For an Eco-Socialist Future

Richard Smith of the Institute for Policy Research & Development gets straight to the point:

Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse.

It has become necessary to stop doing what we are doing (the over-consumption of everything), and yet any aspect of reform is essentially incompatible with capitalist motivations.  Smith argues there is no technical solution or market solution to prevent collapse.  Using "green" energy to promote more growth is not a solution.  Carbon taxes won't put a cap on emissions.  Energy companies are not going to voluntarily leave fossil fuels in the ground.  Ignoring the economic implications means we are deluding ourselves.

The solution requires greater democracy and basic economic equality.  Smith claims that by consuming less, everyone's basic necessities could be met, and that our lives would be richer without wasteful production and mindless shopping.

The question is:  will humanity stand by and let the world be destroyed to save the profit system?

Update (November 22):  Richard Heinberg takes on Paul Krugman regarding the end of growth.

Update (November 27):  A quote from Fawzi Ibrahim's book Capitalism versus Planet Earth, being used to promote Buy Nothing Day:

A stark choice faces humanity:  save the planet and ditch capitalism or save capitalism and ditch the planet.

Update (December 1):  Climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin call for a rethinking of the economic order in an interview with Amy Goodman.  Anderson says that avoiding 2 degrees Celsius of warming requires a "revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony".

Update (December 22):  David Suzuki explains why endless exponential growth is impossible.

Update (September 9, 2014):  Joe Todd laments the culture of consumption.

Update (June 26, 2018):  It is embarrassing that I'm just now made aware of An Ecosocialist Manifesto.

Ecosocialism will be international, and universal, or it will be nothing.

Update (July 14, 2019):  Rob Urie:

Given the trajectory of environmental decline, Western political economy will either be used to ring-fence rich from poor to leave the poor to their own devices, problems will be deemed unsolvable and decline will take its course, or capitalism will be overthrown and replaced with something workable.

Update (July 17, 2019):  Manuel Garcia asks, "do we work dutifully to the death, or till cast adrift as expendable, and do we willingly follow the leader to perdition if he is hellbound and determined for it; or do we rebel, overturn the structure of command, and lead ourselves even if such freedom entails a hard life?"

Remember that the biggest threat to humanity’s survival is anti-social human behavior; climate change alone can’t kill us.

Many will say that obviously climate change as competitive war game is the only realistic alternative because it requires no behavioral changes from our over 10,000 years of "civilized" human history, and because eco-socialism is pure utopianism and thus beyond all realistic actualization. And of course, eco-socialism is impossible in a world of Ahabs and fanatical Ahab followers. But all that is just an excuse to continue with bad behavior. There are no actual physical or biological constraints preventing people from choosing to associate in an eco-socialist manner. The current societal improbability for deeply cooperative behavior does not make future species-wide collective cooperation an impossibility. Responding to climate change could provide a framework on which to build such a species-wide socialist civilization.