What are the links between Predatory Industrial Capitalism & Climate Change?

The fundamental linkage that I see revolves around the central principle of sustainability - 

At the planetary level resource allocation is a zero sum game - all life on Earth is entitled, by being life on Earth, to a proportionate share of the planetary resources. Any aggregation of resources beyond the entitlement of an individual (or the many individuals of a group), on the part of one group or entity, occurs as a direct function of loss of resources by one or more other entities or groups. Sustainability says that we live in such a way that we get the benefit of the planetary resource flows, and we preserve that maximum benefit and value of those flows for everyone else as well.

All human wealth is a derivative function of natural resources, co-opted unilaterally by humanity for personal enrichment or improvement of material well being (in the last three hundred years bolstered by the Christian notion of eminent domain or human dominion over Nature, but extant long before that philosophy rose. There has always been a way to justify taking what is wanted regardless of the intrinsic right to it. The fundamental mechanism of this appropriation is to minimize the value or rights of ALL other living creatures including people not of the exalted “group”, while maximizing the rights and authority of the exalted group). The initial construct for doing this may have been when we aggregated people into large groups (the better to fleece them) - the creation of cities.

Thus, In any situation where someone is aggregating wealth beyond their need or effective requirement, much less beyond their intrinsic entitlement, they are doing so at the substantial expense of the material well being of others, in most cases many others, including the natural realm, which is being massively depleted of resources that are intrinsically valuable to planetary resource flows, in many cases in ways we are only just beginning to understand. This is the study of ecological services, with humans included in the ecological equation - an emergent science. 

Climate inaction occurs for many reasons but the predominant one is the engineered and/or coerced response of the consuming public who represent the engine of consumption that is the defining purpose for the predatory industrial capitalist regime, and who, in the best interest of regime but definitively NOT the planet, just keep on consuming. It is through this process that the multitudes convert & transfer the value of their lives and their share of the planetary resources to the exclusive use of a few - the oligarchy or plutocracy (whichever you prefer). It is good to remember that pigs are not encouraged to consume as they do so that they may become liberated and better pigs. They are encouraged to consume so that they may be better TO consume!

The "market" economy that is used to accomplish this, in the name of "sustaining the multitudes at a higher standard of living" requires three things for it's functional success - endless raw materials, endless consumption, and endless capacity to absorb waste… none of which are present, by definition on a finite planet, with the narrow exception that Madison Avenue expends ever greater sums of money to convince the consuming public to keep on consuming and, in fact, to consume MORE!

There is no functional view of the future that is accomplished through either investment or regulation, both of which are machinations of the oligarchy for control. The only realistic path forward takes us back to square one with a new recognition of what we are actually and functionally entitled to of the planetary resource share, acceptance of a new view of value and transfer of value that is not expressed only in terms of the predominant form of value transfer today (money), and which takes an entirely different approach to ownership, recognizing the commons as the paramount value. I would suggest that in such an environment, incentives will probably be more productive than regulation, with the primary incentive being that the global village recognizes that it's very life and happiness are based on planetary equilibrium and health, not essentially the health and well being of any individual, but of ALL individuals… human or otherwise.

Money as currently construed and applied, is itself a coercive and destructive process, especially when it degenerates, as most world currencies now have, to being both fiat (backed by nothing other than promises) and debt-based (all money is "created" as a function of debt). This is a profoundly destructive force, at the very center of that global wealth transfer and aggregation that underlies the predatory industrialist capitalism and market economy. The rigged process by which money is literally made and controlled is the reason for "inflation" and "deflation" and the fact that your "worth-less" now than you were twenty years ago.

Predatory industrial capitalism is a classic example of the quote ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." by Lord Acton, expressing his opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, or a similar quote from William Pitt The Elder, Earl of Chatham & British PM in a 1770 speech to the House of Lords, in which he said "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it."

Long story short : Predatory Industrial Capitalism is directly and predominantly responsible for the egregious and exploitive co-opting of natural and human resources (ultimately, any resources) that the purveyors could justify as having valid application to their personal objectives and goals and rationalize their exploitation of. The direct result of this is the fouling of all of Earth’s natural environments, the manifest exploitation of 90% of life on Earth to satisfy the whims of less than 10% of human life, and the fundamental endangerment of all planetary life as we now know it. We can trace the current state of climate change directly to these functions of illegitimate and ill-considered exploitation which knocked Earth’s ecosystems severely out of balance, raising some question of if, when, and under what conditions they will find a new equilibrium. 

Thanks for being there and being you ... and thanks for reading this!

The Smokemaster