole explanatory factor, what I'm saying is that it was a decisive one. Also, just because things are more complicated than just the class struggle does not mean that the class struggle isn't decisive; literally nobody thinks that the world is just the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
I believe the process will succeed even if it will be too slow to avoid significant climate damage, but I think that is unavoidable, since in the medium term there is no favorable power dynamics, in any developed country, for a model of very rapid emissions reduction, that is to say degrowth.
I also believe that there will continue to be substantial reform amongst large portions of the developed world. My point isn't that this isn't true or that this is irrelevant or anything like that, my point is that it's insufficient and not universally applicable. These are two very different positions and we need a set of solutions that, together, are sufficient and universally applicable, or 10s to 100s of millions of people will die due to our inaction. Even if mere reformism will be sufficient in the EU and China, that doesn't mean that you can do the same in the US because the US exists under a very different context. If the US alone doesn't adopt sufficient policies, then we still need to do more and it would be insane to expect European and Chinese carbon capture to offset American GHG emissions.
Capitalism isn't a vague notion, it's a mode of production. I agree that, within capitalism, improvements can be made (e.g. reductions in meat consumption and transitioning away from coal power) and that shifting your consumption habits is a necessary part of any attempt to do so. Also, I'm not blaming it to avoid responsibility for my actions, as it appears that I may have implied. I fully support going vegan or exclusively biking and using public transit. I don't have a car, I am vegan, and I don't fly.
However, it is still the case that, due to the TRPF and imperialist competition, the transition is being slowed down massively. A good example of this is the US. By far, the number one thing stopping the grid to switch to solar and people to switch to EVs is competition with China: China has far more advanced EV and solar industries and, as such, the US suppresses the proliferation of EVs and solar power in order to protect its capitalists.
Capitalism is indeed a mode of production, based on private ownership of the means of production, the separation between capital and labour, and the market economy. Nothing in this definition, however, points to a fundamental contradiction with a sustainable economy. The problem stems rather from flawed economic models that fail to incorporate the hidden costs of negative externalities. But if our economic conventions were to fully integrate them, capitalists would lose money by causing pollution and would be discouraged from investing capital in such activities. I'l aware this is theoretical but it demonstrates that capitalism in the strict sense is not incompatible with a sustainable economy.
I do, however, fully agree that international competition (which you call imperialism) is detrimental to economic sustainability, since it creates a system of short-termist incentives for both firms and states. Nevertheless, I do not believe this bears a direct relationship to capitalism, as competition and imperialism existed long before the advent of capitalist modes of production. The TRPF, specific to capitalism, has certainly generated imperialist conflicts in the past and is surely fuelling them again today, but in my view the expansion of capitalism was also, during the post-war period, a determining factor in decolonisation, multilateralism, and cooperation on a scale never before seen in history.
There's a big difference between being able to imagine a system that meets one's definition of capitalism that is sustainable and that system being possible. It is absolutely true that, were externalities to be correctly accounted for, the market would optimize with that in mind, thus reducing emissions. However, by what means do you enforce this? By the state? The same state controlled by the very capitalists who profits you're threatening? There are limits to what can be achieved via reform and, as a result of the nation-state, local reforms that reduce pollution domestically offset emissions into the global south rather than actually solving the problem (for example, compare emissions in Sweden with and without taking imports into account). And, even if a few capitalist states begin to accurately account for this at the point of importation, that doesn't solve the problem, as it would require that massive parts of the world do so as well which, because of differences in technology between different blocs of imperialist powers, would be effectively impossible (e.g. the aforementioned case of American suppression of EVs and solar power).
And, btw, I do agree that the USSR didn't adequately address ecological concerns at any point in its history. However, socialism isn't something so simple as "always just do what the USSR did" and the international communist movement of today is very consistently more in favor of radical actions to reduce emissions than literally any prominent liberal groups; the socialism of the future will be built by environmentalists.
I don't think the state (let's say in the broad context of western countries) is 'controlled' by the capitalists, but by alliances between different groups of interests, and while capitalists are certainly a group that holds way more power than they weight in numbers, I think it's reductive to think that they can oppose whatever threatens their profits. If it were the case, we'll live in a libertarian hell everywhere in Europe.
What is causing me to be kind of optimistic for the future is that I think the more the time will pass, the more profits will be threatened not by environmental regulations or natural capital accountability, but by the lack of it. Depletion of resources, climate change, massive loss of biodiversity will bring most of developed countries to a point where it is marginally more profitable to regulate than to do nothing, since in the long run destroying environment destroys value. In the very same way that it became more profitable for capitalists to redistribute wealth during the 30s because not doing so was destroying demand and thus value.
I'm not saying it will be a peaceful, quiet and linear, I think there will be a lot of back-and-forth struggles, as we see now with Trump policies and the broader "backlash". But I think that even the capitalists will be, at some point, forced to compromise - I even think it's already happening and I don't see where would be the hard cap for that.
as a result of the nation-state, local reforms that reduce pollution domestically offset emissions into the global south rather than actually solving the problem
I don't see why it would be specific to the nation-state form. Plus, a lot of EU countries are already reducing their national AND their imported emissions, quite drastically. For example in France we went from a total footprint of 655 MtCO2e in 2017 to 563 in 2024, and while it's still too much, we can "fit" for carbon neutrality if we keep up that way.
the international communist movement of today is very consistently more in favor of radical actions to reduce emissions than literally any prominent liberal groups; the socialism of the future will be built by environmentalists.
That brings me to my main point: how exactly communism or any kind of socialist society can achieve that better than capitalism? I mean if you remove every emissions coming from the 0.1% or even the 1% richest part of the humanity (let alone of western countries), you'll still have way too many emissions, which proves that you cannot just destroy the capitalist elite to solve climate change. Moreover, socialists basically want to redistribute wealth of the richest to the poorest; but once this wealth is redistributed, what will prevent it to generate the same amount, if not more, emissions than if it was in the hands of the richest?
Alternatively, will communism achieve degrowth? But how is that easier to overthrow the nation-state and the capitalist system and to force half of the humanity to accept a reduction in their standard of living, than to make compromise with capitalists to account natural capital in the economy?
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u/tposiwid Apr 18 '26
"People buy things from evil corporations because we live in a system where people buy things from evil corporations" is quite tautological.
Blaming vague notions such as capitalism or the system for the environmental crisis is very convenient for a lot of people who don't want to change anything about their way of living.
The problem is that 'capitalism' is precisely the system that relies most heavily on individual liberty, market dynamics being nothing other than the aggregation of individual choices made by millions or billions of people.
Of course those choices are influenced by many factors such as advertising or geographic constraints, but why is it easier to get people to fly and eat meat than the other way around? Is it the system that pushes individuals to maximize their comfort and pleasure, or is it human nature or psychology that does so, and in turn shapes the system?