Naomi Klein on Cause of Climate Crisis: "Capitalism Is Stupid"

[marmar]

from Truthout:



......(snip)......

In this book, you say what people just aren't supposed to say: that fixing the climate is incompatible with capitalism. In particular, you point out the ways that the profit motive has proved corrupting, in some cases to green groups themselves, in other cases to the supposedly beneficent pledges made by the superrich. Can you talk a little bit about how profit hasn't been able to, and won't be able to, solve the crisis?

Naomi Klein: There's a chapter in the book on why the billionaires won't save us, and the point of that chapter is not to play gotcha with Michael Bloomberg and Richard Branson. It's actually to say OK, let's say that these are the most enlightened billionaires on the planet. And let's say that they at various points have had the shit scared out of them about climate change. But locked within the imperatives of their model, it's possible for Michael Bloomberg to simultaneously understand the medium-term risk of fossil fuels and to back reports like "Risky Business" that are all about warnings about the billions of dollars in costs that come with a destabilized climate, and Michael Bloomberg, as an investor, to choose, in a very short-term way, to put his billions in oil and gas, which is what he does.

There was this idea that it was just a process of convincing very wealthy people that this really was a problem and that there really were costs down the road and that in the long term it would be better to prevent it from happening.

The problem is, capitalism is stupid. You know that cover of Bloomberg Businessweek, "It's Global Warming, Stupid," well, it is global warming, but capitalism is stupid in that it doesn't actually think. It seeks the maximum short-term profit. I think people are mistaking the fact that there are billionaires out there that do get the extent of the problem and really do talk a good game about carbon bubbles and the economic risk, for the idea that that's going to translate into action. Where that becomes really dangerous is that the UN believes this too. I keep getting press releases from the UN about how the best part of the summit is that it has unprecedented participation from multinationals and CEOs from Bank of America and Walmart and McDonald's and Amoco. It's still this same idea that getting people around the table with the right information and the right incentives in place will solve this from the top, and there won't need to be any friction.

I think the real difference is that now there's a movement on the outside that says no, that understands that the imperatives for the fossil fuel industry are fundamentally incompatible with a livable climate. That's the point of the carbon tracker research that kicked off the fossil fuel divestment movement because students look at those numbers and go OK, my university is investing in companies that have made a bet against my future. You can debate fossil fuel divestment as a tactic, but I think that it's important to understand what you're up against, and I think there's much more clarity in the movement now than there has been in decades. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/26369-naomi-klein-on-cause-of-climate-crisis-capitalism-is-stupid

[leftstreet]

1. Huh. So it's actually RICH people who vote against their interests

DURec

[whatchamacallit]

2. Love her... n/t

[Nye Bevan]

3. Capitalism is, undoubtedly, the stupidest economic system there is,

except for all of the other ones.

[Cayenne]

5. What is the proper ism?

[The2ndWheel]

4. We've been altering the environment since we hunted with sharp sticks

or picked a berry. It's not just capitalism, or the oil industry, or whatever else. It's all included in the equation, but just blaming capitalism is too easy of an answer.