Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Double checked the rules and it doesn’t look like I’m violating any, but please point me in the right direction if there’s a better place for my questions. I genuinely am unclear and want to learn.
In this context, what are eco-facsists? And then how does that and Malthusian Population Theory inherently relate to Capitalism?
When I imagine Malthusian Population issues, I normally think of it as a left-wing / anticapitalist talking point. Assuming I’m missing the mark on that, what’s the Socialist proposed solution and/or explanation of why that’s not an issue? (Racked my brain for a better wording for that last sentence, but couldn’t think of one on the fly. Please pardon my ignorance if there’s a different phrasing I should have used).
Edit: wanna say thanks for letting a foreigner in a foreigner land come and pick at some of the thinking of the community. I appreciate the civil discussion and sources being pitched towards me.
The current consumption patterns of humans, especially in the first world, are unsustainable in regards to meat, travel via cars, home sizes for heating and cooling, etc.
Any reduction in that consumption will be extremely unpopular and thus politically impossible under any democratic regime, whether that regime be under capitalism or communism.
Therefore to achieve sustainability and save the planet and countless human lives we will need a top down authoritarian government to force the populace into sustainability similar to how fascists would force there populace to war despite its inherent unpopularity.
The liberal take on the ecosystem is that the carbon footprint of individuals is too high, and therefore we must as INDIVIDUALS all choose to use less carbon of our own free will. And as liberals see that the individual will not choose to do that, instead of changing our entire system to something better that would improve the environmental impact en mass, they’d prefer that we keep capitalism, even if that means large parts of the global population must suffer and die. Thats what hes talking about here.
I feel like there’s also a similar kind of perspective that is widely normalized in these kinds of discussions that boils down to simultaneously blaming everyone on an individual level and being defeatist about ever solving it. Specifically, I’m talking about when people say things like:
Oh, we destroyed the rain forests / polluted the environment / strip mined 3rd world countries / ruined space with our junk / killed the coral reefs / etc
No, we the working class didn’t do that. Humanity as a whole didn’t do that. The owner class did all of that to feed their addictions to wealth and power under capitalism. We the working class by and large criticized all of those things whenever we happened to have enough agency to consider it.
we the working class by and large criticized all of those things whenever they happened
I don’t recall working class at large protesting car centric infrastructure and factory farming. Some niche groups did but by and large a functioning highway system with free parking everywhere and cheap meat have been very popular with the working class.
I agree we need to liquidate the capitalist class but not everything can be blamed on them. If we had socialism tomorrow we’d still need to deal with the fundamental issue of the unsustainability of the consumption based lifestyles that most people in the first world of become accustomed to and will not give up easily.
The very fact that you’re getting downvoted here proves your point. Most working people love their cars and cheap meat and it offends them to suggest it’s a net negative on society.
Allowing private corporate interests to guide the health of the planet to ruin for individual profit, and controlling world governments to do so at the behest of the people would be a very fascist thing to do, regardless of what the definition of fascism you personally think is.
See and that feels like baby steps towards some flavor of eco authoritarianism (which I suppose I may be conflating with eco-fascism; to me, those both seem bad and in comparable measures).
You seem to be proposing that there is a system (ecologic + economic) that allows for humans to live sustainably at our current-ish population while being mostly free to live their lives with their communities as they see fit and at (at least) a modest level of prosperity.
If there is such a system that doesn’t lean into authoritarianism, I’m unfamiliar with it.
I think it will be difficult to ensure all three of those points (current population + non-authoritarian government + modest living conditions). While I agree Capitalism and Liberalism aren’t doing good on maintaining those three point (gods, are they doing so bad on those three points), I’m unclear what the Leftist suggestions are to fix them.
If you/others here have points that could fill in my gaps of understanding, be interested to hear them. (I worry I’m going to be taken as a Liberal infiltrator, but I feel I know little of the more concrete aspects of Leftist politics and am trying to learn).
For example, the government makes a top down decision to heavily invest in cheap or entirely free public transport, invest heavily in cycling infrastructure, ensures urban planning means that (where possible) you’re never more than a short bicycle ride away from a supermarket (so called 5 minute cities), does its best to ensure it’s affordable to live near your work, bans cars from city centres (with obvious exceptions), increases taxation on fuel, and increases taxation on new vehicles.
Perfectly feasible, because it’s been done in plenty of countries and cities. Vastly better for the environment and much more efficient too, because the population isn’t wasting so much time and money driving from point A to B. People are invariably much happier, because they get more exercise, waste less of their lives in traffic, aren’t wasting money on car ownership, and suffer less from the effects of air and noise pollution. Unsurprisingly, once instituted this kind of thing invariably enjoys majority democratic support.
The polar opposite of the US, where the car industry had and still has a disproportionate influence on politics, and very unpopular there in large part because of propaganda, which has given Americans the illusion of choice; they have been invariably been robbed of the choice to live near their work or spend less time in traffic, but instead get to choose which overpriced car they are forced to buy due to corporate influenced government rule.
I’m tired, but you get the idea.
It’s also important to realise, that a lot of these kinds of policies, aren’t actually unpopular when they’re done well. People like walking, cycling, breathing fresh air, loads of trees, nature, etc. It’s a bit of a joke that Americans return home from their holiday in Europe, feeling healthier and having lost weight. Not being stuck in your car all day is good for you.
