The ecological crisis of capitalism intensifies: Global warming may be reaching 'tipping point'

[marmar]

from PSL:




The ecological crisis of capitalism intensifies:
Global warming may be reaching 'tipping point'

By Darrell Whitman
August 8, 2012


The central lesson of ecology is that everything is connected to everything else, meaning that human activities interact with nature in sometimes problematic ways. Thus, evidence accumulating this summer of powerful and accelerating changes in the global climate offers a warning that capitalism’s insatiable appetite for profits is pushing the global climate system toward runaway global warming.

This process was described in 1987 by Gro Bruntland, the director-general of the World Health Organization and chair of the U.N. Brundtland Commission, which first addressed the connection between development and the environment.

The physical evidence has appeared in the form of intense heat waves and a spreading drought covering two-thirds of the U.S., the continuing collapse of ice shelves in Antarctica, and now the sudden melt-off of ice over the whole of Greenland.

This accumulating evidence, however, has had little impact on capitalist governments. During the recent Rio+20 Conference, these governments turned their backs on their already modest commitments to address global warming. The conference illustrated the connection between the intensifying ecological crises of climate change and species extinction, and the political economy of capitalism that has plundered both the human and natural world over the last 300 years. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/ecological-crisis-capitalism.html

[limpyhobbler]

1. Makes alot of good points.

It really seems like we will not be able to mitigate the coming climate change catastrophe unless we break the power of the fossil fuel industry.

Hard to believe we are actually still exploring for arctic oil, digging out tar sands, fracturing the deep underground for natural gas. It's all profit driven. Even though we know how it is affecting the climate, we just can't stop it because the corporations behind it are too powerful.

We should have factories cranking out solar panels 24 hours a day and be installing them everywhere. Why haven't we modernized our electric grid to account for this.
We need to be on a "war economy" full blast program of switching over to sustainable energy. Most of the problems are political. Not technical. We have to interrupt the power of the oil/gas/coal industry to stop burning fossil fuels and make the big switch now.