Mickey wrote:Why do you say this? Wouldn't complete depletion of natural resources be the cause of unemployment?
The problem is people don't know when natural resources deplete in advance of depletion. We can forecast, but forecasts aren't omniscient.
Furthermore, workers don't have an interest in preventing unemployment into the future. They just identify with working in the present. If you demand that they change their ways in order to accommodate others, they get frustrated unless compensated.
Likewise, workers get frustrated when expected to compensate others whose ways they didn't create.
How do you explain the Red-Green coalitions in Europe?
They're a Machiavellian tactic against capitalism.
I would think Socialism and environmentalism work great together. It had always been capitalist interests
See, you're proving my point here. You haven't shown how socialism and environmentalism are compatible. You just immediately made a Machiavellian leap against capitalism.
that chopped down forests, milked oil for all its worth,
Capitalists deplete natural resources because they're socially alienated from the existing mode of production. If they didn't do this, society would treat them as second class citizens.
In fact, socialism is based on abstract versus concrete labor. It explicitly discriminates against those who work smart, not hard.
and sell us carbon emitting products.
Consumer sovereignty doesn't exist?
I've heard it said that lack of a planned economy is what has allowed companies to disregard their effect on the eco-system.
Can you show how economic planning coincides with environmentalism?
I even think it would work in a more decentralised form of socialism like Anarchism: just start up a nice campaign to convince communities to find ways of reducing their carbon footprint. And a more democratic and worker-controlled form of buisiness would be more smart about their handling of resources.
Anarchism would revert people back to a state of nature which is crude, brutal, and vicious. Unless you believe in intelligent design, I'm not sure why you're convinced that proper environmental handling is just obvious.
Everyone doesn't feel the same way about the environment, and you would be discriminating against weak minorities who feel differently.