Is Capitalism to Blame for Climate Change?

Is China a capitalist country? They claim to be a communist country and they are now the number one emitter. And if I'm not mistaken, Venezuela is also in the oil business, no? So is it capitalism or just greed, which IMO knows no labels.

Climate change is natural and has happened many times through out history. Dr. Richard Lindsen a professor of atmospheric physics at MIT says its false. Companies make tons of money from purchasing carbon offsets while simultaneously polluting. If governments cared they would provide information regarding cheap methods that any person can use to help the environment. Do what you can do to help limit your own pollution (if you can afford solar panels for your house and a grey water system, go you!) . Certainly don't give your money to corrupt corporations or support the government who works for them. And stop pooping in sawdust filled buckets. That is just gross!

no this is simply the partisan political culture politicizing the effects of climate change
very simply put carbon dioxide produced in energy generation and heating socialism communism capitalism are all more than capable of producing huge amounts of green house gases on there own and all three systems are very very resistant to change based on reality and are all likely to ignore reality in pursuit of pure ideology
so lets keep our eye on the ball we need to as a species move forward to protect the future of our planet and our respective civilizations

This whole climate change thing is only about money. they dont care about saving the planet, they just want control of it.

tax the rich nations, and give it to the poorer nations.

So they want America to stop polluting so they can keep doing it?

Call it what you want. When the world economy is based on consumption what do you expect.

The behind-the-scenes negotiations at the summit have been marked by sharp disputes between the U.S. and China, and between rich and poor nations. Poor countries have criticised rich countries for attempting to set inadequate emissions targets for industrialised countries and for pledging insufficient funding for poor countries to alleviate the impacts of climate change.

According to various reports, poor nations argue that rich countries should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The European Union has pledged a 20 percent reduction. The U.S. however, has only offered only a 3-4 percent cut.

Outside in the streets of Copenhagen mass demonstrations calling for “climate justice” have been repressed by police using pepper spray and batons. More than 1000 people have been arrested.

“We ask from Venezuela: How much longer are we going to allow such injustices and inequalities? How much longer are we going to tolerate the current international economic order and prevailing market mechanisms?” Chavez questioned.

Chavez called for the summit to change direction. “We cannot continue like this. Let’s change course, but without cynicism, without lies, without double agendas, no documents out of the blue, with the truth out in the open,” he said.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/5012

During his speech to the 15th United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed the “lack of political will” of the most powerful nations to take serious action to avert climate change, and called for systemic change to save the planet.

Chavez, who received a standing ovation for his speech, said the process in Copenhagen is “not democratic; it is not inclusive.” In particular, he criticised an attempt by rich countries to overturn the Kyoto Protocol. Doing so would eliminate differentiation between the obligations of rich and poor countries, treating countries from the Global North and South as equally responsible for climate change.

“There is a group of countries that believe they are superior to those of us from the South, to those of us from the Third Word… this does not surprise us… we are again faced with powerful evidence of global imperial dictatorship,” Chavez said.

The Venezuelan president also applauded the initiative of the protesters outside the summit who were calling for serious measures to stop catastrophic climate change.

“There are many people outside... I've read in the news that there were some arrests, some intense protests there in the streets of Copenhagen, and I salute all those people out there, the majority of them youth… They are young people concerned for the world’s future,” he said.

“I have been reading some of the slogans painted in the streets… One said, ‘Don’t Change the Climate, Change the System!’ – And I bring that on board for us. Let’s not change the climate. Let’s change the system! And as a consequence, we will begin to save the planet. Capitalism is a destructive development model that is putting an end to life, that threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.”

Another notable slogan is, “If the climate were a bank, they would have bailed it out already,” Chavez said during his speech. “It’s true; the rich governments have saved the capitalist banks,” he said, but they lack “the political will” to make the necessary reductions to greenhouse emissions.

“One could say there is a spectre at Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl Marx… almost no-one wants to mention it: the spectre of capitalism,” he declared.

History requires all people to struggle against capitalism, and if we don’t, life on the planet “will disappear,” the Venezuelan president argued.

