Climate Change Isn’t Your Fault. It’s Capitalism’s: Medium

We want climate action now

You’re Not the Problem. The System Is. The Global Economy’s Broken, and Self-Blame Isn’t Going to Fix It.

"Here’s the truth.

Climate change isn’t your fault. It’s capitalism’s fault. 70% of carbon emissions come from 100 companies. Let me translate that.

The world’s giant corporations are effectively turning the skies, oceans, forests, and mountains into cold, hard cash. So much money so fast they literally don’t know what do with it, because there’s nothing left to do with it.

So much inequality has resulted that it’s destabilizing societies like America and Britain by creating classes of new poor. As result, societies don’t have the resources left to fight problems like…climate change. Capitalism is sucking in nature, turning it into insane, needless, pointless profit — and destroying democracy, the planet, and life as we know it on it along the way."

Read the Medium article 

Related:

The heat is on over the climate crisis. Only radical measures will work : The Guardian

Bloomberg Opinion: Big Oil Doesn’t Like EV Subsidies, Just Its Own Giant Subsidy

The lack of a penalty for carbon emissions is the single biggest obstacle to a level playing field.

By

Liam Denning

November 20, 2018

"A far-more efficient method is to put a price on the stuff you want less of and then let capitalism do its thing, pushing consumption away from the undesirables and investment toward innovative alternatives. Indeed, all these letters demand government officials stand back and let the market do its thing — except their version of the market leaves out one essential element. 

Greenhouse gases and the threat they pose are everyone’s problem, but the individual generating them at any given moment doesn’t pay toward dealing with that. Dump your garbage on your neighbor’s lawn and you’ll wind up paying to have it removed and probably a fine, too. Release 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning a gallon of gasoline, and it’s a freebie.

This is an enormous effective subsidy for fossil fuels and makes a mockery of market piety. Using Yale economist and recent Nobel-prize winner William Nordhaus’s $31-per-tonne estimate of the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion."

Read complete Bloomberg Opinion article

Roger Hollander Blog 2016 Allegation: 'Criminal Exxon: Climate Change Denial'

Roger’s note: Marx said that capitalism isn’t viable because it is unable to sustain a livable society.  Nothing is more true today.  The political leaders of the nations of the world got together in Paris and outlined a plan to halt climate change.  It was not the most ambitious plan, but even that plan has zero chance of implementation.  BIG OIL simply won’t allow it.  Whether it be dictators or democratically elected leaders, they are powerless to save the planet because they do not call the shots.





Exxon and other oil companies pay the same PR firms and right wing front groups that helped tobacco companies lie about the risks of smoking.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporting shows that Exxon has known that burning oil and gas causes catastrophic climate change as far back as 1977.

But by the 1990s, Exxon had instead started funding climate disinformation at a massive scale.






All designed to spread confusion about the urgency of climate change and keep their profits high.




Three states (and counting) are investigating Exxon for misleading shareholders about the risks of climate change.
So now Exxon acknowledges human-caused climate change and even claims to support a carbon tax.”






But in reality, Exxon is quietly blocking progress. The company remains a major funder of denial-promoting groups, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

 
ALEC opposes a carbon tax and misinforms state lawmakers about climate change. But without Exxon’s funding, ALEC would lose influence fast.





Producing carbon emissions is dangerous. But Exxon is producing something else just as dangerous: climate change denial.

Denial is slowing our transition to cleaner energy and harming vulnerable communities.

Exxon continues to spend $27 million a year to spread denial and block climate action.

All eyes will be on Exxon at its annual shareholder meeting in Dallas on May 25, so we need to act fast.

Tell Exxon to come clean and leave the denial-promoting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).


Reblogged from

roger hollander

News and Opinion

Criminal Exxon: Climate Change Denial May 24, 2016

Posted by rogerhollander in Energy, Environment, Uncategorized.
Tags: alec, carbon tax, climate change, climate science, environment, exxon, fossil fuel, pollution
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