prioritizes short term gains and endless growth over sustainability
Who does that sound like? Do you even hear yourself?
Comment on You've gotta ask yourself, "What's the point?"
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 3 days ago
People who say this are full of shit.
People blaming capitalism are just distracting from the real issue, which is having not having a genuine culture of sustainability. India, for example, is a capitalist country but it has growing forests and wildlife unlike most of the world. Their conversation efforts are second to none. On the flip side, you have a country like Brazil, which is destroying its vast forests and wildlife for short terms profits driven by pure greed. The difference between the two? A culture of sustainability.
Changing capitalism is not going to change this. For example, we’ve already seen how Marxist economic systems functioned and they’re an even bigger ecological disaster. The Soviet Union literally wiped out the Aral sea for cotton farming. If capitalism was the root issue then the Soviet Union would’ve been a marvel for sustainability, but they weren’t. That’s because Russian culture prioritizes short term gains and endless growth over sustainability like say for example, Finnish culture.
It sounds less sexy but that’s the real problem. If the general population doesn’t believe in sustainability then nothing can ever change. Things like pollution, deforestation, global warming, desertification, water scarcity, overfishing, and so on will continue to get ignored and sidelined in favor convenient short term wins like slightly cheaper gas, political quotas, and growth charts.
August27th@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 3 days ago
These are not exclusive to capitalism is the whole point that I made. The Soviet Union and China (under Mao at least) both were Marxist and heavily wrecked the environment for the same things, short term gains and endless growth. They both set out to meet short term political quotas and goals by any means even if it meant ravaging the environment. They had no intention of slowing down because they need to constantly chase growth in order to chase unrealistic ideological goals.
shartgargle@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
The meme didn’t attack capitalism. It attacked a thought process. Then you gave an answer that didn’t address the problem. Didn’t even try.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 days ago
What fucking thought process? The entire point is to blame all of societies problems on our economic system, aka capitalism. My critique is that the notion that you blaming all of our environmental problems on the economic system as a blanket statement scapegoat is incredibly lazy and ignorant. Not only does it ignore important context, it also ignores other factors that contribute to the problems we’re having. If you can’t comprehend that from what I said then that’s on you.
SectoidLexi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
The fuck are you on about? India has massive issues with pollution from industrial manufacturing that has led to incredibly high rates of illness and death in its major cities. Capitalist countries will have environmentalist projects as a means to greenwash its image. That’s all.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s still a developing country, but they exceed in areas where others fail. Their wildlife conservation efforts really are praiseworthy. The point isn’t that India is the gold standard of environmentalism but that they excel in certain aspects of it where other countries fail despite sharing the same economic system. This discrepancy can’t be explained by economic system alone, there are clearly other factors in play like politics, culture, geography, and so on.
How is it greenwashing when these projects address real issues and produce real results? That sounds like an incredibly fragile cope to help justify the extremely lazy notion that capitalism is inherently bad and is at fault for everything wrong with the world.