Are we going to let capitalism destroy life on Earth? According to 99% of climate scientists – we’ll know by the end of the century.
Scientists have agreed for three decades about what is causing atmospheric temperatures to rise – humans are burning Earth’s carbon resources to fuel economic activity. But even before we knew what was causing the temperature to rise – scientists warned about the dire global impacts of a two degree increase in atmospheric temperatures.
Earth’s climate has been basically stable for hundreds of thousands of years. But that changed during the industrial revolution - when Great Britain realized the potential of coal-powered steam engines. Soon continental Europe and America followed suit.
And over 150 years later – coal, oil, and natural gas dominate the global politics and economics: wars are fought over oil; communities are destroyed for coal; and increasingly scarce water supplies are poisoned by natural gas extraction.
The Earth has already warmed about one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels –which means we have to change our energy system completely before the Earth warms another degree in order to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change. Is it possible?
Scientists say “Yes!” – BUT it will require us to take bold and immediate steps towards a completely renewable energy system. The technology exists – the shortfall is in investment.
According to the IMF – oil companies get 5.3 trillion dollars in subsidies worldwide per year. And the oil companies pay only a portion – if any – of the environmental costs of ripping fossil fuels from the ground and burning the CO2 into the atmosphere.
In other words, every living human being and government are paying for coal, oil, and gas companies to profit from the destruction our planet. And that’s not a market failure – that’s how the market was set up. Capitalism as we know it isn’t the solution – it’s the problem.
In a report in “Nature Climate Change” – scientists point out that we can keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius – if every country takes bold and immediate action to deploy current clean energy and limit the use of fossil fuels. The biggest failure in our system is that there is no price on carbon. Burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon into our atmosphere has very real costs that corporations aren’t paying for – costs that are being kicked down the road for future generations.
In America, we’ve let the fossil fuel industry become so profitable that it relentlessly funds campaigns and lobbies to keep oil subsidies in place and weaken environmental regulations - all at the expense of our communities and our planet.