“Do the rich think they can go to another planet when they’ve destroyed this one?” he asked as he recommended a copy of a book by Hervé Kampf, “How the Rich are Destroying the Planet.”

“Climate change is undoubtedly the most devastating environmental problem of this century. Floods, droughts, severe storms, hurricanes, melting ice caps, rise in average sea levels, ocean acidification, and heat waves, all of that sharpens the impact of global crisis besetting us,” he continued.

Human activity is exceeding the limits of sustainability and endangering life on the planet, but the impacts of climate change are also being felt disproportionately by the world’s poor, Chavez explained.

He also pointed to the relationship between economic inequality and levels of greenhouse gas emissions. He said the richest 500 million people, or 7% of the world’s population, are responsible for 50% of global greenhouse emissions, while the poorest 50% of the worlds population are responsible for only 7% of total emissions.

Using this analysis, he argued that it was not feasible to call countries such as the U.S. and China to sit at the summit on an equal footing, insisting that the same obligations can not be imposed on both nations.

The U.S., with a population of 300 million, consumes more than 20 million barrels of oil a day, while China, whose population is almost five times greater than that of the U.S., consumes around 5-6 million barrels a day, he pointed out.

PRESIDENT EVO MORALES: [translated] And if we don’t—and I repeat this—we’re going to end our lives, all of us. So, as with the last country and with our black and indigenous brothers who were treated as slaves, and their rights were not recognized, now, today, too, our Mother Earth, she is treated as if she were a thing without life, as if she didn’t have rights.

The second climate debt is the use of atmospheric space by the developed countries. It’s not possible that atmospheric space be the exclusive property of just a few countries for their development, that the countries that are irrationally industrialized have taken over, with their greenhouse gases, the atmospheric space. To pay this debt, they should reduce their emissions and absorb their greenhouse gases in a way that there exists a fair distribution of atmospheric space between all of the countries, taking into consideration their population, because the countries that are on the path of development need atmospheric space for their development.

The third component of climate debt is the paying of reparations, reparations for damages that have been created by the irrationally industrialized countries. For humanity together, it’s shameful that the Western countries have only offered $10 billion for climate change. I was looking at some figures. The United States—how much does the United States spend to export terrorism to Afghanistan, to export terrorism to Iraq, and to export military bases to South America? They don’t only spend millions, but billions and trillions. I hope our figures are not wrong. For example, Obama, he asked his Congress for $40 billion more than what has already been spent. The budget of the United States is $687 billion for defense. And for climate change, to save life, to save humanity, they only put up $10 billion. This is shameful. The budget for the Iraq war, according to the figures we have, is $2.6 trillion for the Iraq war, to go kill in Iraq. Trillions of dollars. But directed towards paying the climate debt, $10 billion. This is completely unfair. These are our deep observations of what’s going on. That’s why—for the war, while trillions are going to the wars, on the other hand, to save humanity and the planet, they only want to direct $10 billion.

The rich countries should take in all of the migrants who will be generated by climate change or affected by climate change. I think our brothers from Africa, our indigenous brothers from [inaudible], have a lot of moral authority. We have been invaded, supposedly discovered in Africa or Latin America, when in reality it was an invasion and plundering of indigenous peoples. Therefore, now, in the face of the asymmetries between continents, our brothers come looking for work, and they’re kicked out of Europe, they’re kicked out of the United States. But our grandparents never kicked anyone out, and our brothers and sisters don’t come here to take hectares of land or mines. They only come to improve their economic situation. Moreover, when they’re affected by this climate change, how is it possible they would be expulsed from Europe when they are climate refugees? How is it possible that our brothers and sisters are not taken under and protected? That’s why—therefore, our protest in the face of this discrimination to expulse immigrants, when we have never kicked immigrants out, we’ve never sent them home—

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/16/bolivian_president_evo_morales_shameful_f...

Chavez may be a horrible leader in many areas, but they both make a good point here. Capitalism isn't necessarily the problem though, it's just that we don't assign enough value to nature and common properties like air and water. Once the true value of these things are realized and accepted capitalism can find a balance with the natural world.

yes, perhaps it would be better if the government ran the entire economy
everything is so much more efficient under government control