Largely agree with what you’re saying. I do strongly wish US mass transit didn’t make me feel like I needed a shower the moment I stepped off it (which has been my experience with state run rail systems).
But I’d don’t see the policy changes you lay out as inherently opposed to a liberal state. Yeah, its less capitalist than the current (US) system, but it seems those are talking points and policies often pushed by the American left/Democratic Party (and if I understand correctly that’s typically what’s referred to as the Liberals by communities like this).
But in practice supposedly liberal states’ governments often become captured by corporate interests or the idea that everything has to make a profit, so much so that it’s impossible to make sensible (and once realised popular) decisions on public transport and the like.
Just look at relatively progressive Germany, where the car industry’s influence on governments on both sides of the aisle has hindered investment in public transport and cycle infrastructure.
Or look at a map of UK railways before and after the Beeching cuts. Crucial train lines were destroyed, often those connecting mayor cities, because railway profits were deemed more important than the public good. The remaining lines and infrastructure are to this day overstretched and over capacity, because a government in the 60s believed a little too much in the free market, and this has caused lasting damage to the economy and housing affordability.
There was a lot wrong with the USSR and eastern bloc, and their environmental record was often deplorable, but it’s no coincidence that the one of the things they did often do right is cheap and good public transport.
US mass transit didn’t make me feel like I needed a shower the moment I stepped off it (which has been my experience with state run rail systems).
They’re often dirty, because they’re invariably too beholden to the profit motive, so don’t hire enough cleaners or pay them enough given their crucial role in preventing disease.
Bit of a tangent, but America’s obsession with airconditioning is also a huge problem.
Bed bugs and their eggs die at temperatures higher than 45°C (110F?) and don’t do well at anything other than room temperature. If you don’t have AC on public transport or in your house, bed bugs aren’t nearly as big an issue. Just let it get hot/cold. Or as regular maintenance pop on the heating for a few hours during the hottest day of the year, while you spend the day at the beach.
Another reason why as someone who worked in the industry, I’m opposed to over insulating homes, but that’s another discussion.
An extremely narrow cohort of society controls the corporations that determine our fate. It plunders the earth for profit, regardless of the consequences.
A sustainable system is one in which those who make a decision are the same as those affected.
Such is the complete opposite of authoritarianism. The planet will be saved when no one any longer benefits from its ongoing destruction.
You do sound like a liberal infiltrator. It in the off chance you aren’t and actually want to understand these things, unfortunately you generally have to do the hard work of actually reading books about them. On this topic specifically I would highly recommend Climate Change as a Class War by Matt Huber. There was a good Ted Talk that summarized the ideas behind this I saw years ago but I can’t find it.
Also baby steps to ecofascism? I cannot begin to imagine what this means. The ecosystem and how we deal with it has been highjacked by weapons manufacturers and energy companies and we are all told that you’d have to give up money and comforts and all kinds of austerity has been forced down our throats which is just simply not true. I cant remember if it was 70 percent or so of climate change variables were from military ventures alone, I know it was over 50 though. And a significant portion of the rest of it is just from non-military airplane fuel. I don’t know about you but MOST people could cut those things out of their lives almost entirely and not notice. Almost every climate change agitator can be fixed WHILE INCREASING THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. But under a capitalist society that is not the goal. The goal is infinite growth through profit maximization and concentration of capital. That goal is literally antithetical to environmental protection AND improvement in proletariat quality of life. They literally cannot coexist on their own.
Thanks for the reading suggestion. I’ve a feeling I’m not going to agree with the conclusion of the book, but I’ll take a look at it and see what I see.
If you turn up the source on the military ventures = worsening climate change variables, I’d love to read about that.
Also #BigAgree with aviation being a major contributor to climate change. Like, of all the things, that is the one I hear about ad consistently contributing a surprising amount. I would like to see domestic air travel largely replaced by rail (from US, for context).
I was around someone with this same hot take, who called Sir David Attenborough an Eco-fascist for acknowledging that the endless destruction of wild habitat at the hands of humans expanding their own habitats and resource extraction, was responsible for the beginnings of a mass extinction event for wildlife.
I’ll say it loud and proud. Industrialism is not natural. Industrialism is the only way we can support a population of 8 billion humans, the only thing that allowed them to exist in the first place. Industrialism is inherently destructive and exploitative.
Tankie dweebs seem to think that if we just give everyone an equal cut, that we would suddenly have a utopia, that we would somehow bring back the massive swaths of insect populations we’ve decimated, that we could magically make degraded land arable again. Nah.
Industrial civilization isn’t infinite. It has a start and an end. When it ends, so will most of us. Recognizing this doesn’t make one an “eco fascist”
What makes someone an eco fascist is if they want to genocide populations they deem undesirable for ecological purposes. Pretty simple.
Industrialism is inherently destructive and exploitative.
Sure, but we’ve destroyed and exploited enough to sustain eight billion people (and, given the insane amounts of food waste in the first world, even more than that). We’ve already cut down enough forests, taken over enough natural habitats, emitted enough greenhouse gases and generally been enough of a cancer already, so we don’t need to do more of that to survive. The reason forests are still being cut down and CO2 is still being emitted isn’t because industrial civilization requires it, but because capitalism requires it. Brazil isn’t cutting down the Amazon rainforest because their life depends on it, but because rich people’s yacht money depends on it. Removing that incentive to destroy the environment even more would do a lot to protect the ecosystem. That, not the strawman you painted, is the intersection with socialism.
