Who is to blame for the climate crisis?

This opinion piece, published three years ago but every bit as relevant now, says we should place the blame on capitalism, not on ‘humanity’.
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The first statement in the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers [AR6, 2021] claims that climate change is “unequivocally caused by human activities.” The phrase “human-induced climate change” appears throughout the report.

Unlike the report’s assessments of likely degrees of warming, anticipated extreme heat, and predicted sea level rises, the suggestion that humanity in general is to blame is not a scientific claim. It is an ideological one. In this instance, it insulates the ruling class from blame.

This is unlikely to be the explicit intention of the scientists at the IPCC. The popular tendency to talk about human-caused climate change is surely a response to well-funded climate denial. However, climate denial is now no longer the main blockage — instead, it’s the delay and inaction of the capitalist class.

It is capitalists who profit from the climate crisis while the poorest suffer. It is the capitalist system putting profit above all else that blocks decarbonization while the world burns.

True, some of us benefit materially from the fruits of fossil capitalism. It’s unavoidable that fossil fuel extraction has been the basis of modern civilization and provided improvements to many lives. But most people are also exploited, alienated, and marginalized within this system. We consume the carbon-intensive products of capitalism — but we have no say about the fundamental conditions of production that are driving our climate to breakdown.

A worker on an oil refinery does not share culpability with the capitalist who exploits them to profit from oil production. Indigenous communities violently displaced from their land to make way for a coal mine do not share blame with the governments forcing these projects through.

We are not all equally responsible for climate breakdown. Our individual behaviors, even taken in aggregate, cannot propel rapid and just decarbonization without a planned transformation of the economy.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://jacobin.com/2021/08/ipcc-sixth-assessment-report-climate-change-denial

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #Degrowth