all my homies hate eco-fascists

https://mander.xyz/post/44532621

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.

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.

Weird to pin a general economic issue on capitalism when it’s more of a general issue with economic growth as history corroborates. Production functions—the dependence on factors of production including natural resources to produce output—work the same regardless of economic system: more is needed to produce more.

Central planning economies can be as or more destructive than the more capitalist ones: type of economy seems to have little bearing there. The USSR aggressively industrialized & would consistently pursue economic growth (to raise standards of living). It comes up in the Soviet constitution of 1977:

  • labor, free from exploitation, as the source of growth
  • continuous improvement of their living standards (art. 39)
  • steady growth of the productive forces (art. 40).

Despite their command economy, their pollution was disproportionately worse than the US’s

Total emissions in the USSR in 1988 were about 79% of the US total. Considering that the Soviet GNP was only some 54% of that of the USA, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the USA per unit of GNP.

Their planners considered pollution control

unnecessary hindrance to economic development and industrialization

and

By the 1990s, 40% of Russia’s territory began demonstrating symptoms of significant ecological stress, largely due to a diverse number of environmental issues, including deforestation, energy irresponsibility, pollution, and nuclear waste.

And this generously glosses over the extent of water contamination, hazardous dumping of toxic & nuclear waste into oceans, etc.

The dependence on natural resources, capacity for environmental destruction, and demand for economic growth are not particular to any type of economy: they’re general. Wherever an economy recklessly grows without environmental protections, the environment is ruined.

1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union - Wikipedia