The reason forests are still being cut down and CO2 is still being emitted isn’t because industrial civilization requires it, but because capitalism requires it.
Weird to pin a general economic issue on capitalism when it’s more of a general issue with economic growth as history corroborates.
Production functions—the dependence on factors of production including natural resources to produce output—work the same regardless of economic system: more is needed to produce more.
Central planning economies can be as or more destructive than the more capitalist ones: type of economy seems to have little bearing there.
The USSR aggressively industrialized & would consistently pursue economic growth (to raise standards of living).
It comes up in the Soviet constitution of 1977:
labor, free from exploitation, as the source of growth
continuous improvement of their living standards (art. 39)
Total emissions in the USSR in 1988 were about 79% of the US total. Considering that the Soviet GNP was only some 54% of that of the USA, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the USA per unit of GNP.
unnecessary hindrance to economic development and industrialization
and
By the 1990s, 40% of Russia’s territory began demonstrating symptoms of significant ecological stress, largely due to a diverse number of environmental issues, including deforestation, energy irresponsibility, pollution, and nuclear waste.
And this generously glosses over the extent of water contamination, hazardous dumping of toxic & nuclear waste into oceans, etc.
The dependence on natural resources, capacity for environmental destruction, and demand for economic growth are not particular to any type of economy: they’re general.
Wherever an economy recklessly grows without environmental protections, the environment is ruined.
So if we all got to divvy up the wealth of the billionaires equally, and suddenly all of us had a moderate but sustaining amount of wealth, we’d give up on cars? Electricity? Beef? Because having those things, as I like to say, your “hot showers and cold ice cream” is what is destroying this world’s habitability. It’s not just the billionaires but our demand for the shit they sell us, regardless of the economic paradigm that delivers it.
Let’s say the first world standard of living downgraded just a bit, and the third world standard of living was elevated to first world standards overnight, do you think our demands of the planets resources would diminish? I don’t think it would. It would explode, as people who have lived on very little would want to eat as well as we have all these years. As the world wants more beef, the rainforest gets the axe so ranchers can graze their cattle on its ashes. Apply this to literally every other consumer good and municipal service.
I want to see the billionaire robber barons dethroned as bad as you do, but it won’t fix the underlying problem of civilization.
we’d give up on cars? Electricity? Beef? Because having those things, as I like to say, your “hot showers and cold ice cream” is what is destroying this world’s habitability. It’s not just the billionaires but our demand for the shit they sell us, regardless of the economic paradigm that delivers it.
Probably not, but we could get that stuff sustainably. I get what you’re saying, and until a couple decades ago this would’ve been 100% true, but clean energy—the thing we need for our hot showers and cold ice cream—is essentially a solved problem, and it’s being solved better and better every day as more advancements are made. Beef and other environmentally destructive consumer products are harder to fix, but it’s at least in theory possible to make them more efficiently, eliminate them or replace them with cleaner alternatives. There’s a certain amount of destruction that’s hard or impossible to eliminate, but multiple times that happens because someone somewhere doesn’t want to spend money doing things sustainably (and, more broadly, because the system selects for people who don’t do things sustainably). It’s less about everyone having a sustainable amount of wealth and more about the people most invested in the status quo (rich stakeholders) being removed from power; imagine the progress that could’ve been made towards net zero if not for pro-oil lobbying and misinformation for example.
s the world wants more beef, the rainforest gets the axe so ranchers can graze their cattle on its ashes.
Alternatively, the world can only ask for more beef because there’s rainforest to cut down. If an external force prevents that from happening, the people who want more beef (and the people who already get a lot of beef) will adapt. Yes, that will make beef less available and therefore more expensive, but then it can be replaced with more sustainable alternatives. First world eating habits don’t necessarily need to be kept around in this hypothetical, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to provide everyone with decent quality food; that food will just need to include more vegetables and legumes and less meat.
Let’s say the first world standard of living downgraded just a bit, and the third world standard of living was elevated to first world standards overnight, do you think our demands of the planets resources would diminish?
If this elevation took place under current economic, absolutely not. If, say, concurrently every vehicle and factory was replaced with an alternative based on clean energy, then with small modifications (say, more vegan food and less meat) it’s not impossible; even poor countries consume a lot of energy in 2025, and because they don’t have the resources to buy, say, solar panels most of it comes from oil instead. It’s inefficiencies like these that could and should be reallocated to sustaining the 10 billion people the world population is projected to peak at, but under capitalism it’s not profitable for that to happen so it doesn’t.
Now, go out into the corners of the internet and ask the question “how many barrels of oil does it take to build a single wind turbine”. Then do nuclear power plants. How about just one tire?
You’d be pretty shocked to find that the only thing that has supported the meteoric rise of our population has been plentiful and cheap petroleum. Renewables can slow things down in the short term, and they certainly make people feel better about themselves, but there is no replacement for oil. All of the renewables are made of oil. Shit loads of it.
Should have read more of the thread I spawned before responding to your other comments.
So to me, it seems like the real solution is to begin interplanetary colonization.
That doesn’t fix the problems on Earth, and I don’t want to pretend it does. I also want to be clear that the way that Musk and Bezos seem to envision interplanetary expansion is…not desirable.
But to me, beginning the Terraforming of Mars is a crucial step in human progress. There’s no ecology or biosphere for humans to ruin, but if we can establish a foothold for humans to live there, it let’s off the steam valve of humanity on Earth’s biosphere and let’s us begin the real work of fixing our biosphere without resorting to mass human death.
