[southerntofu]

Upvoted because that's solid advice. The problem is you may not know about polluted environments. This may well be the case of a private contractor burying very dangerous chemicals in a clearing in the woods and polluting the surroundings, in which case hiking there is not gonna do you any good.

Environmental pollution is everywhere industrial capitalism is. All the major scandals about waste disposal in Europe (including nuclear waste disposal!) should make us think twice before we as a society find it acceptable to allow anyone to produce that kind of dangerous substances.

[fsagx]

Environmental pollution is everywhere industrial capitalism is

Also where industrial communism was? Where industrial democratic socialism is?

Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?

[Swenrekcah]

Probably true, or perhaps:

Wherever regulators have not been carefully selected and sufficiently empowered.

[jwond]

Some might say that the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[southerntofu]

Well that's a nitpicking argument which depends on your definitions. From what i understand, what you call "communism" i call "State capitalism" and what you call "democratic socialism" i call "liberal capitalism". Under all these systems, there's privileges: people who have more and people who have less, while communism is usually defined as a stateless/classless society (including by marxists).

> Wouldn't it be more accurate to just say: where industrial humans are or have been?

Indeed! Yet this formula ignores the ties between the two concepts. Industrialization and capitalism grew hand in hand with extractivism and colonization starting in the 16th century. Without the industry to build boats to exploit the overseas, capitalism could not exist: yet without massive accumulation of wealth, industry as we know it could not be created.

This is not to say pollution is impossible without capitalism. But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment, and because there will always be more areas to exploit and pollute: our overlords are now openly talking of colonizing Mars once they're done fucking things up over here!

If you have intellectual curiosity for critiques of industrial capitalism, i strongly recommend the "End: Civ" documentary.

[christophilus]

That sounds to me like no true Scotsmanship.

[lostlogin]

The 'But communism polluted us too" comments here are a touch too defensive, and I don't get the point.

[revolvingocelot]

It's a thought-terminating cliché that has the useful side effect of getting everyone to talk about the sociopolitics of authoritarism or the Cuban Missile Crisis or anything other than the fact that modern industrial society doesn't have to be as polluting as it is.

[jtbayly]

Ah yes. The old “Nobody has ever tried Communism (or socialism)” argument.

[southerntofu]

I'm not saying nobody has done it. I'm saying those actual examples (eg. 1936 revolutionary Spain, until the stalinist then franquist takeovers) are not what people refer to when they talk about "communism" as a scapegoat. Unless of course "communism" refers to dictatorship of the proletariat, which surprisingly both leninists and capitalists agree about.

[nate_meurer]

> But capitalism as a social structure incentivizes not to care because there's no (immediate) profit involved in respecting your environment

Ok. So what are the viable political/economic alternatives?

[southerntofu]

Self-determination and self-organization on a wide scale. There's much less incentives to affect your environment and community negatively when decisions are taken collectively, than when decisions are taken by a minority reaping benefits but not suffering from negative consequences (pollution, bad working conditions, etc).

If anything, the COVID crisis has shown that health workers care and will go to great lengths of creativity to counteract the bureaucracy and lack of resources (remember the trashbag suits? the homesewn masks?). Now imagine if these people were in charge of organizing healthcare instead of managers? I can only imagine much better outcomes for everyone involved. And the same is true across most (all?) industries and areas of life.

[0dayz]

Anarcho egoism ♡