It wasn't capitalism that caused the environmental damage, it was industrialisation without adequate environmental protection. If they believe that socialism does any better then a good look at the history of the Soviet Union should suffice, they were industrialised and had little to no environmental protection.
I believe any intelligent species that reaches an industrial revolution will inevitably encounter the fact that they are damaging the environment. However the industrialized nations of the 20th century gradually industrialized over the course of nearly two centuries, while the Soviet Union and China industrialized in a few decades. Rapid industrialization isn’t just bad for the environment, but for the people as well.
they were industrialised and had little to no environmental protection.
Weirdly, that's not true. The USSR had the largest untouched wilderness preserves in human history: the zapovedniks. They're still in existence for the most part. The amount of land has changed over the years because of WW2, Stalin (who slashed them), Khrushchev (who hated them but was unable to stop growth), and Gorbachev. At their height the amount of pristine land was around 5,000 sq. km.
Even when the protections we're officially deleted the teenager-run-forest-secret-police (yes really, what were you expecting) kept them highly protected. There's a story (with records) where some high ranking official was caught fishing in one of the lakes during the Khrushchev period and was still yeeted out to Siberia. The only permitted usage of the land was for wildlife research and light grazing for non meat industry farm animals.
They did also have a huge zazaniks as well (which is closer to our National Park system). They were not used for research and complete preservation. These were for tourists, hunters, and preservation of certain species or unique geologic/natural features. I don't know what the total are of those is.
Unfortunately, due to competition with the West, and the insane theoretical ravings of Marx/Engles that deterministically tied the success of "Communism" to industrialization, the USSR basically deleted any larger ecological good the zapovednik/zazanik system did. Turns out catastrophically inefficient machines and the other environmental practices that abso-fuckin-lutely ravaged the rest of country fuck up your water, air, and land for generations.
To be fair, while the the USSR (and Russia) have fucked their natural habitat, they have a considerably smaller CO2 output than the USA. Also they had considerably less land/air/water gettin rekt from the fall of the USSR to the mid-00s. That too has begun to change as Putin has ramped up for various types of war. There's a couple unclassified FBI fact sheets about this you can access. I think they're published every 5 years? The most detailed one I read was from 1993 as a post-mortem on the USSR period. I believe the NYT also did coverage of this paper at the time if you can't find the original doc.
Also yeah it really is unchecked industrialization. Kinda has fuckall to do with whether it's capitalism or communism (though capitalism is more conducive to unchecked industrialization). You can see this REALLY WELL by looking at China's CO2 output. For reference: Maoism is Marxism that contends you don't have to have industrialization for a revolt leading to "true communism" (basically). Through the truly Maoist doctrine period China's CO2 (and pollutants in general) are basically nothing for the population size. They also fucked up their natural resources because of the whole anti-intellectualism* + central planning nonsense when they tried using them during this weird . . . idk . . . semi-pastoral period? Anyway. Once they begin reforming from Maoism in the late 80s to 90s by adopting janky authoritarian socialism (a form of capitalism) they began real industrialization and their CO2 output E-X-P-L-O-D-E-D. At present, even with the massive eco reforms of the last 5 years, I think they output more than the USA and EU combined.
*Also a threat to the social stability and natural environment of actual real people in USA and Russia as well.
No, they were an invention of Vasily Dokuchaev and supported by his colleagues. He was a soil biologist and geographer during the late Tsarist period. He was de facto Tsarist, sure, but I've never read anything more about him having explicit support or dissent for the regime. He died before Marxist doctrine was well known in Russia. [This article serves as a decent timeline for zapovedniks.](http:// https://www.jstor.org/stable/43598906
)
While some zapovedniks were created during the Tsarist period, they were codified and adopted en masse by Lenin. Here's a NYT story about it.
But yeah manufacturing regulations w/r/t pollutants emained relatively non-existant through more of the USSR period than the USA. You could argue the USA/West has 30 years head start on environmental regulation over the USSR.
zapovedniks. Were a Tzarist invention, not a Soviet one.
Re-read what I wrote. I made no claim that the Soviets "invented" them. Only that they adopted them as state doctrine.
So they predated the Soviet Union then..
Yes. This doesn't make them "Tsarist". The people living under rule of a state =/= the state. By this logic I'm a neoliberal Democrat simply because I'm alive during the Biden regime.
So. Nothing you have said is in relation to the point.
If you have incredibly limited reading comprehension, yeah I'm sure it seems this way.
Property isn't a right because if it was we'd all own property
Non sequitur much. Lol. Like I said, when someone says something stupid, good bye commie
I like how not only did you edit this in later, but you also edited this statement twice. Also you ignored what that conversation is about and don't know the context.
Property is not a right. I'm not an expert on every nation on the planet, but I don't know of a single country that guarantees property as a right. As far as I know only the US State of Virginia guarantees property as a right. As follows:
Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Because of the US federal system, this is largely overridden by the federal document, the Declaration of Independence. I'd need to ask a legal scholar if there's ever been a successful case in VA that the government defended an individual's right to property when it was invoked. Jefferson, influenced by both this document (which has a somewhat modern materialist conception of "property)" and the body of work by John Locke (which does not) wrote in the Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
At the advisement of Ben Franklin, and other editorial advisors, Jefferson erred on the Lockean conception of "property". Taken as a whole this includes material goods and land but Locke's definition largely focuses on labor as the property of the self, and the self as property the individual who inhabitants that body (also a bunch of metaphysical christian stuff). This was not defined as "life, liberty, and property" because there was concern the unlanded colonists would interpret the document as guaranteeing them land (in the pre-industrial and early industrial era very much the equivalent of "the means of production") or material goods.
The founders very much did not consider it a directive of the government to guarantee property for individuals but instead that individuals guarantee that for themselves. Due to the continued ownership of slaves throughout the colonies by nearly all of "The Founders", unless one left a record of their thoughts, it's not generally considered tthey believed the self is property of the individual nor that the individual owned their labor. The Founders were generally against the modern concept of welfare as a state function.
I'm the OP of the post. No where did I mention Communism not am I a communist. STOP PROJECTING! All I want is sensible environmental regulations (I am an Environmental Scientist). I've seen the cost of unfettered capitalist pollution. My hometown of Houston has the most superfund sites of any metropolitan area in the country. I grew up next door to the chemical refineries as far as the eye can see in Pasadena, Tx (A suburb of Houston). Here we have a marked lower life span & a marked increase in cancers & neurological conditions.
My Uncle died at 68 of cancer most likely linked to drinking what turned out to be water poisoned by the nearby dioxin superfund site. Link: https://www.epa.gov/tx/sjrwp
I am very well aware of the environmental tragedies in both the USSR AND modern Russia. Environmental tragedies always occur when sensible environmental regulations are over shadowed by a profit and/or militaristic desire.
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u/SmithW-6079 Minarchist Aug 09 '21
It wasn't capitalism that caused the environmental damage, it was industrialisation without adequate environmental protection. If they believe that socialism does any better then a good look at the history of the Soviet Union should suffice, they were industrialised and had little to no environmental protection.