That probably sounds like a tech-bro pipe dream, and maybe it is, but it also feels like the kind of thing humans will eventually need to do if we want to survive as a species (my main drive for it is so humans can survive the next asteroid, which is a whole issue unto itself).
Is…is this not common sense? How can anyone interpret this as ecofacism? Where do they see factories in nature, and what other species takes other species natural production (bees making honey, cows making milk) and scales them for their own benefit?
Am…am I calling for the genocide of the human race for pointing this out? Are words meaningless?
I couldn’t be more critical of the maga movement and the vacant gullibility of its adherents, but I’ve seen plenty of mid wits on the left fall for and parrot shit like this and others equally idiotic. I don’t have much faith in anyone at this point. We are confused apes.
Okay, just so I’m clear then, you think Eco-fascism is bad, but that there are other flavors of “eco-authoritarianism” that could work in there place?
That probably sounds passive aggressive, but I’m legit trying to learn about Leftist takes on the matter.
I’m a product of the American Public School System, and was taught Leftist can be thought of as just another flavor of authoritarianism. But it seems like there’s more to it than that and trying to “peel back the layers” on that.
Do you think there’s an equitable way to impose de-growth policies (which it feels like is the camp you’re in)?
I also don’t think our species will ever willingly do “degrowth”
I think the collapse of modern civilization is an inevitability, and that there will never be any positive, organized way to guide that collapse to any worthwhile positive outcome. Will it come in my lifetime or yours? Probably not. But it will come.
The only wildcard I see that could change this would be fusion energy, actual self sustaining fusion that generates unlimited energy, or the discovery of some other exotic form of matter that can provide unlimited energy. Barring those highly unlikely developments, I think any form of eco-authoritarianism would just be a way for those in power to continue enriching themselves at the cost of everyone else, a more extreme form of what is already happening.
leftist can be thought of as just another flavor of authoritarian
Almost all leftists will say the end goal is communism / anarcho-communism. A system in which the workers control the means of production and anyone involved in production gets an equal say in how that production is done. Before this can be achieved the industrial capacity of a country has to be developed enough to easily provide for everyone’s needs. Marx thought that once everyone’s needs were met consumption would plateau and therefore so would growth. Capitalists would then compete for a fixed size pie where the only way to make money would be squeezing workers and automating jobs away, which would reduce the amount of labor needed but cause mass unemployment. This would eventually reach a tipping point where the workers would rise up, seize the means of production and redistribute resources so everyone go there needs met while working far less, and thus relieving the intraclass tension that would tear it apart once it took over.
The problem is capitalism is very good at creating new needs for people and instilling the desire for them in the working class through media and advertising. So the growth keeps going and we never reach that end state.
These needs and desires are built deep within most people living under capitalism at this point so even if a socialist revolution did happen, which is unlikely due to the above reasons, then those desires would still show in the workers choices on production, so we’d still be making f-150s, hamburgers etc.
The only way I think could result in degrowth is a massive re-education program to remove those desires, most likely through an authoritarian media control. You’d need to counteract all the advertising people have ingested, think of how much of your life you have spent watching car commercials. A person would have to watch just as many hours watching videos on how to destructive and environmentally disgusting cars are to counteract all the positive associations ads have instilled in them. Along with replacing ads with environmental psas, media would also have to be mandated to reflect environmental values, driving and eating meat would be shamed and only done by the lazy and cruel.
I’d say this is definitely authoritarian, totalitarian even, but not fascist. I struggle to think of a coherent eco-fascist ideology as fascism is all about ethno-nationalism, national supremacy and expansionism which don’t work with any environmental goals. so I think Eco-fascism is just a derogatory term used by people who don’t understand what fascism is and just think all evil authoritarians are fascist.
As anthropogenic climate change threatens human existence on Earth, historians have begun to explore the scientific antecedents of environmental Malthusianism, the idea that human population growth is a major driver of ecosystem degradation and that environmental protection requires a reduction in human numbers. These accounts, however, neglect the antagonistic relationship between environmental Malthusianism and demography, thereby creating an illusion of scientific consensus. This article details the entwined histories of environmental Malthusianism and demography, revealing points of disagreement – initially over methods of analyzing and predicting population growth and later over the role of population growth in ecosystem degradation – and moments of strategic collaboration that benefited both groups of scientists. It contends that the image of scientific consensus in existing histories has lent support to ongoing calls for population control, detracting attention from more proximate causes of environmental devastation, such as polluting modes of production, extractive business practices and government subsidies for fossil fuel development.
Abridged conclusion:
Since the end of World War II, environmental Malthusians have pointed to ecosystem degradation as supposedly obvious evidence that the Earth is already overpopulated and have called for population control as an alternative to environmental regulation and economic redistribution. Despite their scientific opposition, demographers collaborated with environmental Malthusians just long enough in the 1950s and 1960s to create a global population movement that advanced the agendas of both groups. The harms caused by that movement – both by governments that explicitly limited childbearing, such as China, and by supposedly voluntary programs that nonetheless imposed contraception where it was not desired – have been well documented (Connelly, 2008; Greenhalgh, 2008; Hartmann, 1995). However, even the most critical histories of the population control movement largely fail to recognize the illusory nature of the scientific consensus that claimed to undergird it.
