The Tipping Point that will DESTROY the World | George Monbiot
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Wow this is a great video. But what is to do? How to convince the politicians, the voters and the consumers?
The real issue is capitalism in my opinion with all the other problems largely being symptoms rather than root causes. Our economy is structured around growth and consumerism because capitalist enterprises need to constantly produce stuff in order to continue operating. Our politicians are representatives of the capitalist class who pass policy that facilitates continuous operation of this system. Meanwhile, people living within the system have little choice but to continue participating in order to get by.
This whole system needs to be done away with if our civilization is going to survive, but unfortunately most people still don’t realize this. I expect it’s going to take more severe climate disasters before people wake up to to this fact, and we can only hope that there will still be time to do something by then.
I agree on your analyze of capitalism.
But I think people don’t need to participate but instead have choices even within the capitalistic system. They can have a small CO2 footprint.
But the problem stays present: How to convince large amounts of (normal) people? Or politicians?
We can obviously try and make better choices within the system, but I think there’s abundant evidence at this point that system change is needed to really deal with the problem. Individual responsibility is basically what liberals have been pushing for decades now, but we see that most emissions actually trace to large scale industry. Just a 100 companies are responsible for roughly 70% of all emissions. This isn’t a problem that can be addressed by being more frugal and turning your lights off.
At this point I’m highly pessimistic that anything can be done to convince large portions of the population until they start personally experiencing the effects. I used to think that once large scale disasters started hitting countries then there would finally be a recognition that this is an urgent problem. Especially once the effects started hitting developed nations.
Yet, we saw Australia burn down, we saw massive fires in US, nearly a thousand people died in Canada from extreme heat, and everybody just shrugged it off. It appears that people just want to keep doing business as usual and pretend that these things are just one offs as opposed to warning signs of things to come.
Yes I’m pessimistic on that, too. But I feel uncomfortable with the conclusion: which is that dictatorship is the solution! Note that a democratic socialistic or communistic country will fail exactly like a capitalistic one.
(We currently have a new minister of econonomics in Germany, from the Green Party. He says we need more speed in climate-protection. We will say where that leads…)
China is actually doing well in this regard, and there’s every indication that it’s a communist country with an actual functioning democracy.
I think the notion of democracy in the west has become distorted where democracy is equated with parliamentary procedural style of democracy. If anything, I’d argue this style of democracy has been shown to be a failure in practice.
The fundamental idea of democracy is that it’s a government that works in the interest of the majority and can be held accountable by the majority. I think we see this being the case in China while the same cannot be said about the west.
Yes there is a well-defined term of democracy and China is definitely not democratic. But every dictator calls himself a democrat because what he does is such a gift for humanity. In that sense China is similar to Trump and Putin.
What makes the Western system so bad is corruption, sometimes called lobbyism.
I’m sorry, but you very clearly have absolutely no understanding of how Chinese political system works. I find it incredibly depressing that so many people have now formed strong opinions on China without bothering to learn anything about it. Why is it so hard to admit that you’re not knowledgeable on the subject and spend the time to actually learn about it. Let’s look at some factual information regarding how elections and the government works in China.
Here’s how the government is actually structured. This is very clearly not a dictatorship, and it’s a democratic system that’s largely grassroots driven.
Here’s a video on how are Chinese leaders elected and elections differ from those in western bourgeois democracies.
Next, let’s take a look at the makeup of the national people’s congress to see who actually runs China.
Here’s an explanation of how Xi was selected for his position. Again, nothing autocratic about this.
Furthermore, the government in China consistently enjoys much higher public approval than any western government. Which is a clear indication that the government is working in the interest of the people. Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey finds extremely high government approval.. People who actually live in China say their country is democratic. Claiming that you know better is just chauvinism.
Here are some more resources for you.
I favorize democratic socialism. And I admit that China does some things right. I just refuse to call a government democratic that (for example) forbids the word Tiannanmen Square. As a German I know well about fake democracy.
But thanks for the links. I will thoroughly check them. Maybe indeed that I learn something new.
I don’t mean to say China is some sort of a perfect society. The reality is that all human societies are flawed in some way, and Chinese system is more restrictive in some ways than western ones. However, you also have to keep in mind that a lot of things you hear about China in the west are outright fabrications. For example, here’s Tienanmen footage that was broadcast on state TV in China.
I watched the viseos/texts. Sorry but I disagree.
Doing what’s good for the majority is another word for a benevolent dictator.
And “the majority thinks it’s a democracy” is not the same as a democracy. Democracy is well-defined. It envolves separation of power, more than one party, freedom of press etc.
You fail to understand that democracy is a method, a structure. You seem to think democracy is an opinion/decret/result.
Selection and election means undemocratically preventing free votes.
And very high rates of popularity lets me question the presence of a democratic process. Because democracy means arguing heavily. But some Chinese seem to prefer denying disagreement.
So you can tell a million times “We/they are democratic” but still fail. Declaring a goat as a cow is wrong even if millions of people tell so.
Then we disagree on what a democracy is.
I’m not sure what point this is addressing. The resources I provided show how people are elected to their positions based on their work and competing with many other people.
Please give your definition of democracy. I get the impression that you’re conflating democracy with parliamentary democracy which is a poor implementation of the concept.
No, I gave you my definition of democracy earlier which is a government that works in the interest of the majority and that is accountable to the majority. The second part is very important, the public has leverage over their government and the government is answerable to the public. This is the case in China and it is not the case in western countries.
That does not follow, and parliamentary democracy is not a direct democracy either.
That’s a strange argument to make. You’re claiming that the public that sees the government work in their interest and improve their lives is supposed to disapprove of the government?
You’re falsely equating approval with debate. In fact, it’s demonstrably the case that China has much healthier debate than the west. Deng reforms are a great example of this. The party honestly acknowledged that their approach wasn’t working well and learned from the west. This would be the equivalent of a western government seriously integrating Marxist principles into the system.
You have not made any convincing argument that China is not democratic in your reply. You seem to simply equate the concept of democracy with the implementation you’re used to.
In fact, I will posit that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and no capitalist country can be called such. One of the primary decisions made in a society is regarding the purpose of work. In a capitalist society, people who own capital decide how and why work is done by virtue of owning the means of production. This is fundamentally an undemocratic process.
By virtue of having all the core industry under public control China is infinitely more democratic than any western country.
Yes we disagree on what democracy is.
“and that is accountable to the majority. The second part is very important,” Then at least we a agree on that. Your former posting gave me the impression you don’t think so.
Just one thing: Having just one party is a mock democracy.
The number of parties is completely tangential to the concept of democracy. You’re once again mistakenly equating parliamentary democracy. There are plenty of alternative implementations of the concept, and there is absolutely no indication that parliamentary style actually works well. Please read up on democratic centralism which is the style of democracy practiced in China.