this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
50 points (98.1% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
6193 readers
458 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Thanks for your perspective, I'm glad there are people like you who feel free to openly articulate in support of it. It's sad people are downvoting as disagreement, because I can't imagine them downvoting out of a good faith belief you're not contributing.
A) When the state owns the company, being "non-profit" is just a matter of accounting. And Uber wasn't a public service back when they were operating at a loss. The power structure is far more important, and when "the benefit of the Chinese people" is decided top-down through nonrepresentative means, that's not socialism even if you trust the dictator/oligarchy/overlord/etc. to play nice.
I am genuinely glad your government has given you ample housing, but that doesn't make your relation less one of being owned and managed. (not to say the west is better, just that China isn't good enough either).
B&D) The USSR is one nation, and a centrally industrialized dictatorship at that. As a point of scientific process, how are they supposed to have definitively proven wasteful capitalism is necessary as you claim? Even if they genuinely attempted degrowth, that's just one data point or approach. Different systems that fall under the same bucket can fail or succeed depending on more fine-grained specifics.
Also, the USSR slaughtered millions of small-scale farmers (so-called Kulaks, who happened to largely be Ukrainian) to make way for their industrial megafarms. They were not an example of trying degrowth, they were an example of an industrial centralized dictatorship being embargoed by most of the world.
Your point of not being crushed by the US is well-taken, and maybe Nixon did make an offer China could not refuse at the time. But I think that time has been over for the past 10-20 years. China can defend itself, and even if the military-industrial complex needs mass production to stay on par with the west that does not need to apply to the rest of the economy.
C) Take it from someone who lives in a mature and "prosperous" nation. The fruits of capitalist-style growth suck balls. You're not giving people a better life by building their industrial/living infastructure wrong initially, you're taking them away from family and craft and friendship. All things that threaten those in power, by the way
If you have time, look up Marx' description of societal alienation. He puts it better than I could. And feel free to ask me to look stuff up to.