I don’t think so. I think there are too many humans, but my approach to the problem is to educate and empower each other to make our own family planning decisions rather than pressuring or forcing people to have children who don’t want them. I believe that we’ll naturally maintain sustainable numbers when allowed free choice in a healthy environment.
I don’t think overpopulation is our biggest concern regarding unsustainability though, only a very small portion. We need to address more serious issues first, but the good news is that overthrowing capitalism addresses pretty much every problem simultaneously.
No, you’re simply a victim of misinformation and propaganda making you believe that.
There are more than enough resources to go around and we don’t have to needlessly structure our society with endless sprawl and wasteful use of space. The only reason there seems to be “too many people” is our current societal structures that push people towards wanton wastefulness and excess which exacerbates the issue.
We can go back to being community driven and living in dense, walkable cities instead of everyone clamoring over each other to obtain their own little fiefdoms.
But can we continue to provide for 8 billion people if we cease things like unsustainable farming practices and nonrenewable energy? (Without everyone agreeing to be vegan. That’s not a realistic wish.)
Good questions and I’m curious about this too. Conservatives like to tie liberal support of abortion rights to Malthusianism, but that’s a hella reactionary take.
Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Double checked the rules and it doesn’t look like I’m violating any, but please point me in the right direction if there’s a better place for my questions. I genuinely am unclear and want to learn.
In this context, what are eco-facsists? And then how does that and Malthusian Population Theory inherently relate to Capitalism?
When I imagine Malthusian Population issues, I normally think of it as a left-wing / anticapitalist talking point. Assuming I’m missing the mark on that, what’s the Socialist proposed solution and/or explanation of why that’s not an issue? (Racked my brain for a better wording for that last sentence, but couldn’t think of one on the fly. Please pardon my ignorance if there’s a different phrasing I should have used).
Edit: wanna say thanks for letting a foreigner in a foreigner land come and pick at some of the thinking of the community. I appreciate the civil discussion and sources being pitched towards me.
An eco authoritarian accepts these two premises:
The current consumption patterns of humans, especially in the first world, are unsustainable in regards to meat, travel via cars, home sizes for heating and cooling, etc.
Any reduction in that consumption will be extremely unpopular and thus politically impossible under any democratic regime, whether that regime be under capitalism or communism.
Therefore to achieve sustainability and save the planet and countless human lives we will need a top down authoritarian government to force the populace into sustainability similar to how fascists would force there populace to war despite its inherent unpopularity.
The liberal take on the ecosystem is that the carbon footprint of individuals is too high, and therefore we must as INDIVIDUALS all choose to use less carbon of our own free will. And as liberals see that the individual will not choose to do that, instead of changing our entire system to something better that would improve the environmental impact en mass, they’d prefer that we keep capitalism, even if that means large parts of the global population must suffer and die. Thats what hes talking about here.
I feel like there’s also a similar kind of perspective that is widely normalized in these kinds of discussions that boils down to simultaneously blaming everyone on an individual level and being defeatist about ever solving it. Specifically, I’m talking about when people say things like:
No, we the working class didn’t do that. Humanity as a whole didn’t do that. The owner class did all of that to feed their addictions to wealth and power under capitalism. We the working class by and large criticized all of those things whenever we happened to have enough agency to consider it.
I don’t recall working class at large protesting car centric infrastructure and factory farming. Some niche groups did but by and large a functioning highway system with free parking everywhere and cheap meat have been very popular with the working class.
I agree we need to liquidate the capitalist class but not everything can be blamed on them. If we had socialism tomorrow we’d still need to deal with the fundamental issue of the unsustainability of the consumption based lifestyles that most people in the first world of become accustomed to and will not give up easily.
The very fact that you’re getting downvoted here proves your point. Most working people love their cars and cheap meat and it offends them to suggest it’s a net negative on society.
Yes, exactly.
So we’re just using the word fascism to mean whatever the fuck we want this day, huh?
Allowing private corporate interests to guide the health of the planet to ruin for individual profit, and controlling world governments to do so at the behest of the people would be a very fascist thing to do, regardless of what the definition of fascism you personally think is.
See and that feels like baby steps towards some flavor of eco authoritarianism (which I suppose I may be conflating with eco-fascism; to me, those both seem bad and in comparable measures).
You seem to be proposing that there is a system (ecologic + economic) that allows for humans to live sustainably at our current-ish population while being mostly free to live their lives with their communities as they see fit and at (at least) a modest level of prosperity.
If there is such a system that doesn’t lean into authoritarianism, I’m unfamiliar with it.
I think it will be difficult to ensure all three of those points (current population + non-authoritarian government + modest living conditions). While I agree Capitalism and Liberalism aren’t doing good on maintaining those three point (gods, are they doing so bad on those three points), I’m unclear what the Leftist suggestions are to fix them.
If you/others here have points that could fill in my gaps of understanding, be interested to hear them. (I worry I’m going to be taken as a Liberal infiltrator, but I feel I know little of the more concrete aspects of Leftist politics and am trying to learn).
For example, the government makes a top down decision to heavily invest in cheap or entirely free public transport, invest heavily in cycling infrastructure, ensures urban planning means that (where possible) you’re never more than a short bicycle ride away from a supermarket (so called 5 minute cities), does its best to ensure it’s affordable to live near your work, bans cars from city centres (with obvious exceptions), increases taxation on fuel, and increases taxation on new vehicles.
