Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Double checked the rules and it doesn’t look like I’m violating any, but please point me in the right direction if there’s a better place for my questions. I genuinely am unclear and want to learn.

In this context, what are eco-facsists? And then how does that and Malthusian Population Theory inherently relate to Capitalism?

When I imagine Malthusian Population issues, I normally think of it as a left-wing / anticapitalist talking point. Assuming I’m missing the mark on that, what’s the Socialist proposed solution and/or explanation or why that’s not an issue? (Racked my brain for a better wording for that last sentence, but couldn’t think of one on the fly. Please pardon my ignorance if there’s a different phrasing I should have used).

I was around someone with this same hot take, who called Sir David Attenborough an Eco-fascist for acknowledging that the endless destruction of wild habitat at the hands of humans expanding their own habitats and resource extraction, was responsible for the beginnings of a mass extinction event for wildlife.

I’ll say it loud and proud. Industrialism is not natural. Industrialism is the only way we can support a population of 8 billion humans, the only thing that allowed them to exist in the first place. Industrialism is inherently destructive and exploitative.

Tankie dweebs seem to think that if we just give everyone an equal cut, that we would suddenly have a utopia, that we would somehow bring back the massive swaths of insect populations we’ve decimated, that we could magically make degraded land arable again. Nah.

Industrial civilization isn’t infinite. It has a start and an end. When it ends, so will most of us. Recognizing this doesn’t make one an “eco fascist”

What makes someone an eco fascist is if they want to genocide populations they deem undesirable for ecological purposes. Pretty simple.

Industrialism is inherently destructive and exploitative.

Sure, but we've destroyed and exploited enough to sustain eight billion people (and, given the insane amounts of food waste in the first world, even more than that). We've already cut down enough forests, taken over enough natural habitats, emitted enough greenhouse gases and generally been enough of a cancer already, so we don't need to do more of that to survive. The reason forests are still being cut down and CO2 is still being emitted isn't because industrial civilization requires it, but because capitalism requires it. Brazil isn't cutting down the Amazon rainforest because their life depends on it, but because rich people's yacht money depends on it. Removing that incentive to destroy the environment even more would do a lot to protect the ecosystem. That, not the strawman you painted, is the intersection with socialism.

So if we all got to divvy up the wealth of the billionaires equally, and suddenly all of us had a moderate but sustaining amount of wealth, we’d give up on cars? Electricity? Beef? Because having those things, as I like to say, your “hot showers and cold ice cream” is what is destroying this world’s habitability. It’s not just the billionaires but our demand for the shit they sell us, regardless of the economic paradigm that delivers it.

Let’s say the first world standard of living downgraded just a bit, and the third world standard of living was elevated to first world standards overnight, do you think our demands of the planets resources would diminish? I don’t think it would. It would explode, as people who have lived on very little would want to eat as well as we have all these years. As the world wants more beef, the rainforest gets the axe so ranchers can graze their cattle on its ashes. Apply this to literally every other consumer good and municipal service.

I want to see the billionaire robber barons dethroned as bad as you do, but it won’t fix the underlying problem of civilization.