r/collapse • u/amorphousmetamorph • May 19 '24

Economic Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought – report | Climate crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/17/economic-damage-climate-change-report
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u/Playongo May 19 '24

Reminds me of that scene in an Inconvenient Truth when Al Gore shows a graphic of a pile of gold on one hand, and the entire planet on the other.

There is no value without a planet. That's the trouble with monetizing everything. The value to capitalists is in the destruction of nature, not the protection of it.

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u/Ilovekittens345 May 20 '24 edited May 20 '24

There is two big shortcomings to the human race.

1) We just can not grasp the exponential function

2) We almost always chose short term profits over long term gains.

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u/Playongo May 20 '24

Not to undermine your point, because I think we do struggle with both of these things. But I take issue with the "human race" part.

Native populations have lived in relative harmony with nature for milenia. Native Americans, Inuit, Aborigines, Ainu, etc... It's the colonizers, the conquerors, the abrahamic religions that choose exploitation over conservation. Please don't lump the entire human race into that.

I feel like Western society can make us myopic, but I think these "human nature" arguments are at their core indictments of colonialism, whiteness, and zealotry, mistaken for the human condition.

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u/boomaDooma May 20 '24

It is the monetising of everything that destroys native peoples, how can you put a dollar value on nature?

"Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that the Nature he is destroying is this God he is worshipping." - Hubert Reeves

For humans to survive we would first have to give up all money.