Perfectly feasible, because it’s been done in plenty of countries and cities. Vastly better for the environment and much more efficient too, because the population isn’t wasting so much time and money driving from point A to B. People are invariably much happier, because they get more exercise, waste less of their lives in traffic, aren’t wasting money on car ownership, and suffer less from the effects of air and noise pollution. Unsurprisingly, once instituted this kind of thing invariably enjoys majority democratic support.
The polar opposite of the US, where the car industry had and still has a disproportionate influence on politics, and very unpopular there in large part because of propaganda, which has given Americans the illusion of choice; they have been invariably been robbed of the choice to live near their work or spend less time in traffic, but instead get to choose which overpriced car they are forced to buy due to corporate influenced government rule. I’m tired, but you get the idea.
It’s also important to realise, that a lot of these kinds of policies, aren’t actually unpopular when they’re done well. People like walking, cycling, breathing fresh air, loads of trees, nature, etc. It’s a bit of a joke that Americans return home from their holiday in Europe, feeling healthier and having lost weight. Not being stuck in your car all day is good for you.
Largely agree with what you’re saying. I do strongly wish US mass transit didn’t make me feel like I needed a shower the moment I stepped off it (which has been my experience with state run rail systems).
But I’d don’t see the policy changes you lay out as inherently opposed to a liberal state. Yeah, its less capitalist than the current (US) system, but it seems those are talking points and policies often pushed by the American left/Democratic Party (and if I understand correctly that’s typically what’s referred to as the Liberals by communities like this).
Am.i kissing something in that?
In theory they aren’t.
But in practice supposedly liberal states’ governments often become captured by corporate interests or the idea that everything has to make a profit, so much so that it’s impossible to make sensible (and once realised popular) decisions on public transport and the like.
Just look at relatively progressive Germany, where the car industry’s influence on governments on both sides of the aisle has hindered investment in public transport and cycle infrastructure.
Or look at a map of UK railways before and after the Beeching cuts. Crucial train lines were destroyed, often those connecting mayor cities, because railway profits were deemed more important than the public good. The remaining lines and infrastructure are to this day overstretched and over capacity, because a government in the 60s believed a little too much in the free market, and this has caused lasting damage to the economy and housing affordability.
There was a lot wrong with the USSR and eastern bloc, and their environmental record was often deplorable, but it’s no coincidence that the one of the things they did often do right is cheap and good public transport.
They’re often dirty, because they’re invariably too beholden to the profit motive, so don’t hire enough cleaners or pay them enough given their crucial role in preventing disease.
Bit of a tangent, but America’s obsession with airconditioning is also a huge problem.
Bed bugs and their eggs die at temperatures higher than 45°C (110F?) and don’t do well at anything other than room temperature. If you don’t have AC on public transport or in your house, bed bugs aren’t nearly as big an issue. Just let it get hot/cold. Or as regular maintenance pop on the heating for a few hours during the hottest day of the year, while you spend the day at the beach.
Another reason why as someone who worked in the industry, I’m opposed to over insulating homes, but that’s another discussion.
The current system is authoritarian.
An extremely narrow cohort of society controls the corporations that determine our fate. It plunders the earth for profit, regardless of the consequences.
A sustainable system is one in which those who make a decision are the same as those affected.
Such is the complete opposite of authoritarianism. The planet will be saved when no one any longer benefits from its ongoing destruction.
You do sound like a liberal infiltrator. It in the off chance you aren’t and actually want to understand these things, unfortunately you generally have to do the hard work of actually reading books about them. On this topic specifically I would highly recommend Climate Change as a Class War by Matt Huber. There was a good Ted Talk that summarized the ideas behind this I saw years ago but I can’t find it.
Also baby steps to ecofascism? I cannot begin to imagine what this means. The ecosystem and how we deal with it has been highjacked by weapons manufacturers and energy companies and we are all told that you’d have to give up money and comforts and all kinds of austerity has been forced down our throats which is just simply not true. I cant remember if it was 70 percent or so of climate change variables were from military ventures alone, I know it was over 50 though. And a significant portion of the rest of it is just from non-military airplane fuel. I don’t know about you but MOST people could cut those things out of their lives almost entirely and not notice. Almost every climate change agitator can be fixed WHILE INCREASING THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. But under a capitalist society that is not the goal. The goal is infinite growth through profit maximization and concentration of capital. That goal is literally antithetical to environmental protection AND improvement in proletariat quality of life. They literally cannot coexist on their own.
Thanks for the reading suggestion. I’ve a feeling I’m not going to agree with the conclusion of the book, but I’ll take a look at it and see what I see.
If you turn up the source on the military ventures = worsening climate change variables, I’d love to read about that.
Also #BigAgree with aviation being a major contributor to climate change. Like, of all the things, that is the one I hear about ad consistently contributing a surprising amount. I would like to see domestic air travel largely replaced by rail (from US, for context).
Military is worse. Huber talks about it in his book.
What exactly from what you know about this book makes you think you wont agree with the conclusion already?
I was around someone with this same hot take, who called Sir David Attenborough an Eco-fascist for acknowledging that the endless destruction of wild habitat at the hands of humans expanding their own habitats and resource extraction, was responsible for the beginnings of a mass extinction event for wildlife.
I’ll say it loud and proud. Industrialism is not natural. Industrialism is the only way we can support a population of 8 billion humans, the only thing that allowed them to exist in the first place. Industrialism is inherently destructive and exploitative.
