Capitalism and climate change

capitalism exists hand in hand

with climate change

‘In all these ways, therefore, the performance of Western capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic. The problem is that these failings are not temporary; they are structural.’ (Mazzucato and Jacobs, 2016)

Without any intention to criticize, this article aims to show the four key features of capitalism and briefly expose the impact that capitalism has on the environment. Capitalism has been around us much longer than we think, to set an exact time period, let us go back to the Soviet Union. When the URSS was around, there was an imminent fear from the United States, that communism would spread to the Western countries of Europe and, as a response to that fear, the US started to enlarge its sphere of influence and spread capitalism in order to contain communism – and they succeeded. As you may know... or not, after the Cold War the URSS fell and consequently communism fell; since then, capitalism has been seen as the freest and most liberal economic model that countries should follow – but is that true? Is capitalism flawless? Absolutely not, but before the dive into ‘criticising’ capitalism we shall define it, and no one is better to do that than its own ‘father’ Adam Smith. ‘The liberal plan’ or ‘the system of natural liberty’ were ways in which Smith described ‘capitalism’ in which ‘every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own war, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.’ The four key characteristics: The most well-known characteristic of capitalism is free markets. It is believed that in capitalist economies, markets should be free, and the main argument is that ‘if people cannot do the things that they find most profitable, they lose the incentive to invest and innovate’ (Chang, 2010). But markets are not the only thing that are ‘free’ in capitalist countries, there is also freedom of ownership and private property. The capitalist model believes that individuals should be left free to own property and that the government should protect the right to property. The price mechanism in capitalist countries is determined by the curve between supply and demand. If there is a high supply but a low demand the prices will be low and if there is a low supply but a high demand the prices will be high. In capitalist economies, profit is what induces economic activity, naturally the more profit a producer makes reflects how well the business is doing ‘therefore, it can be said that Profit Motive is the SOUL of capitalist economy.’ Does not sound too bad right? Capitalism has a very liberal basis and believes in freedom of choice and freedom of possession. Capitalism is so free that pro-capitalist scholars before child labour was abolished argued that if the child wants to work and the owner of the factory wants to employ children – then what is the harm? The harm is that with too much freedom, the human being starts destructing and killing, many children were victims of child labor and without trying to sound rude, we are now killing our environment. Capitalist impact on the environment ‘The rich don’t care about the planet’ is probably a phrase that you have heard or read even, and it is not false. Capitalism has a distinct characteristic of its production, meaning increasing gas emissions and problems such as ‘environmental damage, from the pollution of air, water, and land to the loss of habitats and species’ (Mazzucato and Jacobs, 2016). Despise action against climate change in developed countries, none of the problems have actually been solved. Governments are not decreasing gas emissions and notable scientists firmly stating that temperatures are expecting to rise 3-4 degrees, and more extreme weather events (such as, droughts, storms, or floods). This is where it gets interesting, follow my thought line - we all live on the same planet, we are all suffering from climate change. We are all scared when some journalist on Instagram pops up in our feed saying that if do not change our habits, the world will not last another 50 years. If governments are aware of this, given they also live on Earth why would they not change their gas consumption? Here is where most of the discontent against capitalism is formed because our capitalist historic system of production and consumption is embedded in the use of fossil fuels ‘in total 80 per cent of the world’s energy still comes from oil, gas and coal’ (Mazzucato and Jacobs, 2016). We are out there creating biological and chemical weapons and mass destruction missiles and governments still cannot change from non-reusable energy to reusable energy. There is however a quite simple explanation for this disinterest in environmental issues – gas is not their fuel, money is. u