Tankie dweebs seem to think that if we just give everyone an equal cut, that we would suddenly have a utopia, that we would somehow bring back the massive swaths of insect populations we’ve decimated, that we could magically make degraded land arable again. Nah.
Industrial civilization isn’t infinite. It has a start and an end. When it ends, so will most of us. Recognizing this doesn’t make one an “eco fascist”
What makes someone an eco fascist is if they want to genocide populations they deem undesirable for ecological purposes. Pretty simple.
Sure, but we’ve destroyed and exploited enough to sustain eight billion people (and, given the insane amounts of food waste in the first world, even more than that). We’ve already cut down enough forests, taken over enough natural habitats, emitted enough greenhouse gases and generally been enough of a cancer already, so we don’t need to do more of that to survive. The reason forests are still being cut down and CO2 is still being emitted isn’t because industrial civilization requires it, but because capitalism requires it. Brazil isn’t cutting down the Amazon rainforest because their life depends on it, but because rich people’s yacht money depends on it. Removing that incentive to destroy the environment even more would do a lot to protect the ecosystem. That, not the strawman you painted, is the intersection with socialism.
Weird to pin a general economic issue on capitalism when it’s more of a general issue with economic growth as history corroborates. Production functions—the dependence on factors of production including natural resources to produce output—work the same regardless of economic system: more is needed to produce more.
Central planning economies can be as or more destructive than the more capitalist ones: type of economy seems to have little bearing there. The USSR aggressively industrialized & would consistently pursue economic growth (to raise standards of living). It comes up in the Soviet constitution of 1977:
Despite their command economy, their pollution was disproportionately worse than the US’s
Their planners considered pollution control
and
And this generously glosses over the extent of water contamination, hazardous dumping of toxic & nuclear waste into oceans, etc.
The dependence on natural resources, capacity for environmental destruction, and demand for economic growth are not particular to any type of economy: they’re general. Wherever an economy recklessly grows without environmental protections, the environment is ruined.
So if we all got to divvy up the wealth of the billionaires equally, and suddenly all of us had a moderate but sustaining amount of wealth, we’d give up on cars? Electricity? Beef? Because having those things, as I like to say, your “hot showers and cold ice cream” is what is destroying this world’s habitability. It’s not just the billionaires but our demand for the shit they sell us, regardless of the economic paradigm that delivers it.
Let’s say the first world standard of living downgraded just a bit, and the third world standard of living was elevated to first world standards overnight, do you think our demands of the planets resources would diminish? I don’t think it would. It would explode, as people who have lived on very little would want to eat as well as we have all these years. As the world wants more beef, the rainforest gets the axe so ranchers can graze their cattle on its ashes. Apply this to literally every other consumer good and municipal service.
I want to see the billionaire robber barons dethroned as bad as you do, but it won’t fix the underlying problem of civilization.
Probably not, but we could get that stuff sustainably. I get what you’re saying, and until a couple decades ago this would’ve been 100% true, but clean energy—the thing we need for our hot showers and cold ice cream—is essentially a solved problem, and it’s being solved better and better every day as more advancements are made. Beef and other environmentally destructive consumer products are harder to fix, but it’s at least in theory possible to make them more efficiently, eliminate them or replace them with cleaner alternatives. There’s a certain amount of destruction that’s hard or impossible to eliminate, but multiple times that happens because someone somewhere doesn’t want to spend money doing things sustainably (and, more broadly, because the system selects for people who don’t do things sustainably). It’s less about everyone having a sustainable amount of wealth and more about the people most invested in the status quo (rich stakeholders) being removed from power; imagine the progress that could’ve been made towards net zero if not for pro-oil lobbying and misinformation for example.
Alternatively, the world can only ask for more beef because there’s rainforest to cut down. If an external force prevents that from happening, the people who want more beef (and the people who already get a lot of beef) will adapt. Yes, that will make beef less available and therefore more expensive, but then it can be replaced with more sustainable alternatives. First world eating habits don’t necessarily need to be kept around in this hypothetical, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to provide everyone with decent quality food; that food will just need to include more vegetables and legumes and less meat.
If this elevation took place under current economic, absolutely not. If, say, concurrently every vehicle and factory was replaced with an alternative based on clean energy, then with small modifications (say, more vegan food and less meat) it’s not impossible; even poor countries consume a lot of energy in 2025, and because they don’t have the resources to buy, say, solar panels most of it comes from oil instead. It’s inefficiencies like these that could and should be reallocated to sustaining the 10 billion people the world population is projected to peak at, but under capitalism it’s not profitable for that to happen so it doesn’t.
This is all good stuff.
Now, go out into the corners of the internet and ask the question “how many barrels of oil does it take to build a single wind turbine”. Then do nuclear power plants. How about just one tire?
You’d be pretty shocked to find that the only thing that has supported the meteoric rise of our population has been plentiful and cheap petroleum. Renewables can slow things down in the short term, and they certainly make people feel better about themselves, but there is no replacement for oil. All of the renewables are made of oil. Shit loads of it.
Should have read more of the thread I spawned before responding to your other comments.
So to me, it seems like the real solution is to begin interplanetary colonization.
That doesn’t fix the problems on Earth, and I don’t want to pretend it does. I also want to be clear that the way that Musk and Bezos seem to envision interplanetary expansion is…not desirable.
But to me, beginning the Terraforming of Mars is a crucial step in human progress. There’s no ecology or biosphere for humans to ruin, but if we can establish a foothold for humans to live there, it let’s off the steam valve of humanity on Earth’s biosphere and let’s us begin the real work of fixing our biosphere without resorting to mass human death.
That probably sounds like a tech-bro pipe dream, and maybe it is, but it also feels like the kind of thing humans will eventually need to do if we want to survive as a species (my main drive for it is so humans can survive the next asteroid, which is a whole issue unto itself).
We can’t even terraform Earth, good luck terraforming Mars.
The hellscape earth would have to become in order for mars to seem like a good option for people is not something we should be aiming for
Is…is this not common sense? How can anyone interpret this as ecofacism? Where do they see factories in nature, and what other species takes other species natural production (bees making honey, cows making milk) and scales them for their own benefit?
Am…am I calling for the genocide of the human race for pointing this out? Are words meaningless?
I couldn’t be more critical of the maga movement and the vacant gullibility of its adherents, but I’ve seen plenty of mid wits on the left fall for and parrot shit like this and others equally idiotic. I don’t have much faith in anyone at this point. We are confused apes.
Okay, just so I’m clear then, you think Eco-fascism is bad, but that there are other flavors of “eco-authoritarianism” that could work in there place?
That probably sounds passive aggressive, but I’m legit trying to learn about Leftist takes on the matter.
I’m a product of the American Public School System, and was taught Leftist can be thought of as just another flavor of authoritarianism. But it seems like there’s more to it than that and trying to “peel back the layers” on that.
Do you think there’s an equitable way to impose de-growth policies (which it feels like is the camp you’re in)?
No. I oppose authoritarianism in all its flavors.
I also don’t think our species will ever willingly do “degrowth”
I think the collapse of modern civilization is an inevitability, and that there will never be any positive, organized way to guide that collapse to any worthwhile positive outcome. Will it come in my lifetime or yours? Probably not. But it will come.
The only wildcard I see that could change this would be fusion energy, actual self sustaining fusion that generates unlimited energy, or the discovery of some other exotic form of matter that can provide unlimited energy. Barring those highly unlikely developments, I think any form of eco-authoritarianism would just be a way for those in power to continue enriching themselves at the cost of everyone else, a more extreme form of what is already happening.
Almost all leftists will say the end goal is communism / anarcho-communism. A system in which the workers control the means of production and anyone involved in production gets an equal say in how that production is done. Before this can be achieved the industrial capacity of a country has to be developed enough to easily provide for everyone’s needs. Marx thought that once everyone’s needs were met consumption would plateau and therefore so would growth. Capitalists would then compete for a fixed size pie where the only way to make money would be squeezing workers and automating jobs away, which would reduce the amount of labor needed but cause mass unemployment. This would eventually reach a tipping point where the workers would rise up, seize the means of production and redistribute resources so everyone go there needs met while working far less, and thus relieving the intraclass tension that would tear it apart once it took over.
The problem is capitalism is very good at creating new needs for people and instilling the desire for them in the working class through media and advertising. So the growth keeps going and we never reach that end state.
These needs and desires are built deep within most people living under capitalism at this point so even if a socialist revolution did happen, which is unlikely due to the above reasons, then those desires would still show in the workers choices on production, so we’d still be making f-150s, hamburgers etc.
The only way I think could result in degrowth is a massive re-education program to remove those desires, most likely through an authoritarian media control. You’d need to counteract all the advertising people have ingested, think of how much of your life you have spent watching car commercials. A person would have to watch just as many hours watching videos on how to destructive and environmentally disgusting cars are to counteract all the positive associations ads have instilled in them. Along with replacing ads with environmental psas, media would also have to be mandated to reflect environmental values, driving and eating meat would be shamed and only done by the lazy and cruel.
I’d say this is definitely authoritarian, totalitarian even, but not fascist. I struggle to think of a coherent eco-fascist ideology as fascism is all about ethno-nationalism, national supremacy and expansionism which don’t work with any environmental goals. so I think Eco-fascism is just a derogatory term used by people who don’t understand what fascism is and just think all evil authoritarians are fascist.
A made-up boogie man that basically no one believes in.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9315181/
Abstract:
Abridged conclusion:
am I a bad person if I think there are too many humans but have no idea or capabilities to change that fact?
I don’t think so. I think there are too many humans, but my approach to the problem is to educate and empower each other to make our own family planning decisions rather than pressuring or forcing people to have children who don’t want them. I believe that we’ll naturally maintain sustainable numbers when allowed free choice in a healthy environment.
I don’t think overpopulation is our biggest concern regarding unsustainability though, only a very small portion. We need to address more serious issues first, but the good news is that overthrowing capitalism addresses pretty much every problem simultaneously.
No, you’re simply a victim of misinformation and propaganda making you believe that.
There are more than enough resources to go around and we don’t have to needlessly structure our society with endless sprawl and wasteful use of space. The only reason there seems to be “too many people” is our current societal structures that push people towards wanton wastefulness and excess which exacerbates the issue.
We can go back to being community driven and living in dense, walkable cities instead of everyone clamoring over each other to obtain their own little fiefdoms.
But can we continue to provide for 8 billion people if we cease things like unsustainable farming practices and nonrenewable energy? (Without everyone agreeing to be vegan. That’s not a realistic wish.)
Good questions and I’m curious about this too. Conservatives like to tie liberal support of abortion rights to Malthusianism, but that’s a hella reactionary take.